Los Angeles proposal on soft-story buildings

Los Angeles Coun­cil­man Tom La­Bonge is call­ing on the city to con­sider an in­vent­ory of thou­sands of so-called soft-story build­ings — many of them apart­ments — that dot the re­gion. Seis­mic ex­perts and en­gin­eers have long warned that this type of wood-framed build­ing is par­tic­u­larly vul­ner­able to col­lapse dur­ing a ma­jor earth­quake, be­cause the first story can­not sup­port the weight of the up­per stor­ies.