Natural hazard mitigation in Southern California



4. Case studies in Southern California

4.1 Southern California and natural hazard mitigation

California is known for its natural disaster potential around the world. The mass media often
choose California as a location for making disaster-movies, and not without a reason. The
cities of Southern California are located in an area of high seismic activity. On January 17,
1994, Los Angeles was struck by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake. The losses exceeded $30 billion.
It is estimated that within the next century, the greater Los Angeles area might experience an
earthquake of even greater magnitude, not unlike the one that hit San Francisco in 1906 that
with a magnitude of 8.2 caused 3000 deaths, destroyed 28,000 buildings and made 350,000
people homeless (Palm & Carroll 1998). If that would happen, losses would be dramatic. For
such an event the economic losses are estimated at $220 billion, the number of deaths at 8,000
and the number of serious injuries at 20,000 (Burby 1998). And unfortunately, earthquakes are
not the only natural hazard threat in Southern California; there are also high flood, wildfire and
landslide risks (Cutter 2005). Combined with high population densities, this creates an
enormous potential for natural disasters in this region. Davis (1998) therefore mockingly
describes the city of Los Angeles as “apocalypse theme park”. However, research by Palm &
Carroll (1998) provides evidence that California’s population greatly underestimates the risks
of such events and is not very concerned with natural hazard risks. The mitigation efforts of
local governments vary greatly. The amount of un-reinforced masonry buildings that is now
retrofitted or demolished, for example, is 85% of identified un-reinforced masonry buildings in
Los Angeles, 65% in Orange County, and 15% or less in San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino
and Kern (LA Times 2004).

In previous chapters, many motivations for natural hazard mitigation have been given, as well
as ideal approaches to mitigation planning. Since Southern California is so prone to natural
disasters, mitigation can really make a difference here. In this chapter, the quality of natural
hazard mitigation plans in Southern California will be examined. In order to do so, two highly
urbanized counties in the region, Orange County and Los Angeles county, will be used as case
studies. For both counties, county general plans and general plans of 16 cities therein (8 in each
county) will be used. As seen in chapter 3, all counties and cities in California are required to
establish a general plan that includes natural hazard mitigation. Gathering these general plans
for research proved to be difficult; in some cities the plans were publicly available on the
internet, but in most cases they were harder to come by. Local governments were not always

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