Seattle, WA Earthquake Safety: Soft-Story Retrofit (2026)

Unreinforced Masonry Buildings — What's Happening Now? The City has adopted code to recognize URM retrofits. The code was adopted in fall 2024 as part of the 2021 Seattle Existing Building Code (SEBC). The code recognition of URM retrofits supports voluntary earthquake retrofits for URM building owners seeking to have their building recognized in the City's URM database as retrofitted. [...] Retrofitting URM buildings will be mandatory in the future, once the City has established supportive resources. [...] Project Benefits — The code recognition or URM retrofits: Define minimum earthquake safety requirements for a "retrofitted" URM building. Establish the Alternate Method for URM retrofit, a reduced retrofit standard that minimizes cost and collapse hazard for qualifying URM buildings. The City's primary reason for encouraging earthquake retrofits of URMs is public safety. [...] In the next 50 years, Seattle has an 86 percent chance of experiencing a damaging earthquake. A future mandatory unreinforced masonry retrofit ordinance will improve the life safety of over 1,100 collapse-hazard buildings. The future required URM earthquake retrofits will reduce the probability of injuries, fatalities, and long-term displacement to the over 22,000 people who live or work in URM buildings.