| ▲ | tlogan 4 days ago | |
I’m not sure where you live, but in my case, I wasn’t even able to get home insurance without an automatic gas shutoff valve. Our policy also required an automatic shutoff for water. So in that sense, earthquake safety is already being addressed through insurance requirements. Ultimately, mandates like this just make housing even more expensive. Which, frankly, seems to be the real goal. God forbid home prices actually decline or even stop rising. | ||
| ▲ | pengaru 3 days ago | parent [-] | |
That's not really sufficient for seismically active regions like the SF bay area. The mains are more likely to develop leaks from the frequent tremors and no amount of at-home shutoff valves will change that. If you allow new construction dependent on existing natural gas distribution lines, they increase the pressure to accommodate the increased demand. This makes explosions from pipes leaking/catastrophically failing more likely. I thought it was obvious the long-term goal was to reduce if not completely eliminate the need for natural gas distribution _especially_ in these regions. | ||