TABLE OF CONTENTS
| Topics | Sections |
| OVERVIEW | 1.1 What is the purpose of this chapter? 1.2 What is the scope of this chapter? 1.3 What is the objective of this chapter? 1.4 What are the authorities for this chapter? 1.5 What terms do you need to know to understand this chapter? |
| RESPONSIBILITIES | 1.6 Who is responsible for seismic safety? |
| POLICY, ASSESSMENTS, AND MITIGATION | 1.7 What is the Service’s seismic safety policy for new building design and construction? 1.8 What is the Service’s seismic safety policy for existing building structures and nonstructural building components? 1.9 How does the Service ensure the safety of its buildings? 1.10 What should employees do after they receive a copy of a recently completed seismic evaluation report? 1.11 Are recently constructed buildings subject to seismic safety program action? 1.12 Once the Service has determined that a building is compliant, is it free from further program action? 1.13 Where can employees find a list of the publications that govern seismic evaluation or design projects undertaken by or for the Service? 1.14 Are the engineers who provide evaluation or design services for seismic projects required to have special qualifications? 1.15 How does the Service fund seismic retrofit projects? |
OVERVIEW
1.1 What is the purpose of this chapter? This chapter provides U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) policy, guidelines, and procedures for implementing the Service’s seismic safety program.
1.2 What is the scope of this chapter? This chapter applies to:
A. All building projects for which development of detailed structural plans and specifications are initiated by or for the Service;
B. All existing, Service-owned buildings, whether they are:
(1) Occupied by Service personnel, or
(2) Occupied or operated by others under a lease or operating agreement with the Service;
C. Buildings owned by others that the Service leases or in which it otherwise conducts operations; and
D. Nonstructural building components.
1.3 What is the objective of this chapter? Our objective is to enhance the seismic resilience of Service facilities by:
A. Reducing the risk of death or injury to building occupants due to earthquakes, and
B. Increasing the likelihood of continued performance of buildings essential to our operations and functions following future earthquakes.
1.4 What are the authorities for this chapter?
A. Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 (P.L. 95–124, as amended through P.L. 115–307).
B. Executive Order 13717, Establishing a Federal Earthquake Risk Management Standard.
1.5 What terms do you need to know to understand this chapter?
A. Building. Any structure structure
Something temporarily or permanently constructed, built, or placed; and constructed of natural or manufactured parts including, but not limited to, a building, shed, cabin, porch, bridge, walkway, stair steps, sign, landing, platform, dock, rack, fence, telecommunication device, antennae, fish cleaning table, satellite dish/mount, or well head.
Learn more about structure , fully or partially enclosed, used or intended for sheltering people or property.
B. Nonstructural building components. Any item contained within or attached to a building that can cause physical harm or hinder egress during an earthquake.
C. Performance level. A measure of the amount of damage a building sustains when affected by earthquake ground motion and the impacts of this damage on the post-earthquake use of the building.
D. Rapid Visual Screening (RVS). A quick and inexpensive method for predicting a building’s probability of collapse as the result of an earthquake.
E. ShakeCast. A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) application that generates near real-time estimates of damage to facilities due to an earthquake. ShakeCast sends alerts when a magnitude 4.5 or greater earthquake occurs and when a Service-owned building or high hazard dam may have been damaged because of a nearby earthquake of any magnitude.
F. Standards. Refers to the Interagency Committee on Seismic Safety in Construction (ICSSC) Standards of Seismic Safety for Existing Federally Owned and Leased Buildings: ICSSC Recommended Practice 10 (RP 10-nn)[1] (referred to as the Standards).
