Craig Comartin has been a structural engineer for over thirty years. After graduating from Santa Clara University and the University of California, Berkeley, he learned structural design at Rutherford & Chekene in San Francisco, working on schools, hospitals and other buildings. Later he joined his good friend Boris Bresler as the second employee of the west coast office of Wiss Janney Elstner. There he gathered skills in the investigation of existing buildings, bridges, and other structures. In the early 1980s, he joined Coffman Engineers in Seattle and Anchorage and helped expand a small structural office into a large multidisciplinary firm.
In 1990, Comartin returned to California and his interests in earthquake engineering. He advised the Stanford University administration on the repair and retrofit of buildings damaged in the Loma Prieta earthquake. There he implemented performance-based engineering (PBE) procedures that he was helping to develop on projects with the Applied Technology Council (ATC). He continues to play a similar role at UC Berkeley. He combines economic and financial analysis techniques with PBE to assist clients in making informed decisions on risk management.
Comartin was EERI’s team leader for the post-earthquake investigations of the 1993 Guam and 1995 Kobe earthquakes. He also investigated the Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey for ATC in 1999. He was president of the EERI Board of Directors from 2005 to 2007, and was Secretary Treasurer from 1994 through 1999. He was active in the establishment of EERI’s Endowment Fund and participated in several of its early projects. He continues to serve on the Development and International Activities Committees, is an active participant in the WHE project, and is a member of the Editorial Board of Earthquake Spectra.
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