Building officials are voting in October 2022 on proposed changes to the International Building Code, including three changes EERI specifically supports. EERI urges eligible voters to affirm three proposals to assign certain buildings to Risk Category IV, recognizing the need to limit damage and shorten the functional recovery time after earthquakes, hurricanes, and winter storms.
The three proposals, published at the International Code Council website here (PDF), are:
- S74-22, for medical care facilities without emergency rooms (Occupancy Group I-2)
- S75-22, for detention facilities with special security needs (Occupancy Group I-3)
- S76-22, for public utility facilities providing power, water, and wastewater treatment
The current round of voting is the final step in ICC’s code development process for the 2024 codes. All three proposals were approved at ICC’s Committee Action Hearings in April and at the Public Comment Hearings in September. As part of the public comment process, EERI submitted letters of support for the three proposals based on the unanimous recommendation of our Public Policy and Advocacy Committee. For more information about any of the proposals, EERI members may contact David Bonowitz (M.EERI. 1994), who submitted them on behalf of the FEMA-ATC Seismic Code Support Committee.
The three proposals are consistent with EERI’s mission to increase earthquake resilience in communities worldwide, as detailed in several of EERI’s existing policy statements:
- Promote the Adoption and Enforcement of Effective Building Codes
- Resilient Communities
- Resilient Healthcare Systems (Relevant to S74-22)
- Improving Reliability of Lifelines and Infrastructure (Relevant to S76-22)
Eligible ICC members can vote via cdpACCESS between October 10 and October 24. We also encourage EERI members who are not ICC members to advocate for these proposals with your colleagues who are building officials and eligible to vote.
