June 23--Berkeley city officials confirmed Tuesday that dry rot weakened the wood support beams of a balcony that collapsed last week, killing six people and injuring seven, and called for new rules requiring regular inspections of existing and new buildings.
The wooden joists that held up the cantilevered balcony "had been completely sheared off" about 16 to 20 inches from the building, according to two Berkeley building inspectors who examined the balcony from inside Unit 405 early Tuesday morning.
The inspectors said the balcony "appeared to be severely dry rotted."
City staff said they would recommend that the City Council pass strict requirements on waterproofing new balconies and other sealed areas exposed to weather, as well as inspecting them and ensuring they are ventilated so they can dry after getting wet.
"In addition, the proposed regulations would institute regular maintenance inspections for all such spaces for future buildings as well as those units already built," officials said in a statement released by city spokesman Matthai K. Chakko.
If the City Council adopts the new rules, all existing buildings with balconies and other sealed areas exposed to weather would need to be inspected within six months of the ordinance. Then, balconies would have to have maintenance inspections by qualified inspectors once every five years.
City officials confirmed that the balcony's architectural plans, which were approved by the city's Building and Safety Division before the structure was constructed, complied with the California Building Code requirements at the time. All state required inspections also were completed, the statement said.
A different Berkeley building inspector who viewed the broken joists from a raised platform later that day said the wood "appeared to be extensively rotted at the failure points."
On Monday, Councilman Jesse Arreguin added his own proposals to the next Berkeley agenda: mandatory posting of weight capacity on balconies, disclosure of whether they are steel-reinforced and a requirement that all new balconies have steel reinforcement.
Arreguin and others were highly critical of Berkeley's rental safety-inspection program. When created in 2001, it was envisioned to inspect half the rental properties in the college town.
According to the city manager's office, code enforcement inspectors performed visual checks on just 300 of Berkeley's 28,000 rental units in the past 11 months, not counting cases in which tenants had filed their own complaints of broken windows, lack of heat or holes in walls.
By comparison, Richmond inspected 2,400 of 13,600 rental units covered by its rental inspection program. As of June, Richmond expanded the mandatory inspection program to include dwellings with fewer than three rental units.
"It shouldn't take a tragic situation to make this a priority," Arreguin said.
Jesse Townley, chairman of the Berkeley Rent Stabilization Board, also criticized Berkeley's current inspections as "toothless," to the point that "there is no code enforcement."
The vast majority of rental property owners are left to their word on whether they have performed the annual inspections required by the city. In 26 years of renting, Townley said, a landlord has never provided him with a copy of his apartment's annual safety certification.
He said the subject of requiring at least periodic city inspections of rental properties came up in a city meeting as recently as May, but was shot down.
"Lack of staff, time and money stopped us," he said. "It always comes down to staffing and the political will to spend money."
UPDATE
12:10 p.m.: This post was updated with additional background and details.
This story was first posted at 11:50 a.m.