RESPONSIBILITIES
1.6 Who is responsible for seismic safety? See Table 1-1.
Table 1-1: Responsibilities for Seismic Safety
| These employees | Are responsible for... |
| A. The Director | Approving policy for all Service infrastructure management activities, including seismic safety. |
| B. The Chief - National Wildlife Refuge System | Ensuring we have policy in place for all Service infrastructure management activities, including seismic safety. |
| C. Regional Directors | Mitigating seismic deficiencies in their Regions. |
| D. The Chief, Infrastructure Management Division (IMD), Headquarters | (1) Ensuring that Service-owned and leased buildings are assessed for seismic risk; (2) Appointing a National Seismic Safety Program Manager; and (3) For facilities that are physically located in a Region but report to Headquarters (such as the National Conservation Training Center in West Virginia and the National Eagle Repository in Colorado), performing the seismic safety duties of a Regional IMD Chief related to those facilities. |
| E. Regional Infrastructure Management Division (IMD) Chiefs | (1) Reviewing seismic deficiency corrective maintenance work orders and adding projects to their 5-year plan as appropriate, (2) Ensuring that a qualified engineer designs all planned seismic retrofit projects prior to construction, (3) Reviewing seismic retrofit design and construction for all projects in seismic zones in their areas of responsibility, and (4) Appointing a Regional Seismic Safety Coordinator and ensuring that required training and certifications are supported and tracked. |
| F. The National Seismic Safety Program Manager | (1) Interpreting and implementing the Standards; (2) Developing seismic safety policy in collaboration with Regional and Headquarters personnel; (3) Maintaining the national seismic safety building inventory; (4) In collaboration with Regional personnel, identifying conditions that may pose unacceptable seismic risks in existing Service-owned and leased buildings during an earthquake; (5) Tracking Servicewide progress of seismic assessment and mitigation activity; (6) Serving as the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR) for Servicewide seismic evaluation contracts; (7) Generating seismic inspection and corrective maintenance work orders in the Service Asset and Maintenance Management System (SAMMS) that reflect the findings and recommendations documented in seismic evaluation reports; (8) Maintaining and administering the Service’s use of the USGS ShakeCast earthquake notification application; and (9) Setting training and certification requirements for Regional Seismic Safety Coordinators. |
| G. Regional Seismic Safety Coordinators | (1) Remaining current on seismic assessment, design, retrofit, and construction practices through annual participation in classroom or online training, webinars, or workshops as suggested by the National Seismic Safety Program Manager or as offered by nationally recognized organizations such as the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the Applied Technology Council, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), USGS, and others; (2) Performing RVS inspections within their Regions as needed; (3) Providing the following to the National Seismic Safety Program Manager upon request: (a) Information on Regional RVS and seismic mitigation activities, and (b) Building-specific information; and (4) Reporting the following to the National Seismic Safety Program Manager: (a) Trigger situations we describe in section 1.12, and (b) The progress of seismic assessment and mitigation activity. |
| H. Facility Managers | (1) Reviewing seismic evaluation reports prepared for buildings at their facility; (2) Communicating with the Regional IMD staff regarding any potential trigger situations we describe in section 1.12; and (3) Implementing easily addressed, low-cost mitigation measures included in seismic evaluation reports using station allocations as we describe in section 1.15. |
POLICY, ASSESSMENTS, AND MITIGATION
1.7 What is the Service’s seismic safety policy for new building design and construction? According to the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program’s Recommended Seismic Provisions for New Buildings and Other Structures, code-conforming new buildings increase earthquake resilience for at-risk communities. All new buildings under design or planned for construction must conform to the seismic provisions of the current edition of the International Building Code (IBC) published by the International Code Council. If the current edition of the IBC has been in effect for less than 2 years, the previous version may be used in lieu of the current edition.
1.8 What is the Service’s seismic safety policy for existing building structures and nonstructural building components?
A. All existing buildings that we own, have recently acquired, or currently lease must comply with the requirements of the current edition of the Standards.
B. The current approach to seismic retrofit of existing buildings is to design for a desired outcome rather than for a specific size earthquake. There are several prescribed outcomes, called performance levels, in use. The minimum acceptable performance level for Service-owned buildings is life safety. Engineers expect buildings that provide life safety performance to retain enough structural integrity to allow safe occupant egress, even if the damage caused by the earthquake leaves the building in a completely unusable state. Likewise, engineers expect nonstructural building components not to hinder occupant egress.
