USA: Experts say earthquake damage was worse outside Anchorage’s building safety area due to lax oversight
By Aubrey Wieber and Matt Tunseth
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In the months following the [Cook Inlet Region] earthquake, public and private building inspectors fanned out to assess damage in homes and businesses from Chugiak-Eagle River through the Anchorage Bowl and south to Girdwood. They categorized buildings with green, yellow or red placards — green meaning any damage was superficial; yellow meaning the building could still be occupied under certain conditions; and red meaning the building should only be occupied to repair it.
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The resulting conclusion is that a higher level of building regulation in the Anchorage Building Safety Service Area — which essentially covers the Anchorage Bowl south of Eagle River and north of Girdwood — resulted in more buildings being built to code and that survived the earthquake at a higher rate.
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A month into the rebuilding process, the municipality had red-tagged buildings in Eagle River at 20 times the rate in Anchorage, and municipal inspectors were called out to assess damage in single-family homes five times more often in Eagle River than in Anchorage. Of the 72 red tags issued by the city, 55 were in the Chugiak-Eagle River area, the sprawling semi-suburban area at the northern end of the municipality. Only 17 were issued in Anchorage, which has nearly 10 times as many people.
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That is a “shocking comparison,” said Wael Hassan, a University of Alaska Anchorage associate professor of structural earthquake engineering. The biggest takeaway from that is “you should follow building codes," said Hassan, who was appointed by the California-based Earthquake Engineering Research Institute to study the quake’s impacts on structures.
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