SFO departed 70,000 travelers on both Thursday and Friday last week – a travel milestone not reached last week since the pandemic.

Travel hasn’t fully recovered yet, an airport spokesman said, but the trend is definitely picking up speed.

San Francisco International Airport spokesman Doug Yakel said the number of travelers on May 11 and 12 was the highest the airport has seen in more than three years.

Before the pandemic, the airport saw an average of 157,501 travelers per day. During the 2020 pandemic, the average was 44,885 travelers per day. Last year the average was 81,906. For this year, Yakel forecasts around 127,000 average travelers per day.

Annual passenger numbers have fluctuated since 2019 when they stood at 57.48 million. In 2020, the annual numbers dropped to 16.42 million. In 2022, the annual number rose to 42.28 million and Yakel estimates that number will rise to 46 million this year.

Yakel expects more than 14 million travelers during this year’s peak season, from Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend. In 2019, before the pandemic, it was 18.08 million. During the pandemic, peak-season numbers dropped to 2.47 million, then rose to 13.41 million last year.

“We’re anticipating the busiest summer since the pandemic began,” Yakel said.

Travel has increased by 61% from the summer of 2021 to last year and people are coming to the region for tourism rather than business. John Hutar, President and CEO of The San Francisco Peninsula, said the shoreline is busier with travelers on weekends and the Bayside is busier on weekdays.

“And we’re seeing that trend returning to normal,” Hutar said.

Congresses are still catching up and the consequences of layoffs in companies are still not felt. However, the peninsula is a natural area with easy access to major attractions, he said.

“We’re a great anchor point for natural beauty and a lot of places in close proximity, such as the Golden Gate Bridge and Monterey Bay,” said Hutar.

Room rates are low and high-end hotels are doing well, but Hutar said the rest of the hotel industry still has a long way to go before it returns to pre-pandemic levels.

In the first quarter of 2023, occupancy is still down about 20% compared to 2019. Hutar explained that occupancy is better than last year’s numbers, which were down 30% compared to 2019.

“We see that the number of group congresses is very high, has only recovered very slowly and the amount of traffic and inquiries this year shows that it has been promising,” said Hutar. “But at the moment we are satisfied with the current development.”

Hutar is encouraged to see that hotels near the SFO corridor are starting to grow and accommodate more travelers. As hotel bookings continue to recover, the summer boom at the airport is leading to longer queues for travelers.

Travelers should allow more time to exit the airport, Yakel said.

“We recommend two hours in advance for domestic flights and three hours in advance for international flights,” Yackel said.

Additionally, SFO expects its parking garages to reach full capacity, and Yakel recommends travelers use ride-hailing services or use public transit such as BART.

“We recommend that people who want to park at SFO, both short-term and long-term, book in advance on SFO’s website. It’s a way to ensure there’s still room available,” Yakel said.

SFO is also offering some new programs, he said. Two airlines, ITA and United, are offering non-stop flights to Rome this summer. Two newer airlines also offer international low cost flights. One of them, Norse Atlantic, flies to London. And Zip Air flies to Tokyo, he said.

“Farees vary, but they’re definitely cheaper than some of the incumbent airlines,” Yakel said.

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ANNAPOLIS, Maryland – Legend has it that when Horatio Sharpe, Maryland’s colonial governor, began work on Whitehall in the 18th century, he hoped the palatial mansion on the Chesapeake Bay would win the heart of his beloved. Unfortunately, the young woman fell in love with Sharpe’s friend and private secretary instead.

But Whitehall’s recent owners are now hoping to win over the American people — and perhaps enlist Uncle Sam’s help to keep it running.

Long overshadowed by its larger and more accessible cousins ​​like Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Whitehall could become a major attraction in the proposed Chesapeake National Recreation Area, according to lawmakers and others promoting federal designation.

The Annapolis location would provide visitors with a home base from which to explore the Bay’s paradoxical history as the birthplace of American democracy and slavery. The National Register of Historic Places also lists it as “an important milestone in American architectural history” because of the scope and quality of a classic design that predates Monticello. The bill would allow the National Park Service to acquire or partner with Whitehall and other designated sites in the bay.

The idea of ​​turning Whitehall into a national travel destination is also blessed by a key figure: Charlie Scarlett, one of the last people to live there.

Scarlett said he remembered family dinners on the grand portico overlooking the bay, learning to swim with a piece of two-by-four for a buoy, raising a pet red fox and living with a portrait of Edgar Allan Poe in front of his bedroom.

