Berkeley City Council approves strict new building regulations

Berkeley City Council has approved strict new rules on building regulations in the wake of last month's balcony collapse in California that killed six Irish students and injured seven others, some gravely.

The council voted to adopt recommendations made by the city’s building and safety division staff to introduce more frequent inspections of balconies, improved ventilation and access to balcony supports, and more stringent rules on the materials used and the construction design.

City officials made the recommendations in a report released a week after the June 16th tragedy. They concluded in their report that the wooden beams that had supported the fourth-floor balcony were “severely dry-rotted” as a result of water damage and poor ventilation.

The elected nine-member council voted to pass “urgency ordinances” relating to balcony construction and inspections at a meeting in Berkeley last night.

Building industry representatives unsuccessfully lobbied the council at last night’s meeting not to pass the new regulations and to delay them.

One of the rules would “require more stringent regulations” than those provided by the 2013 California building code.

Building regulations are set by the state but Berkeley city officials have the authority to set a higher level of safety standards, if required.

Five 21-year-old Dublin students - Eimear Walsh, Eoghan Culligan, Lorcán Miller, Nick Schuster and Olivia Burke - and Ms Burke’s Irish-American cousin Ashley Donohoe (22), from Rohnert Park, California - died when the fourth-floor balcony they were standing on collapsed as they were celebrating an early-morning 21st birthday.

Seven other students were injured in the accident, including a number seriously. Two students have been discharged from hospital.

Berkeley building and safety staff had recommended five-year inspections of balconies but some felt this did not go far enough.

George and Jackie Donohoe, the parents of Ms Donohoe and uncle and aunt to Olivia Burke, had called for yearly inspections of balconies to prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

Attorneys for the couple warned the council that dry rot could infect wood in as little as 12 weeks and cause damage in less than a year.

Their lawyers wrote to the council on Friday, telling them: “If the city of Berkeley truly wants to prevent another tragedy, these required maintenance inspections should be done, at a minimum, every year.”

The council compromised, modifying the frequency of inspections down from every five years, as recommended by building staff, to every three years.

They also introduced a regulation requiring all existing structures to be inspected within six months.

The newly passed regulations will force building contractors and property owners to create ventilation openings on balconies that are exposed to the weather and which are sealed underneath.

Such balconies must be constructed of naturally durable wood, preservative-treated wood, corrosive resistant steel or other materials, according to one of the new ordinances.

Meanwhile, state legislators in the California capital of Sacramento refused to support proposed legislation that would require building contractors to report legal settlements to the state in construction defect cases.

The emergency measure was proposed by two Democratic state senators, Jerry Hill of San Mateo and Loni Hancock of Berkeley, in the aftermath of the balcony collapse tragedy.

It emerged after the accident that Segue Construction, the California company that built the Library Gardens apartment block at 2020 Kittredge Street in 2007, had been sued in at least 20 civil legal actions in four Californian counties since 1997.

The legal complaints centred on negligence, construction defects and property damage claims and the company paid out almost $23 million (€21 million) from 2012 to 2014 to settle the court cases.

The California Contractors State License Board had been unaware of the various legal actions taken against the construction company.

Amid stiff resistance from the construction industry, legislators declined to vote on a bill they had not seen, preferring to wait until more details emerged about the balcony collapse before passing a law.

The balcony collapse is the subject of parallel criminal and civil investigations by the Alameda County district attorney Nancy O’Malley, who is responsible for prosecuting crime in Berkeley, and the California Contractors State License Board.

In another development, the family of Aoife Beary, one of the seven students injured in the balcony collapse, said she is scheduled to be moved to the same California hospital where two of the other injured students, Hannah Waters and Clodagh Cogley, are being treated.

"Aoife is getting stronger every day and making steps forward towards recovery," her family said in a message posted on the Friends of Aoife Beary page on the social media website Facebook.

“All going well,” they said, “Aoife is due to move from Stanford to Valley Medical Rehab Centre in Santa Clara, south of San Francisco”.

“The road to recovery is still long and the family would again like to extend their thanks for all prayers, messages and positive thoughts being sent their way,” they said.

The 13 students who were on the balcony when it collapsed were celebrating Ms Beary’s birthday at the time.