The City of Oakland needs your help!

Building on the success of their cripple wall retrofit program, and in an ongoing effort to make the Easy Bay a seismically safer place, the City of Oakland, assisted by the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) is looking for volunteers to help them survey their multi-family residential buildings in order to identify potential soft-story hazards. Volunteers will be surveying residential neighborhoods and compiling basic information about pre-selected buildings onto provided forms. Several other Bay Area professional organizations such as SEAONC and the UC Berkeley student chapter of EERI have signed on to help with this important project, and your additional support would be welcome!

The survey will be conducted on Saturday, September 20, 2008 and Saturday, October 4th, 2008. Volunteers will meet and sign-in at a central location at the City offices for breakfast and a short training talk (at 7:30 a.m.) covering administrative, safety, and technical points. Around 9:00 am volunteers will disperse in teams of two to three people to designated neighborhoods, and conduct the surveys on foot or by car. Please bring a brown bag lunch and your car if possible!

As many volunteers as possible are needed for both Saturdays, so sign up for one day or both! It’s a great opportunity to get some fresh air, meet like-minded seismic activists, and contribute a valuable public service in increasing seismic safety for the City of Oakland.

for more information: please contact ABAG via Erika Amir at ErikaA@abag.ca.gov or Jeanne Perkins at JeanneP@abag.ca.gov.