“This is my home,” he said recently during a tour. “And I love everything about it.”

His late father, Charles E. Scarlett Jr., a Baltimore shipping executive with a fondness for history, purchased Whitehall in 1946 and spent more than a decade restoring the building to its original design, right down to the hand-painted wallpaper that cuts out China were imported . He lived with his wife in Whitehall until her death.

Charlie Scarlett, who runs the family-run Brandywine Foundation, which owns the property, is taking steps to open Whitehall to the public. Part of his motivation is practical: He said the nonprofit is struggling with the huge costs of maintaining a nearly 260-year-old building.

But Scarlett, 70, a business executive who lives in St. Louis, said he also believes Whitehall’s historical significance should make it more accessible to all Americans, including the many descendants of enslaved people who lived and worked there.

If Congress incorporates the bay into the national park system, Scarlett envisions Whitehall becoming a national attraction modeled after the nonprofit Mount Vernon or managed by the National Park Service within a network of landmarks, such as those at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco.

Scarlett has even considered allowing Brandywine to sell his former home to the federal government. The foundation’s most recent publicly available income tax form values ​​the property at $7.8 million.

“You know, if you’d asked me ten years ago, I would have said, ‘Damn, no.’ But that was 10 years ago,” Scarlett said. Just repairing the mansion’s leaking roof, which has caused significant water damage, is costing nearly $1 million, he said.

Janice Hayes-Williams, who lives in Severn, Maryland and traces her family back to Whitehall’s enslaved Africans and slaveholders, said the historic site is an asset to the country in helping people learn about the enduring effects of slavery to clear up. She said her late father dreamed of the day when he and other descendants of the enslaved residents could walk the halls.

“He’d say, ‘Baby, whatever you’re doing, go in there because your ancestors built this,'” recalls Hayes-Williams. He never got the chance, but when Hayes-Williams visited her during an open house about five years ago, she cried. “The slaves are my family members,” she thought.

Unlike Jefferson and others, whose homes have become national shrines, Sharpe was a British Loyalist. He was born in Yorkshire to a large, prominent family whose connections probably played a role in his appointment as governor by Lord Baltimore, according to an article in the 1937 journal of the Maryland Historical Society.

Sharpe had also been commissioned as a captain in the Royal Marines and had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel with an infantry dispatched to the West Indies – an experience that made him a wise decision to lead the colony on the eve of the French and Indian War. According to Lady Matilda Ridout Edgar’s 1912 book A Colonial Governor In Maryland, he was 35 when he sailed from England, accompanied by his private secretary, the Oxford-educated John Ridout.

Legend has it that Sharpe began building Whitehall in late 1764 to impress Mary Ogle, daughter of a previous governor, according to a 1951 article by Charles Scarlett Jr. She fell in love with the younger Ridout, who eventually married her married.

Col. Sharpe, as he was known, commissioned the finest architects to build Whitehall and oversaw its construction, using enslaved Africans and indentured European labourers, including a skilled woodcarver who died of tuberculosis before he could gain his freedom .

The building drew on the design of the influential Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio, whose clean, simplified Neoclassical Roman and Greek style – characterized by columns, domes, and pediments – became popular in London in the mid-18th century, according to a 1974 report became National Registry. The Palladian style also influenced Monticello, the James Semple House in Williamsburg, and other colonial homes.

Whitehall was one of only two pre-Revolutionary homes in the United States to feature a “full temple portico” with massive white cedar Corinthian columns, the 1974 report said. (The other was Roger Morris’ 1765 mansion on the Harlem River .) The spacious interior was also “extraordinarily rich” with elaborate woodcarvings, including satyr-like faces in each corner of the central salon, meant to represent the four winds. A phoenix looks down from the top of the great square hall.

“And so there arose in our part of the world a Palladian dwelling which in all probability marked the beginning of the full Classical revival in America,” wrote the elder Scarlett. “Thomas Jefferson took it to heart and promoted it, and it should become the foundation of our national architecture.”

The Chesapeake Bay Proposal Could Benefit Thousands of Native Americans

Lady Ridout’s book describes Sharpe’s 1,000-acre estate, filled with activities, mostly carried out by enslaved people, in well-tended gardens, orchards, a sawmill, a brickworks, and a workshop spinning cotton, flax, and wool.

