The West Coast remains vulnerable to catastrophic damage and loss of life in a major earthquake despite billions of dollars spent to strengthen buildings and infrastructure.

In the aftermath of three massive quakes since 1989 that killed 121 people and caused $51 billion in property losses, progress in quake-proofing older structures has been slow and fitful, experts say.

Damage from the 6.8-magnitude quake that struck the Pacific Northwest on Feb. 28 was modest because it originated deep in the Earth. But with 80 percent of California's 34 million people living near active faults, a strong quake in the Los Angeles basin or the San Francisco Bay Area still could be devastating.

"Not nearly enough is being done," says Fred Turner, structural engineer with the state seismic safety commission. "The state and local governments should be taking more proactive measures."

Charles Scawthorn, senior vice president of EQE International, the largest earthquake engineering company, says no region in the world is better prepared than the Bay area. "Yet a huge amount of work still needs to be done," he says, and Los Angeles is in no better shape.

The Puget Sound quake, which did an estimated $2 billion damage, already is prodding some officials in high-risk areas to do more. "We will embark on an expanded retrofitting effort," Seattle City Council member Heidi Wills vows.

But retrofitting -- a term for strengthening and bracing older structures -- is expensive, disruptive and lengthy.

California's building codes are among the world's strictest. They require that walls, roofs, floors and foundations be connected to stabilize them and add strength. But "very few laws have been passed that require older buildings to have this work done," says Mark Benthien, associate director for outreach at the Southern California Earthquake Center.

In Seattle, many brick buildings that are not reinforced were damaged because brick is particularly vulnerable to sways and jolts. Almost half of California's 25,000 brick buildings have not been retrofitted, despite a 1992 law requiring cities to devise a strategy to make them safer. Bakersfield, San Bernardino, Riverside, Carmel, El Cerrito, Gilroy, Napa, Orange, Ontario, Oxnard, Palo Alto and Redwood City are among cities that have decided not to make such improvements mandatory.

Most brick buildings in Los Angeles, Long Beach and San Jose have been strengthened -- or condemned. San Francisco, however, has more than 1,000 buildings that still haven't been strengthened.

Oakland has more than 300. San Diego and Sacramento lie outside high-risk areas.

Few of California's tens of thousands of large concrete buildings have been retrofitted -- warehouses, offices, apartments and parking garages built from the 1920s through the 1970s. "They're the ones that pancake in a quake," Scawthorn says. Retrofitting costs up to several hundred thousand dollars per building.

The Olympian Copyright 2000