Danny O’Neil: ‘Boondoggle’ of Seattle politics will slow life-saving work

Earthquakes were once again at the top of our minds after The Seattle Times reported that city officials have made no law requiring buildings to be seismically retrofitted.

The Times found there are “at least 1,163 buildings” that are not built to withstand a major earthquake. That puts more than 26,000 people at risk.

KIRO Radio’s Tom Tangney found the news both “enlightening and equally troubling.”

Tom Tangney: Why haven’t we done anything since the ’80s to prevent these buildings from being eminently collapsible?

Danny O’Neil: The same reason we’re not going to do anything now. It’s not shocking that there is going to be a huge seismic event.

Tom: The idea is: How much do we want to make ourselves safe, versus what are the odds of a huge earthquake. There’s a good chance it will happen in our lifetime …

Danny: Are you willing to roll the dice? You have children you have to think about. I don’t have children, so I can be more selfish.

Tom: The way the system works now, is if you’re going to do an upgrade to a building, then in order to get that permit you have to retrofit the entire building. The problem is we have so many of these buildings it will cost [building owners] a fortune. We look like we are really not doing our ethical due diligence compared to other cities.

Danny: It isn’t a matter of ethics. It’s a question of what’s going to happen because there isn’t a mystery. Without retrofitting these buildings, the number of fatalities are going to skyrocket. Either you have to start retrofitting, or we have to agree not to complain when a bunch of people die in the earthquake. It’s one of the two.

Tom: It is politically dicey. If you own a building and it’s unsafe, you must retrofit it. You can’t have fire hazards, you can’t have an earthquake hazard. But if you are a building owner, you say …

Danny: “How will you help me pay?”

Tom: The argument from landowners is that they can’t afford this and the city needs to come to their aid. Then we have to decide if we’re willing to raise taxes to retrofit on the off chance there will be an earthquake that justifies that.

Danny: I also – being someone who has witnessed the boondoggle of local politics – think about how hard it was to agree on what to do with the [Alaskan Way Viaduct], and now what I consider to be a colossal disaster. Now you’re, essentially, going to expand that. I don’t have much optimism.

Danny: I have zero faith in politicians to tackle this honestly or their ability to come up with a solution. Perhaps the quake will be so big that all the retrofitting in the world doesn’t save us and the Earth opens up and swallows Seattle.

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