Quake Busters

Jerome is fantastic to work with and every member of his crew are professional, clean, and very easy to deal with. I have had them here twice; once to retrofit my basement, and another time to start the retrofit of the garage. I will be having them back next year to finish the garage.
Jerome is extremely knowledgeable and doesn’t mind sharing knowledge. I have very limited funds to work with, so have had to do my retrofit piece meal, and that works just fine for Jerome. He will work with you in stages, give you all of the options from top to bottom, does exactly what he says he will do, come in on budget, on time and not leave a huge mess for you to deal with. Amazing!
Ever since my first retrofit of the basement a few years ago, I can barely feel any of the earthquakes we’ve had. Once we had part of the garage done, my house hardly budges in an earthquake so can’t wait to get the second half done.
Highly recommend!

Jerome is really dedicated to his work. I found him to be dependable, cooperative, and creative in getting my foundation upgrade done. I recommended Quake Busters to my son, and the project is now underway.

Quake Busters recently finished earthquake retrofitting my 97-​year old duplex in North Oakland. I have never had such a pleasant, dependable, and successful experience with a contractor of any sort. Their bid was submitted when they said it would be and it was lower than the two competitors.
Jerome, his brother Frankee, and Alexis in the office were totally on point. The job started a week after I signed the contract, and was completed in a few weeks – exactly as promised! Communication was quick and complete throughout. In addition, they worked hard to help me with particular permitting needs, and also coordinated perfectly with the sheetrock and painting subcontractors. QB busted their behinds to make sure all of the work was completed before I needed to show one of the apartments. High-​quality work from honest, friendly, and knowledgable professionals. I’d give them 6 stars, if it was possible. –Don

We had a generally positive experience all around with QuakeBusters. Jerome’s initial visit was informative and thorough; he made sure we understood what we were having done, and also some recommendations about how to improve drainage to keep our crawlspace dry. His bid was considerably less than others we had solicited, and we liked how he offered us the option not to take his word on things (he said that our one-​story «textbook» house didn’t need a structural engineer’s evaluation, but also gave us contact information for several structural engineers who he works with in case we wanted to double-​check).
Although the work was scheduled a few days later than the office originally estimated, once things got turned over to the work crew everything ran like clockwork. The crew arrived on time and worked hard; a job that they’d estimated would take 3 full days was done in just a bit more than 2. Crew foreman Frankee took time on the first day to answer our questions, and also worked to accommodate our special needs (in this case, a slightly-​neurotic cat who we didn’t want to close in the bathroom all day and also didn’t want to lose under the house; the crew was able to close off part of the house as their work area and let him have the run of the rest). Our crawlspace is barely 18″ and involves squeezing in through the closet floor, so the job certainly wasn’t easy for them.
We would recommend QuakeBusters to anyone looking to get this kind of work done.

Don’t bother. They don’t answer the phone and don’t respond to requests through their website. Find somewhere else that actually wants to be in business.

I had a great experience using Quake Busters to do earthquake retrofitting for my new home. They were efficient, conscientious, and meticulous in their work., Jerome runs the business and his brother, Frankee oversees the workers. The business has a family feel to it. The work crew was great also.. It t was important to Q Busters that I be satisfied and Jerome gave me some excellent suggestions re deciding what work needed to be done.
They are good people;..

I recently had my house retrofitted by Quakebusters and will absolutely use them again if I ever buy another house and need another retrofit. I highly recommend them. From the start, I very much appreciated how well Jerome communicated with us about what needed to be done. He was knowledgable and clear, in addition to being personable and relaxed, and his manner made me relaxed about the whole process.
When they started the work, Jerome was there to introduce Frankie, the on-​site manager, who was equally competent and direct. I liked that he gave me his cell number and told me to call him anytime I needed to. As it turned out, I didn’t need to, because they were so professional and thorough in their work. They also went above and beyond, as I ended up having a plumbing leak in the area where they were working, while they were there and I was not. They took the time to figure out where the problem was, went upstairs to turn off the offending appliance, then called my cell to tell me what had happened.
Every one of their employees who entered my house was professional, hard-​working, friendly and unobtrusive. They were also very careful to keep the dirt contained and even washed my floor when they were finished! It was truly a pleasure doing business with them.

