Buildings

In 2024, the City of Vancouver modelled what three different earthquakes would do to the city’s buildings. [1] Each row below is a separate scenario.

The nearby M7.2 damages about four times as many buildings as the offshore M9.0 and causes about four and a half times the direct economic loss. Its smaller magnitude is offset by its location. It produces stronger shaking in the city. [1]

Vancouver has about 90,000 buildings. Nearly 70 per cent were built before 1990, when modern earthquake standards arrived, and about half before 1973, when there were no earthquake standards. [1]

Five privately owned building types make up roughly a tenth of the stock but carry nearly 80 per cent of the city’s earthquake risk. They include concrete apartment buildings, wood-frame apartments, older brick homes, low-rise concrete shops and offices, and downtown office towers. [1]

The City’s M7.2 scenario shows how differently three common types of housing perform. The figures are averages for each type, not an assessment of any individual building.

Wood-frame apartments account for 45 per cent of residential displacement in this scenario, or 103,900 people. They also hold 40 per cent of the city’s purpose-built rental housing. [1] This is different from the familiar finding that wood-frame houses generally perform well. The City’s engineering work identifies weak walls and ground floors left open for parking as particular concerns in apartment buildings. [2]

Downtown office towers are another concern. The model finds 29 per cent extensively or completely damaged, with nearly half of their occupants unable to return for more than 90 days. [1]

Six neighbourhoods carry 65 per cent of the city’s building risk: the West End, the Downtown Eastside including Chinatown and Strathcona, Downtown, Kitsilano, Fairview and Mount Pleasant. [1] In the census tracts with the most risk, roughly 70 to 75 per cent of residents rent. Tenants can ask about a building’s condition, but they cannot retrofit it themselves. [1]

Older commercial streets face a different hazard. Brick walls, parapets and gable ends can fall onto pavements and roads, injuring people and blocking emergency vehicles. The City identifies this risk along streets including Hastings and Kingsway, especially in and around Downtown and the Downtown Eastside. [1]

Unreinforced masonry is brick or concrete block built without steel reinforcing. A parapet is the section of wall above the roofline. Both can break away from an older building during strong shaking.

Federal modelling of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake close to Vancouver estimates 13 million tonnes of debris across the affected region, enough to obstruct streets and response work. The estimate excludes damage from aftershocks, tsunami, landslides, liquefaction and fire. [3]

The danger is established even though no Vancouver casualty estimate exists for falling walls. In the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, unreinforced masonry walls and façades caused 35 of the 42 deaths from building failures outside the two office buildings that collapsed. Twenty-six of those people were on the street or in vehicles. [4] Christchurch shows the mechanism, not how many people would be harmed here.

The Vancouver Building By-law requires glazing in newer buildings to accommodate movement without falling out. It also sets earthquake requirements for cladding, parapets, ornaments and brick facing. [6] Older buildings generally come under the falling-hazard rules only when an owner renovates, adds to, reconstructs or changes the use of the building. Age alone does not trigger an upgrade, and Vancouver has no standalone requirement to retrofit parapets or façades. [6]

There is no public list of buildings at risk. The City’s five-year risk-reduction plan includes seismic screening, but it does not set a date for publishing the results or say whether individual buildings will be named. [2]

The gap between damage and displacement in the tables is important. A building does not have to collapse to become inaccessible. Damage elsewhere on the block can lead to a cordon, and every building must wait for someone qualified to inspect it.

The City expects large parts of some neighbourhoods to remain inaccessible while a limited number of inspectors and tradespeople work through damaged buildings. Even minor damage can take time to assess and repair. [7] [8] The Housing page covers the longer problem of finding somewhere for displaced households to live.

A 2013 model of an M9.0 Cascadia earthquake put the total economic loss in western Canada between roughly $66 billion and $83 billion, depending on how quickly the economy recovered. Its central estimate was about $75 billion. About $62 billion was direct damage and about $20 billion of that direct damage was insured. In other words, insurance covered roughly a third of the direct loss and just over a quarter of the central estimate for total economic loss. [9]

Coverage is also uneven. About 55 per cent of Vancouver homeowners carry earthquake insurance, and coverage among renters is much lower. [10] Earthquake damage cannot be assumed to be part of a home or tenant policy.