In 1773 Sharpe sailed to England expecting to return to Whitehall, but he never did. He entrusted Ridout with his beloved villa, sometimes sending back cuttings for the vineyards, or often writing to inquire of affairs there, wrote Lady Ridout. In a letter, Sharpe granted Ridout the freedom to sell enslaved laborers if it was economically necessary to do so, instructing that they would only go to buyers “You are sure you will treat them with humanity.”

Still, Hayes-Williams spent hours rummaging through state archives, including correspondence between Ridout and Sharpe, in which she discussed her ancestry in the same context as Furnishings.

“He’s basically saying, ‘Oh, the pigs are fine, the horses are fine, the slaves are fine,'” she recalls.

After Sharpe’s death in 1790, Ridout inherited Whitehall and his heirs owned it until 1895. The property changed hands several times thereafter, including in the early 20th century when a buyer considered offering it to the President as a White House summer home. When the Scarlett family bought Whitehall the property was in poor condition.

In recent years, her family foundation has launched a variety of business ventures, including using the now 115-acre site as a wedding venue. For a rental of $19,000, up to 12 weddings are hosted annually. Part of it is shared with a wedding planner who takes care of the rest of the arrangements. Other income comes from housing horses ($500 per head per month) and renting out a small 17th-century cottage ($500 per night on weekends). But it’s nowhere near enough to cover capital expenditures and needs, such as roof repairs.

To help cover costs, Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Maryland Democrats, secured $500,000 for the restoration of Whitehall in fiscal 2023 as part of a $10.2 million package of local investments. The foundation also received a $100,000 conservation grant in 2021 from the Maryland Historical Trust, an agency of the state planning department.

The Scarletts Foundation has applied to join the agency’s Chesapeake Bay Gateways Network and is exploring a future partnership with the National Park Service to open Whitehall to the public.

Charlie Scarlett said possible options include creating a ferry service between Annapolis and Whitehall Creek west of the mansion. Visitors would likely board at the Burtis House, a former Aquarius home that is also expected to be a focal point in the proposed national recreation area. (Others include the Thomas Point Shoal Lighthouse and the North Beach of Fort Monroe in Virginia, where ships delivered enslaved Africans in 1619, as key attractions anchoring the new park.)

“I think what makes it interesting from a historian’s perspective is that it’s a place where you can connect closely to Loyalist history,” said Mary-Angela E. Hardwick, Historic’s vice president of education and interpretation Annapolis, a non-profit organization that operates a museum and colonial homes.

Wendy O’Sullivan, director of the National Park Service’s Chesapeake office, said the Brandywine Foundation has sought recognition as a gateway site but has not yet qualified because the site is not fully open to the public. She said the Park Service consulted with the foundation on how that could happen.

In the meantime, Scarlett said his family is trying to accommodate informal requests for visits as well as archaeological research, while also planning for a future that could allow many more Americans to experience his former home.

“It’s a treasure,” he said.

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Sieben Jahre nach der wegweisenden Erdbebensicherheitskampagne von Los Angeles wurden mehr als 8.000 erdbebengefährdete Gebäude in der ganzen Stadt mit geschätzten Kosten von 1,3 Milliarden US-Dollar nachgerüstet, wie eine neue Analyse zeigt.

Die Verbesserungen stellen den größten Fortschritt bei seismischen Upgrades seit Jahrzehnten dar, machen aber dennoch Tausende von Gebäuden anfällig für Schäden oder sogar den Einsturz bei einem katastrophalen Beben.

Die Vorschriften, ein Vermächtnis des Vorstoßes von Bürgermeister Eric Garcetti für die umfassendste Erdbebensicherheitsgesetzgebung des Landes, erfordern die Nachrüstung von insgesamt fast 14.000 Gebäuden. Die Regeln kamen nach jahrelangen ins Stocken geratenen Bemühungen, die Widerstandsfähigkeit von Gebäuden trotz zunehmender Beweise für Erdbebengefahren zu verbessern.

Die Regeln zielen auf Wohnungen und andere Gebäude mit weichen, schwachen Erdgeschossen sowie auf größere Betonrahmengebäude ab, die während der Sylmar- und Northridge-Beben von 1971 und 1994 große Schäden erlitten haben.

Viele der abgeschlossenen Nachrüstungen wurden in Wohngebäuden mit Holzrahmen und Weichgeschossen durchgeführt, wo Nachrüstungen erheblich billiger sind als die in spröden Gebäuden mit Betonrahmen. Nach den Regeln der Stadt zahlen die Grundstückseigentümer die baulichen Verbesserungen, aber die Vermieter können einen Teil der Kosten an die Mieter weitergeben.

