How bad would an earthquake be for Vancouver? Really bad

While it’s a beautiful city to live in, Vancouver is increasingly dealing with challenging environmental and natural disasters that could pose problems in the years and decades ahead.

A report to council by city staff looked at how an earthquake could affect privately owned buildings in the city. It paints a devastating picture — a 7.2 magnitude quake would result in 6,100 heavily damaged buildings, with 1,350 injuries, $17 billion in damages and displace one-third of residents, up to 231,000, for up to three months. 

Risk areas: The city looked at different neighbourhoods to understand the risk scenarios for each one. The areas with the greatest risk are near Stanley Park, the West End, downtown Gastown, Chinatown and False Creek. These are all areas with both older and taller buildings. Most of these areas have renters, affecting 70% of the population in those neighbourhoods. 

• The majority of casualties and displacement would occur in concrete mid- and high-rise multi-unit residential buildings, as well as wood and unreinforced masonry multi-unit residential buildings. 

West End: The popular neighbourhood would especially be hit hard — 50.9 percent of the buildings were built in or before 1972, before seismic design provisions. Modelling suggests 20 per cent of people displaced would be in the West End, with 36 per cent of the buildings being extensively or severely damaged. Even more startling is that 95 per cent of the area’s population would be disrupted or displaced for 90 days. 

• This image shows where the highest-risk concrete mid- and high-rise residential buildings are located, with the majority (32 per cent) in the West End. 

Unequal impact: Like many problems in the city, the most vulnerable and low-income people will be impacted the most, as an earthquake of that magnitude would disproportionately impact affordable housing stock. The report estimates most of the affordable housing stock would

What comes next: The city will be engaging with stakeholders in 2025 to determine more insights and potential challenges to mitigating risks. With this information, the city would develop a seismic risk reduction strategy for private buildings to be voted on in 2025. 

Will new building requirements mitigate rainfall issues?

Anyone following the news lately will have seen the flooding problems plaguing the city and the region. Some modelling has rainfall could increase in BC by six per cent over the next 28 years (though you’ll be forgiven for thinking it’s much more). 

The problem: Vancouver’s infrastructure isn’t up for the task or the budget required. According to the Vancouver Sun, the city owns $34 billion in infrastructure, needing to invest $800 million annually for upkeep and repairs. Unfortunately, the city only invests around $300 million each year, meaning the infrastructure deficit grows by $500 million a year. The sewers have not been able to keep up with the higher rain flow, causing sewage overflows during heavy rainstorms.

One solution: The city is looking at requiring new smaller buildings, like houses, duplexes and multiplexes to install the tanks. Water is stored in these tanks, then slowly released back into the system rather than all at once during a rainfall. This is already a requirement for larger condo and high density buildings.

• Costs rise: It’s expected that adding these requirements would increase home costs by $15,000-$25,000 for developers.

What it means: In many ways, this is another example of the inequality of existing homeowners versus newer residents. Rather than raise taxes to pay for the infrastructure, the city is saddling new homes with the costs, which trickle down into higher home costs and bigger mortgages. Is it fair that only one group is paying for a collective benefit? Water tanks are a great solution, but the proposed process certainly exacerbates and ongoing problem of inequality in the city of current homeowners versus future homeowners.