carport

The term applies to apartment buildings built decades ago in which the bottom floor has room for a carport, garage or retail shop.

This week, the livestock was gone, and a black tarpaulin had been erected around the carport and the entrance to her house.

In Santa Barbara, for instance, there isn’t a law requiring seismic retrofit of apartment buildings with a flimsy ground floor — often held up above a carport or garage.

She said the problems became so bad that the owner of her building had to install gates on the building carports to keep people away.

They have flimsy supports on the ground story that prop up carports, garages or storefronts and can snap when shaken from side to side in an earthquake.