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Work wrapped up last week on a project to better prepare Santa Clarita City Hall to withstand an earthquake.

The project officially finished just days after a powerful earthquake hit Napa, knocking facades off structures in the city’s downtown area and crippling some public buildings.

The seismic retrofit just completed at City Hall is designed to make sure the building can be operational and able to be occupied shortly after an earthquake, according to Mike Hennawy, a senior engineer with the city of Santa Clarita.

This is especially important because City hall is home to the city’s emergency operations center, Hennawysaid.  “It’s basically a center that you operate and you have everybody reporting to after a disaster,” he said.

The city has firsthand experience when it comes to major seismic events, having dealt with the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Hennawycompared them to shock absorbers in a car.

Work for the project took place after business hours, Hennawysaid.

“We wanted to minimize impact on the staff and the operation of the city”, he said. “And we wanted to make sure that everybody could come in and out of the building.”

Part of the funding for the seismic retrofit project came from a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Hennawysaid.