Radfahrer fahren an den Überresten eines eingestürzten Klinik- und Bürogebäudes Kaiser Permanente in den Granada Hills nach dem Erdbeben in Northridge 1994 vorbei. Die Struktur war ein gefährdetes Betongebäude.

(Jonathan Alcorn / Los Angeles Times)

Erdbebenexperten haben Gemeinden in ganz Kalifornien dazu gedrängt, sich auf die Stärkung der Schlüsselinfrastruktur zu konzentrieren, um großen Beben besser standzuhalten, einschließlich Versorgungsunternehmen, Wassersystemen und Gebäuden. Obwohl LA Tausende von Gebäuden ins Visier genommen hat, hat es sich noch nicht mit einer anderen Art von gefährdeter Konstruktion befasst: Stahlrahmengebäude, von denen 25 beim Northridge-Erdbeben erheblich beschädigt wurden. Dazu gehört auch das Gebäude des Automobile Club of Southern California in Santa Clarita, das dem Einsturz sehr nahe kam.

„Gebäude mit Stahlrahmen haben das Potenzial, einen Schlüsselteil ihres Skeletts zu zerbrechen“, sagte Ryan Kersting, Vorsitzender des Grundsatzausschusses der Structural Engineers Assn. von Kalifornien. „Und sobald Sie diesen Bruch haben, machen Sie sich Sorgen über die Instabilität und den möglichen Einsturz dieser Gebäude.“

Es wäre wichtig, eine Einzelfallanalyse durchzuführen, um zu verstehen, welche Gebäude am stärksten einsturzgefährdet sind, selbst bei geringeren Erschütterungsintensitäten, sagte Kersting. Eine 2008 vom US Geological Survey veröffentlichte Simulation eines Erdbebens der Stärke 7,8 in Südkalifornien sagte, es sei plausibel, dass fünf Hochhäuser aus Stahl mit 5.000 Menschen einstürzen könnten.

„Wir sollten besser über die Risiken informiert sein, die wir mit unseren Gebäuden haben“, sagte Kersting.

Nichtsdestotrotz haben LA und eine Handvoll anderer Städte in den letzten Jahren einen langen Weg zurückgelegt. Städte wie Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Beverly Hills und Pasadena haben jetzt Gesetze, die die Nachrüstung von Soft-Story-Gebäuden vorschreiben. Auch in Nordkalifornien, San Francisco, Berkeley und Oakland sind solche Gesetze in Kraft.

„Das ist wirklich groß und riesig, mit wirklich großen Vorteilen“, sagte die Seismologin Lucy Jones. „Das Befriedigendste war die wirklich große Verschiebung hin zu einer weicheren Geschichte [buildings] und alles, was dagegen getan werden konnte.“

Der Bericht zeigt die Vorteile des Gesetzes von LA, das die Nachrüstung von Soft-Story-Gebäuden, auch bekannt als Dingbats, vorschreibt. Ein verräterisches Zeichen für diese Strukturen sind Wohneinheiten über Carports, die von schwachen Stangen gestützt werden, die bei einem Erdbeben anfällig für einen Einsturz sind.

Kehl Tonga von Cal-Quake Construction installiert eine Stahlstütze, um ein erdbebengefährdetes Mehrfamilienhaus in Hollywood zu verstärken.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

Beim Erdbeben in Northridge 1994 stürzten etwa 200 Gebäude mit weichen Stockwerken ein, darunter ein Wohnhaus, in dem 16 Menschen starben.

Die Veröffentlichung des Berichts erfolgt 14 Jahre nach dem ersten ShakeOut, einer riesigen Erdbebenübung, bei der die Bewohner aufgefordert werden, zu simulieren, was sie bei einem Beben tun würden.

Von den 12.604 Soft-Story-Gebäuden, die vom Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety identifiziert wurden, wurden 8.228 oder 65 % nachgerüstet. Für weitere 2.068 Gebäude wurden Nachrüstungsbaugenehmigungen erteilt.