1.9 How does the Service ensure the safety of its buildings? We ensure the safety of our buildings by systematically:
A. Inventorying Service-owned and leased buildings. The National Seismic Safety Program Manager maintains an inventory of Service-owned buildings and certain leased buildings and tracks all seismic safety-related activities for each owned building in the inventory.
B. Assessing buildings for compliance with the Standards. Each inventoried, owned building progresses through a series of steps in an assessment process until the National Seismic Safety Program Manager determines that it and its nonstructural components comply with the Standards. (See sections 1.11 and 1.12 for information about the frequency of assessments.)
C. Mitigating identified seismic deficiencies. When we determine that a building or a nonstructural component is seismically deficient, we must eliminate the deficiencies or remove the life-threatening hazard. We accomplish this in one of the following ways:
(1) Retrofitting the deficient structural and nonstructural building components;
(2) Removing the building from our inventory by:
(a) Termination of the lease,
(b) Sale with full disclosure, or
(c) Demolition of the building;
(3) Permanently evacuating the building; or
(4) Changing the use (i.e., code occupancy) of the building so that it falls into an exempt category.
1.10 What should employees do after they receive a copy of a recently completed seismic evaluation report?
A. You should review the Executive Summary section at the beginning of the report to see what the engineers who completed the report determined. If they found that the building did not have any seismic deficiencies, there is nothing more that needs to be done (see section 1.12). If the engineer identified seismic deficiencies, the Executive Summary provides a recommended timeline to address the deficiencies.
B. If the engineer determined that a building does have seismic deficiencies, the evaluation report will include the following:
(1) The estimated cost to address the deficiencies will be in the Executive Summary.
(2) More detailed, line-item costs will be in the body of the report.
C. You should identify any items that station staff can complete using station funds and plan to address these deficiencies as soon as staff availability and funding permit. Nonstructural component deficiencies often fall into this category and can usually be addressed at little cost and without significant staff effort.
D. For more expensive and complex retrofit requirements, you should work with Regional IMD personnel to prioritize and develop projects for inclusion in the 5-Year Plan. Headquarters personnel will already have created the appropriate work orders in SAMMS to address the deficiencies.
1.11 Are recently constructed buildings subject to seismic safety program action? Yes. We assess all newly constructed and acquired buildings as we describe in section 1.9 to verify that they were designed and constructed with adequate seismic resistance, regardless of when they were constructed.
1.12 Once the Service has determined that a building is compliant, is it free from further program action? No. We regularly review our building inventory, looking for any change that increases our exposure to seismic risk. If you are aware of any of the following trigger situations, you should report it to your Regional Seismic Safety Coordinator so that they can determine its impact on the current assessment status of the building:
A. We changed a building's function and the change resulted in an increase in the building’s level of use, importance, or occupancy;
B. Fire, wind, earthquake, or some other event or activity has damaged an existing building;
C. We are planning or recently completed an addition, significant alteration, or repair of substantial structural damage to an existing building; or
D. We added a building to our inventory, either by acquisition or construction.
1.13 Where can employees find a list of the publications that govern seismic evaluation or design projects undertaken by or for the Service? The current edition of the Standards lists the building codes, standards, and guidelines that govern seismic safety-related projects conducted for the Service.
1.14 Are the engineers who provide evaluation or design services for seismic projects required to have special qualifications? Yes. The Standards provide qualification guidelines for these engineers.
1.15 How does the Service fund seismic retrofit projects? We fund large seismic retrofit projects through our Construction Appropriation and Deferred Maintenance accounts. Less expensive mitigation measures, such as those typically required to address nonstructural building component seismic deficiencies, are typically accomplished using station allocations.
[1]The “nn” in RP 10-nn represents the publication year of the current edition of the standard; we adopt the most current standard within 2 years of publication.