SF’s Millennium Tower tilting 3 inches a 12 months

File photo: The Millennium Tower is shown in San Francisco on Sept. 26, 2016.

SAN FRANCISCO — A 58-story luxury apartment building in San Francisco continues to sink and is tilting about 3 inches per year, the engineer responsible for fixing the troubled building said.

At the current rate without a fix, the Millennium Tower in just a few years could reach a 40-inch tilt, which would be the point at which the elevators and plumbing may no longer operate, said Ron Hamburger, the engineer.

Hamburger told the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in an update hearing last week that the building remains safe and that installing 18 steel piles to bedrock is the best way to stop the tilting and possibly reverse some of it, KNTV-TV reported.

“The building does continue to settle at a rate of about one-half inch per year and to tilt at a rate of about three inches per year,” he told supervisors. “It is doing this whether we are conducting work at the site or not.”