Die dünnen, dünnen Säulen, die dieses Wohnhaus in El Centro stützen, ließen die Struktur nach einem Erdbeben im Jahr 2010 instabil zurück

(Fred Turner / California Seismic Safety Commission)

Die Studie des Statikers Keith Porter, Experte für seismische Sicherheitsfragen in Kalifornien, schätzte, dass die Nachrüstung von 8.100 Wohnhäusern mit weichen Stockwerken in Los Angeles – das war die Gesamtzahl, als die Analyse durchgeführt wurde – 117.000 Wohneinheiten verstärkte. Beamte schätzen, dass die typische Nachrüstung eines Soft-Story-Gebäudes in LA 80.000 bis 160.000 US-Dollar kostet.

Porter schätzt, dass Immobilienbesitzer in LA bisher 1,3 Milliarden US-Dollar für diese Nachrüstungen ausgegeben haben.

Aber die Vorteile sind bereits immens. Porter berechnete, dass die Nachrüstung zukünftige finanzielle Verluste um 41 Milliarden US-Dollar reduzieren und 1.500 Todesfälle und 27.000 nicht tödliche Verletzungen und Fälle von posttraumatischer Belastungsstörung verhindern wird. Die Nachrüstungen sollen auch verhindern, dass 5.000 Wohneinheiten einstürzen und weitere 60.000 erheblich beschädigt werden.

Porter nannte es „eine sehr kostengünstige Investition“ und berechnete, dass jeder in eine Nachrüstung investierte Dollar 32 Dollar einsparen würde, wenn der Grundstückseigentümer nicht für seismische Upgrades bezahlt hätte.

„Diese Schätzungen lassen wichtige, aber schwer zu quantifizierende Vorteile wie den Schutz von Erinnerungsstücken, Haustieren, Seelenfrieden, Gemeinschaft und Kultur aus“, schrieb Porter. „Sie ignorieren die Müllentsorgung, die Energie, die in der Reparatur oder dem Ersatz der Gebäude steckt, und den Anstieg der Wohnkosten, der mit einem reduzierten Wohnungsangebot einhergeht.

„Und diese Analyse schweigt über das Potenzial vertriebener Bewohner, obdachlos zu werden, mit den damit verbundenen Auswirkungen auf die geistige und körperliche Gesundheit, der Inanspruchnahme öffentlicher Dienste und anderen Schäden“, fügte er hinzu.

„Die heutige Nachrüstung dieser Gebäude wird viele Mieter in ihren Häusern halten“, sagte Porter. „Die Nachrüstungen werden Tausende von Verletzungen vermeiden, die ansonsten eine medizinische Notfallversorgung erfordern würden, und medizinische Ressourcen freisetzen, wenn sie plötzlich und stark beansprucht werden. Die vermiedenen Verluste kommen allen zugute.“

Das seismische Nachrüstgesetz von LA wurde verabschiedet, nachdem eine 2013 veröffentlichte Times-Analyse ergab, dass mehr als 1.000 alte Betongebäude bei einem schweren Erdbeben einsturzgefährdet sein könnten. Die Stadt war sich des Risikos seit langem bewusst, hatte aber in den Jahren nach dem Erdbeben in Northridge 1994 wenig dagegen unternommen.

Zu Beginn seiner Amtszeit im Januar 2014 kündigte Garcetti eine Partnerschaft mit Jones an, um Empfehlungen zur Behandlung von Erdbebenanfälligkeitsproblemen zu entwickeln. Jones, zuvor Wissenschaftler beim US Geological Survey, war eine Schlüsselfigur hinter ShakeOut, dem Namen sowohl für den riesigen Erdbebenbohrer als auch für die Veröffentlichung eines Berichts im Jahr 2008, der die Auswirkungen eines Erdbebens der Stärke 7,8 auf die südliche San-Andreas-Verwerfung zeigt. In diesem Szenario schätzten Wissenschaftler, dass ein Beben 1.800 Todesfälle, 50.000 Verletzungen und 200 Milliarden US-Dollar an Schäden und anderen Verlusten verursachen könnte.

Bis Ende 2014 schlug Garcetti einen umfassenden Satz seismischer Sicherheitsregeln vor, die im folgenden Jahr die einstimmige Unterstützung des Stadtrats fanden.

Beim Erdbeben in Northridge im Jahr 1994 wurden Fahrzeuge zerquetscht, als ein mehrstöckiges Wohnhaus einstürzte.

(Roland Otero / Los Angeles Times)

Aber die Arbeit ist noch nicht getan. Die Verbesserungen bei der Zuverlässigkeit des Stromnetzes und der Kraftstoffleitungen seien ungleichmäßig gewesen, sagte Jones, und sie sei weiterhin besorgt über die Stabilität der Wasserversorgung in Südkalifornien.

