Large or small, earthquakes grab the attention of building owners and facility managers.

Extreme weather events have become increasingly frequent and severe, and the World Economic Forum confirms that they pose a major global risk. These events include wildfires, floods and droughts.

They also include earthquakes, which might not command the news headlines that wildfires do. But check the stats: There were more than 1,500 earthquakes worldwide with a magnitude of 5.0 or higher in 2024.

In early December, tsunami warnings were issued for nearly 5 million people along parts of the northern California and Oregon coastlines after a 7.0 earthquake struck off the California coast.

It’s an earthquake world — many quakes register below 2.5 and aren’t even felt. Disaster-resilient design and construction never have been more important to building owners, particularly those along the West Coast.

“The structural community learns from these events, even the ones outside the country,” says John Leuenberger, a longtime structural engineer for McCarthy Building Companies and native of the San Francisco Bay area. “The technology is getting more sophisticated, with custom fabrication and building code design.”

Base isolators, which separate a building’s structure from its foundation to reduce earthquake damage, and timber-based construction systems, are two examples of transformative solutions for quake-resilient buildings.

The main goal:flexibility and a lightweight design that enable structures to ride out seismic activity, bending rather than breaking under extreme stress.

Healthcare facilities, in particular, have received added attention over the past 20 years, Leuenberger says, noting legislation in 2008 that mandated facilities evaluation by California hospitals.

“There has been a dramatic increase in seismic awareness,” he says. “California has an agency (Department of Health Care Access and Information) whose mission is to oversee design and construction.That pushed forward a lot of construction.”

It takes a collaborative effort by architects, engineers, building owners and facilities managers to get things built and secured well. And it has never been more important for facilities managers to have expert command of that which they oversee.

“The more savvy ones will look at their inventory,” Leuenberger says. “Some of that inventory is aging buildings that they grew into. Then you engage a structural engineering firm to evaluate. There are risk models now to do that. You plan over a period of time to target your at-risk buildings.”

Retrofitting an older building isn’t necessarily a no-brainer. The process may involve a significant amount of foundation work, and it can be costly.

The balance sheet matters. In 2024, there were 27 individual weather and climate disasters with at least $1 billion in damages, trailing only the record-setting 28 events analyzed in 2023, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.

Since 1980, the United States has sustained403 weather and climate disastersfor which the individual damage costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The cumulative cost for these events exceeds$2.915 trillion.

For 14 consecutive years, 10 or more separate billion-dollar disaster events have impacted the U.S.

By Doug Carroll, Contributing Writer

Doug Carroll is a freelance writer based in Chandler, Arizona. 

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