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San Mateo County Hall of Justice Seismic Retrofit   1  2  Crosby Group was contracted by San Mateo County, California to design a seismic retrofit for the nine-story Hall of Justice building. The County was awarded funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for seismic mitigation after the exterior precast panels failed at their upper support and partially peeled away from the building during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Crosby Group recognized that the core reason for the panel failures was excessive inter-story drift during the earthquake. Rigid panel connections only exacerbated the problem. The seismic retrofit involved the installation of visco-elastic dampers, on floors four through nine, to reduce the building response and to replace the fixed panel connections with new connections that allowed panel movement. The retrofit work was phased and performed at nights and on weekends in order to minimize the disruption of this important court facility. Copyright © The Crosby Group. All Rights Reserved.