LA hat langsame Fortschritte bei der Nachrüstung von spröden Betongebäuden gemacht. Stadtdaten zeigen, dass nur zwei der 1.337 spröden Betongebäude von LA Konformitätsbescheinigungen erhalten haben, die belegen, dass sie die Standards des Sanierungsgesetzes erfüllen.

Eigentümern von Betongebäuden wurde viel länger Zeit gegeben, um sie nachrüsten zu lassen – 25 Jahre, verglichen mit den sieben Jahren, die Eigentümer von Soft-Story-Gebäuden aufrüsten mussten.

Einige Eigentümer von Soft-Story-Gebäuden erhielten seit 2016 Nachrüstungsaufträge, was bedeutet, dass sie noch etwas Zeit haben, bis die Frist von sieben Jahren abgelaufen ist. Andere Eigentümer begannen 2017, Bestellungen zu erhalten.

Betonbauten können besonders tödlich sein, weil sie so massiv sind. Der Einsturz zweier Betongebäude bei einem Erdbeben in Neuseeland im Jahr 2011 forderte 133 Todesopfer.

Jones ist weiterhin besonders besorgt über alte Backsteingebäude. Eine Analyse der Times aus dem Jahr 2018 ergab, dass es in mehr als einem Dutzend Städten des Inland Empire, darunter Riverside, Pomona und San Bernardino, bis zu 640 unverstärkte Mauerwerksgebäude gab, die als gefährlich eingestuft wurden, aber trotz jahrzehntelanger Warnungen nicht nachgerüstet wurden.

Trotz der Tatsache, dass die San-Andreas-Verwerfung durch die Region verläuft, wurde wenig getan, um diese Gebäude nachzurüsten. Im Gegensatz dazu ordnete LA vor Jahrzehnten an, solche Strukturen nachzurüsten oder abzureißen.

In einer Erklärung sagte Garcetti, er hoffe, dass LA ein Modell sein könnte.

„Obwohl noch viel zu tun ist, haben wir die Stadt so positioniert, dass sie die kritischen Gebäudeanforderungen weiter ausbaut und als Modell für Städte auf der ganzen Welt dient, wie es aussieht, um für Erdbeben gerüstet zu sein“, sagte er.

Beim Erdbeben in Neuseeland 2011 kamen mehr als 40 Menschen ums Leben, als Ziegel- und Steingebäude einstürzten. Die meisten befanden sich nicht in den Gebäuden, sondern wurden durch herunterfallende Trümmer getötet, während sie auf dem Bürgersteig oder in einem Fahrzeug auf einer angrenzenden Straße saßen.

„Es ist frustrierend, weil wir wissen, dass sie Menschen töten werden“, sagte Jones. „Es erfordert, über das Kurzfristige hinaus zu denken und an Gemeinschaft und kommunale Investitionen zu glauben.“

Ziegel von eingestürzten Gebäuden füllen eine Straße in Christchurch, Neuseeland, nach einem Erdbeben im Jahr 2011. Mehr als 40 Menschen starben durch den Einsturz von Ziegelbauten während des Bebens.

(Martin Jäger/Getty Images)

Besorgt ist Jones auch über die kalifornischen Mindestbaustandards, die immer noch den Bau neuer Gebäude erlauben, die bei einem großen Erdbeben so stark beschädigt werden können, dass sie abgerissen werden müssen. Befürworter der Erdbebensicherheit haben einen neuen Baustandard gefördert, der Gebäude von vornherein stärker bauen würde, damit sie nach einem großen Beben relativ schnell repariert und wieder besetzt werden können.

Dann-Gov. Jerry Brown legte 2018 sein Veto gegen einen Gesetzentwurf ein, der die Mindestbauanforderungen verschärfen sollte. Das vorgeschlagene Gesetz hätte einen Ausschuss eingerichtet, um zu bewerten, ob ein strengerer Baustandard angenommen werden sollte, und um einen Beitrag dazu zu leisten, ob die neue Regel verbindlich sein sollte.

Porter hat zuvor geschätzt, dass die Stärkung der kalifornischen Mindestbaustandards die Baukosten um 1 % bis 2 % erhöhen würde.

