Behring Earthquake Excuse Reduced To Rubble
It’s easy to scoff at the earthquake worries cited by Seahawks owner Ken Behring in a lawsuit against King County that seeks to terminate the club’s Kingdome lease 10 years early.
Especially when Behring is looking to find the team a home in Southern California, site of several major quakes in recent years.
“I laughed when I read they were moving down here because of earthquakes,” said Gary C. Hart, a structural engineering professor at UCLA.
“It sounded like a joke to me.”
“It’s just absurd,” said Bill Steele, chief of the University of Washington’s seismology lab, of Behring’s contention that it would cost $90 million to make the 20-year-old cement stadium earthquake-safe.
King County Executive Gary Locke says a $15 million investment would make the Kingdome “very safe and have it available for use even after a Kobe earthquake-type situation,” referring to the devastating earthquake that struck Japan in January 1995.
Even a state-of-the-art sports palace would not meet Behring’s standard, said University of Washington civil-engineering professor Steve Kramer.
“People just don’t build things to the level that he appears to be demanding,” Kramer said. “He isn’t going to find it in Southern California either, unless he’s playing in an open field with people standing around on the sidelines like at a pee-wee game.”
Behring’s lawyers cite a three-volume seismic study completed for the county last summer that found columns supporting grandstand areas would be subject to “shear failure” in a major quake.
Such a failure could cause the collapse “not only of the columns but of the grandstand seating areas that they support,” the lawsuit says.
The county report, released in August, recommended reinforcing some areas, wrapping columns with fiberglass jackets and bracing some equipment.
“No cost estimates were furnished with these recommendations, no work implementing them has been done or been scheduled, and no funding has been obtained for any such work,” the lawsuit says.