A 749-foot-high skyscraper located in the heart of Los Angeles is potentially at risk of collapsing if a much-anticipated major earthquake eventually impacts the city, which many individuals fear.

The 52-story Gas Co Company is currently at the center of controversy after authorities in Los Angeles County refused to release seismic reports that assess the building’s capacity to withstand the long-dreaded ‘Big One.’

The county purchased the skyscraper last year with the intention of moving hundreds of their staff into Los Angeles’ fifth tallest building.

Nonetheless, a proposed retrofit for the Gas Co Tower, valued at $230 million and aimed at upgrading the 34-year-old skyscraper to contemporary earthquake-resistant standards, has been put on hold by the officials.

Gas Co Tower was built in 1991 and is a modern steel building, constructed with a design called a ‘steel-moment frame,’ which used horizontal beams and vertical columns to form a strong skeleton.

This has set off alarms among nearby workers and residents, as the building was erected three years before the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake, which severely damaged several buildings constructed using the steel-moment frame method.

Moreover, California officials did not require Gas Co Tower to be inspected after the Northridge quake, meaning there could still be damage inside the structure that was never found.

With the Big One feared to be drawing closer every year, structural engineers worry that without upgrades, the Gas Co Tower could threaten thousands of lives under the worst-case scenarios for the city.

According to the Los Angeles Times, officials refused to make Gas Co Tower’s seismic report public because the LA county is still awarding contracts for construction at the site.

However, the county counsel claimed that the original report was ‘being updated with new findings.’

Los Angeles County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath added: ‘Safety is nonnegotiable, and my understanding is that the building already exceeds safety requirements.’

‘In fact, it would have the highest standards of any county building at this present moment,’ she continued during a county counsel meeting.

Despite the assurances from local government, structural engineer David Cocke pointed out that the Northridge quake caused many of the connections between beams and columns in steel-moment buildings cracked of completely broke.

‘I don’t think it’s going to collapse — that’s just my opinion,’ Cocke said. ‘But I can say with a lot of confidence, in a major earthquake, they’re not going to be able to use the building unless they do the retrofit.’ 

Officials in the city of Torrance, which is also in Los Angeles county, were less optimistic in the chances of steel-moment frame buildings surviving the Big One, a massive earthquake that would likely be around magnitude 7.8 or higher.

‘Many of these buildings have not been retrofitted and may be susceptible to similar severe structural damage or even building collapse in a major earthquake,’ city officials explained while addressing their own building repair program.

City officials in Torrance also noted that buildings like Gas Co Tower suffered from serious design problems that were exposed by the 1994 earthquake.

‘Experts discovered that these buildings suffered from a wide range of flaws resulting from shortcomings in established design and construction procedures, including poor basic connection geometry, poor connection welding materials, and inadequate quality control, among other factors,’ the city wrote.

In 2008, officials with the US Geological Survey (USGS) conducted a simulation of what a 7.8 magnitude quake would do if it erupted along the San Andreas fault under LA.

This hypothetical ‘Big One’ would cause roughly 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries, and $200 billion in damages, according to the Great California ShakeOut.

It would also cause a surface rupture of up to 13 feet, causing significant damage to infrastructure crossing the fault line, such as roads, pipelines, and rail lines.

As for buildings, roughly two million buildings would be affected, with 50,000 buildings completely destroyed or red-tagged, meaning they couldn’t house people again.

The report also warned that older, unreinforced structures and high-rises with brittle welds were particularly vulnerable.

LA county cited financial problems as the reason they stopped the retrofit of Gas Co Tower, complying with modern building codes which account for seismic stress in earthquake-prone California.

The Daily Mail has reached out to LA county and USGS for comment on Gas Co Tower and the threat posed by the Big One.