„Denken Sie daran, wie viele Gebäude in den letzten 15 Jahren in der Innenstadt von Los Angeles gebaut wurden. Es gibt viele von ihnen, und sie sind so gebaut, dass sie ein finanzieller Totalschaden sind“, sagte Jones, wenn sie nach dem bestehenden Mindestbaustandard gebaut würden. „Was wird aus der Wirtschaft Südkaliforniens, wenn wir die Gebäude in der Innenstadt von LA nicht nutzen können?“

The post L.A.’s $1-billion earthquake milestone: 8,000 constructing upgrades appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

“It means a lot, because as someone who grew up taking trips to Chinatown with my grandparents, it wasn’t an easy trip — having to walk through hills and having to take multiple bus rides — and I think this really centralizes it and gives people, like my younger self and my grandparents, an opportunity to reach places that they previously had a lot more trouble reaching,” said Adrianna Zhang, who serves as the District 7 representative on the San Francisco Youth Commission.

The original line will run weekends between Chinatown-Rose Pak Station, and 4th and Brannan streets. On Jan. 7, however, the line will run its full course seven days a week, direct from Sunnydale, Bayview and Visitacion Valley all the way to SoMa, Union Square and Chinatown, extending the Muni Metro T-3rd Street line on 3rd Street .

SFMTA’s Central Subway Project was always expected to be a complex and difficult undertaking, going underneath the Union Square area and Chinatown — not only one of the densest parts of the city, but one of the densest residential areas in the entire US

Those expectations proved to be well-founded. The project ended up costing $2 billion and went significantly over budget due to various construction delays. All in all, it was completed four years later than planned.

Lion dancers from the Yau Kung Moon school are seen celebrating the opening of the Chinatown-Rose Pak Station on Grant Avenue and Stockton Street, Nov. 19, 2022. (Ekene Okobi/KQED)

The project finally overcame those hurdles with the Nov. 19 opening, and is being hailed as a monumental accomplishment for San Francisco in terms of its commitment to transit over fossil-fuel vehicles, its commitment to a community where 80% of residents are estimated to be transit-dependent, and its overall commitment to moving people in the least environmentally harmful way possible.

Locals used the Central Subway for the first time on Nov. 19, 2022. An estimated 80% of Chinatown residents rely on public transit. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

But the Central Subway has meant a great deal for one neighborhood in particular, where Saturday’s opening was seen and celebrated as a victory: Chinatown.

Residents, business owners and community leaders in Chinatown fought hard for years to bring the Central Subway project to their neighborhood after it was initially slated to go to the Financial District, with various local organizations lending their weight, including the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and the Chinatown Community Development Center, among others.

“I think this sends a signal to the city and the world that Chinatown is a permanent part of the fabric of San Francisco and it needs to be valued as such — and is valued as such,” said Malcolm Yeung, executive director of the Chinatown Community Development Center, adding that the Central Subway is an important part of Chinatown history and that the opening of this new line is the start of a new chapter for the community.

“We can think of Chinatown as a place where we can build upon the culture and the anchor that this has brought for generations of immigrants and San Franciscans,” Yeung said.

A map of the Muni lines in San Francisco, including the 3rd Street line that will be effective on January 2023. (Courtesy of SFMTA)

But the political fight to bring the line to Chinatown was actually led by an unlikely and controversial figure after whom the Chinatown station was eventually renamed on Aug. 20, 2019: Rose Pak.

Pak, who died in 2016 at age 68, had a penchant for the dramatic and a brusque, unapologetic style that won her as many opponents as it did supporters. But, love her or hate her, it was Pak’s passionate drive that won the day and brought the Central Subway to Chinatown.

A photo display of various stages of the development of Rose Pak Station, Nov. 19, 2022. (Ekene Okobi/KQED)

“I’m happy for Chinatown,” said Donald Luu, president of the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce. “We waited 30 years for this day. The thing that everyone touched on today was the impact of Rose Pak, how this launched the legacy, and the legend continues in Chinatown with the name of the station in Chinatown, Rose Pak Station. This day and the celebration will be in the history books for Chinatown and the Chinese community of San Francisco.”

Pak was a former consultant for the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and organizer of the Chinese New Year Parade in San Francisco, but never held an elective office. Nevertheless, she was a force to be reckoned with in the Chinatown community, considered by many to be a power broker and an effective fundraiser, with her support making — and sometimes breaking — electoral campaigns in local politics.

