Failure to Act on a Known Public Safety Issue: Simple or Gross Negligence?

Once I got into the profession of emergency management, operations and also warning, I began to check out the issue of me making a mistake. This mistake then causing harm to people or property. What I found out, way back when, is that I was protected by state law if I was acting in good faith in the performance of my duties, which means that if my actions somehow caused harm, I could not be held criminally liable for my actions.

However, there is gross negligence, "Examples of Negligence. ... Negligence is used in general language to mean someone was unreasonably lax in fulfilling some obligation. If someone is negligent in the eyes of the law, he or she could face a civil lawsuit or even criminal charges." I've added the bold to the quote above.               

With the above in mind, let me give you some other facts for the case of unreinforced masonry buildings. The earthquake threat has been known about in Washington since 1949-1965 or earlier. Those years saw two earthquakes. The Seattle City Council mandated seismic retrofits after the 1965 earthquake, but there was pushback, so they negated that legislative move to fix unreinforced masonry buildings. Since then, we have learned about many other earthquake faults in this region, to include the Cascadia Subduction Zone fault and the Seattle Fault — the worst case fault for the city itself. URM are well documented as being killer buildings. Christchurch, New Zealand, is a good example and their mayor is quoted in the linked article below. 

So we have a known natural hazard here in this region. There is a 5 percent chance of an earthquake each year from all sources. We also have inventoried and assessed how many URM buildings are in the city of Seattle. The state of Washington has not even taken that step. 

Therefore, if you have a known hazard and a very predictable collapse of buildings that will kill and injure many — do you have a duty as a government official to protect the people who live and work in those URM buildings?  I say yes, and I say it is not simple negligence to do nothing, it is gross negligence, not take action to protect your citizens and residents. And, one should not put public safety on the same level as historical preservation and affordable housing. You can debate those two all you want — but they should not be something that prohibits taking action to protect people from death and injury. 

Lastly, before reading the article below from The Seattle Times, there is an established standard of care as illustrated by what the State of California and cities in that state have done to cause URM buildings to be retrofitted. 

With all the above in mind, please read the article below and my quote. Do you think I am right or wrong?

‘This is an urgent issue’: Seattle makes little progress on buildings that can kill in earthquakes