Vancouver to map earthquake risk building by building
The city is developing a seismic inventory to identify which buildings would fail in a major quake—a step Seattle and San Francisco took after their own disasters.
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Vancouver is launching an ambitious effort to catalog the seismic vulnerability of its buildings, a move the city hopes will drive retrofits before the next major earthquake strikes.
The city plans to develop a building-by-building inventory and seismic risk rating system, following the lead of earthquake-prone cities like Seattle and San Francisco. Micah Hilt, Vancouver's lead seismic policy planner, told city council that while current models show a one-in-five chance of a very strong earthquake in the next 50 years, "we could have an earthquake at any moment."
The process would involve seismic screening—professionals observing buildings from the exterior and assigning risk ratings based on those observations. Seattle's public inventory of unreinforced masonry buildings has already galvanized the community into a "fix-the-bricks" campaign pushing all levels of government to protect heritage structures.
City council is considering a range of measures including establishing a technical working group to guide policy, developing a retrofit pilot program and creating incentives to accelerate upgrades. A 2024 study Hilt co-authored examined what a 7.2-magnitude earthquake could do to Vancouver's building stock.
One concern flagged during public feedback: commercial and rental property owners expressed "significant concern" about publishing building-level risk information, citing potential impacts on leasing, insurance, and lending. The city is also considering how to support renters and small businesses affected by seismic upgrades, and to prioritize retrofit efforts in vulnerable single-room-occupancy buildings.