38 U.S.C. § 8105 — Structural requirements

(a) Every medical facility — including nursing home facilities the Secretary contracts for under section 1720, and state home facilities built or altered under this chapter's Subchapter III — must be built to resist fire, earthquakes, and other natural disasters. The Secretary sets these construction standards on a state or regional basis, after surveying the relevant state and local laws, ordinances, building codes, and climate and seismic conditions for each facility. If the VA acquires an existing building for use as a medical facility, that building must be altered to meet these same standards. (b) To carry out this section, the Secretary must appoint an advisory committee called the "Advisory Committee on Structural Safety of Department Facilities," on which at least one architect and one structural engineer — experts in disaster-resistant design who don't work for the federal government — must serve. This committee advises the Secretary on all structural-safety matters in building and altering medical facilities under this section, and reviews and recommends changes to the regulations the Secretary writes. The Associate Deputy Secretary, the Under Secretary for Health (or that Under Secretary's designee), and the VA official responsible for construction automatically serve on this committee as well.