Funded by a $5 million Federal Emergency Management Administration grant, the Earthquake Soft-Story retrofit program can fund the shoring up of more than 300 homes, according to Janiele Maffei ...

I learned about the risk of “soft story” buildings on the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1989. On that day, coastal Northern California was struck by the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake.

The study noted that soft-story buildings made up nearly half (7,700) of the 16,000 dwellings that were deemed uninhabitable after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and more than 34,000 of the ...