Jerome and crew worked hard to get my job done on time and on budget. My crawlspace is about 12−14″ in some spots and they methodically went around the entire foundation over a week and took care of everything. Of the nine contractors I’ve worked with over the past few years they were the easiest to work with and delivered everything they promised. Jerome also took the time to talk about earthquake risk, codes and standards — an excellent education component of their work! I cannot recommend them enough.
On another note, there was a 4.0 earthquake this morning — centered under my driveway! As I ducked and covered with my infant daughter I kept thinking how glad I was to have had QB do our retrofit when we did. The peace of mind is almost as good as knowing the house is ready to take what the Hayward fault throws at it (to a certain extent anyway). Thanks Jerome and thank you QB!

These guys are great. The tough thing about seismic retrofit is you don’t really know if it works until the day that you really need it to work. So you really have to rely on the professionalism of the people doing the work. And these guys are real pros. They are smart and knowledgeable. They show up on time, stick to schedules and don’t leave a mess at your house. They are a pleasure to work with. They did the seismic on our house in 2011 and I highly recommend them. I hope to only have this type of work done once and I only own one house but if I ever buy another house I would use Quakebusters again in a heartbeat.

I contacted these guys after getting another quote for my earthquake work that was really outrageous. The Quakebusters quote was MUCH more affordable. They came out and did an evaluation pretty quickly, and were pretty easy to work with. I didn’t have to be home for most of the work they did, so it was pretty easy to get the work that I needed done, and their crew leader (Frankie?) was very responsive to my questions.
They made recommendations for other work they think I should have done (termite work), and gave me some suggestions about who to use. The guys who did the work were polite and unobintrusive. Quakebusters even allowed me to set up a payment plan to pay for the second chunk of the work (I paid for half up front), and were very nice about it.
My only complaint about them is that about six weeks elapsed between the time that I authorized the work and when it started due to some health problems for a key staff person. My complaint is that no one contacted me about the delay; I had to contact them. The delay meant that I had to ask a brand-​new boss for time off to be present for the inspection, due to the change in timeframe.
But I would recommend these guys to anyone. Good company to work with.

QUAKE BUSTERS are the best! We had been contemplating a retrofit for
sometime. Our Realtor and Home inspector both said that we should
just call Quake Busters. Not being one to get only one bid, we called
a number of other companies, and went through the process of talking
to multiple retrofit companies. We were not impressed with their
customer service, or confident in the knowledge of the estimators that
were sent out.
Quake Busters was definitely the exception! Jerome Lenoir came out,
and was able to provide us with an incredible amount of information,
explanations about the work, and an itemized proposal. Quake Busters
was able to show us the specific recommendations for our size and type of
building. With all the information, we were able to see that the other
bids were not only overpriced, in addition, they were not bringing our
building up to the level of safety that is recommended by the
building departments. Quake Busters is the only mainstream
retrofitting company that was recommended by The Association of Bay
Area Governments, as a qualified company. (On the ABAG website, they
list the contractors that they feel are trained well enough to execute
the plan that ABAG and the Building Departments recommend.)
Quake Busters was very easy to work with. They took care of the
permit process with the Building Department, met with inspectors, and
were extremely polite and courteous. The job was finished right on
schedule, and they did a great clean up. The workers were here
everyday from 8:30 to 4:30, and the crew was great to have around. On
our final inspection, the Building Inspector told us that he was very
familiar with Quake Busters work. He said it was all done correctly and to the highest quality. Finally, the best thing was that they have a zero interest payment plan! I was able to spread my payments over a number of months, with no interest.
If you are trying to figure out who to call, go no further, these guys
are the best!