Building safety was on minds at City Hall this week after an
earthquake of 6.0 hit near the Central Valley town of Parkfield at
10:15am Tuesday. There were no injuries and little damage but the
event raised questions about how Morgan Hill
’s older buildings would stand up to a similar shaker.
Building safety was on minds at City Hall this week after an earthquake of 6.0 hit near the Central Valley town of Parkfield at 10:15am Tuesday. There were no injuries and little damage but the event raised questions about how Morgan Hill’s older buildings would stand up to a similar shaker.
Two strong earthquakes in the past 20 years have largely cleared out Morgan Hill’s weaker buildings, according to Chief Building Inspector Larry Ford. The ones still standing should weather another quake fairly well.
“We’re in pretty good shape,” Ford said Wednesday, “much better than many other cities in seismic zone four.
When the city took the state-required inventory of its unreinforced buildings in the early 1980s, there were 12. Now there are five that Ford has his eye on and only the one-story former St. Catherine Parish Hall, on East Dunne Avenue across from the Community Center, remains totally unreinforced.
“And they’re looking at an upgrade,” Ford said.
State law requires that unreinforced buildings be marked with a sign at the entrance, said architect Charles Weston.
Building codes have been in place in Morgan Hill since the early 1900s and are updated every three years, based on requirements received from the state. The newest set of codes went into effect on Nov. 1, 2002.
“We work with owners when they change a building’s use or make substantial improvements,” Ford said.
The parish hall is undergoing a change of use.
Morgan Hill police dispatchers said no one called to report feeling Wednesday’s earthquake. Up the street at the Santa Clara County Fire Department’s El Toro station, Battalion Chief Don Jarvis said not only had they had no calls, they didn’t feel the quake and hadn’t known about it. Several local residents said they felt the jolt but found no damage.
Morgan Hill’s biggest event occurred April 24, 1984 when a temblor measuring 6.2 on the Richter scale occurred eight miles northeast of Morgan Hill on the Calaveras Fault. The fault runs along the east hills, partly through Jackson Oaks.
One house in Jackson Oaks slid off its foundation, causing major damage – it was not built to code – but several buildings downtown, the oldest part of town, were damaged and removed. Most of the vacant lots downtown are the sites of buildings damaged beyond repair that day – on Monterey Road south of East Main and south of East Third Street.
The old Cornerstone Building on the northeast corner of Monterey and East Third was broken in the 1989 Loma Prieta quake. It was replaced by the new Cornerstone Building – the House of Bagels, Dezign Salon and Weston Miles Architects.
Most of the others remaining downtown, Ford said, have been retrofitted to some degree and are square with the city’s code enforcement officers, at least until they change format.
The white-painted brick building next to Rosy’s at the Beach – the original Granada Theater – was braced in the early 1990s when it became a restaurant and night club but its masonry not reinforced, according to Weston.
“That would help in an earthquake,” Ford said, “but we would still have some damage.
Plans to renovate and reopen the building as a possible sports bar exist but are on hold and would require meeting the 2001 seismic code.
The old Millhouse Building – BookSmart and Just Breakfast – is entirely built of wood and weathered even the 1906 San Francisco earthquake as did the 1902 Morgan Hill Times building on East Third Street.
The Downtown Mall – Continental Stitch, the Music Tree and Gallery Morgan Hill – is also mostly wood though the back wall is reinforced masonry.
The 1952 Granada Theater is newer. At Monterey and Second, the two-story Votaw Building, proudly showing off its 1905 date, was severely damaged in 1984 and retrofitted to 1984 code.
Older buildings on the west side of Monterey, between West Third and West Second – Brotin’s Design up to the Downtown Café – have some claim to retrofitting though, Weston said, not enough for comfort.
The Skeels Building on the West Third/Monterey corner was rebuilt in 1996.
Weston said The Grange, an old grammar school on East Fourth Street, has vertical support but no lateral reinforcement.
“That could be a problem,” he said, “but the city didn’t have enough money to do both.”
Gunter Brothers Feed building has I-beam straps around it, Weston said, but needs more to be safe.
What Ford really worries about are decks on otherwise properly built homes about town.
“What I’m concerned about are decks built with no lateral support,” Ford said.
He would like every homeowner with a deck to go out and check. If it’s more than four or five feet off the ground you would be in trouble if it fell. Decks move at a different rate and can separate. Fixing it is easy and inexpensive in most situations, Ford said.
Running a 2” by 6” piece of lumber from the top of one column to the bottom of the adjacent column in front and in back of the deck will hold the posts together.
Homeowners can contact the city’s building department at 779-7241, for advice.
“But our commercial buildings are pretty much up to code,” Ford said.
