Earthquake Safety Bill Targets $14.7 Billion in Annual Losses, Mandates Retrofitting of High-Risk Buildings

This bill, the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program Reauthorization Act of 2025, is essentially an overdue update and expansion of the federal government’s plan to deal with earthquakes. It reauthorizes the core program through Fiscal Year 2028 and moves the focus from simply designing new buildings better to actively fixing the old ones. The bill specifically notes that nearly half of the U.S. population lives in areas that could experience a damaging earthquake within the next 50 years, and it cites a massive $14.7 billion in estimated annual economic losses due to quakes (Sec. 2).

Moving Beyond Design: Inventory and Retrofit

For decades, the program focused heavily on research and improving building codes for new construction. This bill changes the game by explicitly adding “evaluation, and retrofitting” to the program’s objectives (Sec. 3). This is crucial because, as the bill points out, most buildings and infrastructure weren’t built to modern standards and pose a significant risk (Sec. 2). The bill now requires the program to develop best practices for creating an inventory of high-risk buildings and infrastructure critical to community resilience, and to offer technical assistance to state, local, and Tribal governments to conduct these seismic evaluations and identify cost-effective retrofitting practices (Sec. 5).

If you live in an older city, this could eventually mean safer schools, hospitals, and bridges, reducing the risk of catastrophic failure. For the construction and engineering sectors, this signals a potential increase in mandated and incentivized retrofit work, moving safety from a theoretical concern to a practical, shovel-ready project.

The Race to Functional Recovery

The most significant shift in philosophy involves the concept of “functional recovery.” The bill defines this as restoring a building or infrastructure system to safely support its basic pre-earthquake functions or service levels (Sec. 4). This means the goal is no longer just preventing collapse and saving lives, but also minimizing downtime. Think about it: if a major earthquake hits, the difference between your workplace or local grocery store being closed for three weeks versus three months is huge for your paycheck and your community’s stability.

To achieve this, federal agencies must implement recommendations aimed at reducing the time it takes for people to re-enter buildings and for infrastructure to become functional again (Sec. 7). FEMA, for example, is now tasked with actively working on improving post-earthquake functional recovery (Sec. 5). This focus on resilience is a direct response to the reality that modern life can’t afford long, drawn-out recovery periods.

Expanding the Early Warning System and Tribal Inclusion

The bill also pushes for significant improvements to the science and communication side of earthquake preparedness. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is specifically directed to expand the earthquake early warning system to additional high-risk areas and improve detection to increase warning time (Sec. 5). They must also coordinate with the FCC to ensure alerts are broadcast rapidly and reliably, even including forecasts for aftershocks.

Crucially, this reauthorization formally incorporates Tribal governments into the program, requiring their inclusion in planning, preparedness, and information exchange, recognizing them as key partners alongside state and local governments (Sec. 2, Sec. 3). This ensures that federal resources and technical assistance are equally available to Tribal communities, many of which are located in seismically active regions.

The Fine Print: Funding and Controls

The bill authorizes specific funding levels for the four main agencies involved in the program from 2024 through 2028: $92.4 million annually for the USGS (with $36 million specifically for the Advanced National Seismic System), $54 million for the National Science Foundation (NSF), and $5.9 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (Sec. 9).

However, there are a couple of practical hurdles built into the text. First, while the bill mandates a lot of new activities—like technical assistance for creating inventories and retrofitting—it often adds the caveat “subject to available funds” (Sec. 5). This means if Congress doesn't appropriate the full authorized amounts, these critical new services could be delayed or deprioritized. Second, the bill includes a new control stating that any appropriated funds that are later canceled must be transferred to the U.S. Treasury's general fund for deficit reduction (Sec. 10). While deficit reduction sounds good, this prevents unspent money from being re-obligated for other urgent earthquake reduction needs within the program, essentially taking that money off the table forever.