Earthquake Planners Need Help With Their ‘Resilient Cities’ Plan
These are scary times, and for those citizens living in earthquake country, the times are not just scary, they are terrifying. For starters, a major earthquake is overdue along the Hayward Fault, in the East Bay area near San Francisco: It could happen at any moment. San Francisco has 120,000 buildings, at least 90% of them erected before the adoption of modern building codes in the 1970s. Most won’t flat-out collapse in a city-centered earthquake the size of 1989’s Loma Prieta, but there will be damage beyond repair from the quake and ensuing fire to about a quarter of the buildings, say San Francisco planners.
Yet the area’s earthquake-preparedness community says pleas for action to mitigate the impact of such a disaster fall on deaf ears in Sacramento and in City Hall because earthquakes are not the disaster of the day, but rather terrorism and the Great Recession. Nevertheless, a group of determined planners has initiated a campaign in San Francisco that could transform the paradigm for earthquake preparedness, impact and recovery.