President Barack Obama is ordering all new or renovated federal buildings to be equipped with the latest protections against earthquakes.
Obama signed an executive order on Wednesday creating a Federal Earthquake Risk Management Standard. The White House says the standard will improve federal buildings’ resilience to earthquakes, making them safer and lowering the costs for recovering from a quake.
Obama’s order says agencies constructing or updating federal buildings must ensure they’re built with earthquake-resistant designs that meet the latest building codes. The White House says following those codes are one of the best ways to save the lives of people living in a building.
The White House says it’s also working to ensure government assets dollars are available for recovery efforts after an earthquake.
(AP)
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3 Responses
This is long overdue. The Federal Government had previously exempted itself from the stringent state earthquake rules in California, endangering lives and property. Even stricter rules are needed in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska which are vulnerable to even stronger earthquakes than California.
How many earthquakes did the federal buildings have ? If ever… Another way to spend our taxes …
Yeah cuz there are so many earthquakes in DC and the government has a surplus in the budget so why not just create a new agency to spend billions of dollars.