State Urged to Spend More to Upgrade Bridges

More money needs to be spent to upgrade bridges to withstand an earthquake, state officials and engineers told a special hearing of the State Assembly Transportation Committee at Los Angeles City Hall Tuesday. Officials also were urged to move faster to make structures safe.

“We didn’t solve these problems 18 years ago and they came back to haunt us last month,” said Wilfred Iwan, a member of the State Seismic Safety Commission. The lessons learned from the Sylmar earthquake in 1971, which toppled a freeway interchange, were not acted upon quickly enough, he said, to forestall the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway in the Bay Area earthquake Oct. 17.

Assemblyman Richard Katz, committee chairman, said he called the hearing because “One of the casualties’ of the Nimitz’ collapse is public confidence that freeways and highways we travel every day will be ‘safe’ in an earthquake.”

Information that comes out of the hearing will be used in developing future legislation, a legislative aide said.

Although a three-phase Caltrans program was started after the 1971 earthquake to shore up 2,500 of the most vulnerable bridges and elevated roadways in California, only the first phase has been completed. James E. Roberts, chief of the Caltrans structures division, said the money needed to strengthen state bridges alone is $300 to $500 million.