Born in Henan, China, Pak moved to Hong Kong as a child and then to San Francisco in 1967. After studying communications at the San Francisco College for Women and receiving her master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University in New York City, Pak returned to San Francisco in 1974 to work as a reporter for The San Francisco Chronicle, taking on the Chinatown beat and immersing herself in the city’s Asian community — until she went from reporting news to making it.

The Central Subway will run from Chinatown-Rose Pak Station to 4th and Brannan on weekends until January when the full 3rd St. line will open, extending from Chinatown all the way to Sunnydale. (Aryk Copley/KQED)

Pak led fundraising and community leadership efforts on a number of issues and projects — many controversial — including Chinese Hospital, the 8 Washington condominium project in Embarcadero, and the Embarcadero Freeway. But when the freeway came down in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, Pak began advocating for the construction of Central Subway, an idea of ​​hers that went all the way back to the 1980s, four decades before the project was finally completed and opened on Saturday.

“We needed another transit corridor, another way of connecting to Chinatown, and it was Rose Pak who was that visionary leader who led the charge,” Yeung said.

KQED’s Dan Brekke, Ekene Okobi, Spencer Whitney and Attila Pelit contributed to this story.

The post Central Subway Opening Marks a Milestone for San Francisco and Chinatown appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Seven years into Los Angeles’ landmark earthquake safety campaign, more than 8,000 seismically vulnerable buildings have been retrofitted across the city at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion, a new analysis shows.

The improvements mark the biggest advance in seismic upgrades in decades but still leave thousands of buildings vulnerable to damage or even collapse in a catastrophic temblor.

The regulations, a legacy of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s push for the nation’s most sweeping earthquake safety legislation, require a total of nearly 14,000 buildings to be retrofitted. The rules came after years of stalled efforts to improve the resilience of buildings despite growing evidence of earthquake threats.

The rules target apartments and other structures with soft, flimsy floors first as well as larger concrete-frame buildings of the type that sustained major damage during the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge quakes.

Many of the completed retrofits have come in wood-frame, soft-story apartment buildings, where upgrades are considerably cheaper than those in brittle concrete-frame buildings. Under the city’s rules, property owners pay for the structural improvements, but landlords can pass on a portion of the costs to tenants.

Cyclists ride past the remains of a collapsed Kaiser Permanente clinic and office building in Granada Hills after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The structure was a vulnerable concrete building.

(Jonathan Alcorn/Los Angeles Times)

Earthquake experts have been pushing communities across California to focus on strengthening key infrastructure to better withstand big quakes, including utilities, water systems and buildings. Though LA has targeted thousands of structures, it still has not dealt with another type of vulnerable construction: steel-frame buildings, of which 25 were significantly damaged in the Northridge earthquake. That includes the Automobile Club of Southern California building in Santa Clarita, which came very close to collapsing.

“Steel-frame buildings have the potential to fracture” a key part of their skeleton, said Ryan Kersting, who chairs the policy committee for the Structural Engineers Assn. of California. “And once you start to have that fracture, you are concerned with instability and possible collapse of those buildings.”

It would be important to conduct a case-by-case analysis to understand which buildings are at the highest risk of collapse, even at lower shaking intensities, Kersting said. A US Geological Survey simulation released in 2008 of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California said it’s plausible that five high-rise steel buildings holding 5,000 people could collapse.

“We should be more informed about the risks that we have of our buildings,” Kersting said.

Nonetheless, LA and a handful of other cities have come a long way in the last few years. Cities such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Beverly Hills and Pasadena now have laws requiring soft-story buildings to be retrofitted. In Northern California, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland have such laws on the books as well.

“That’s really big, and really huge, with really big benefits,” seismologist Lucy Jones said. “The most satisfying thing has been the really big shift about softer story [buildings] and all that’s been able to be done about that.”

The report shows the benefits of LA’s law requiring soft-story buildings, also known as dingbats, to be retrofitted. A telltale sign of these structures are those with housing units above carports propped up by flimsy poles, which are vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake.

Kehl Tonga of Cal-Quake Construction installs a steel support to strengthen a quake-vulnerable soft-story apartment building in Hollywood.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, about 200 soft-story buildings collapsed, including one apartment building in which 16 people died.

The report’s release comes 14 years after the first ShakeOut, a giant earthquake drill that asks residents to simulate what they would do in a temblor.

Of the 12,604 soft-story buildings identified by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, 8,228 have been retrofitted, or 65%. Retrofit building permits also have been issued for an additional 2,068 buildings.

The skinny, flimsy columns supporting this El Centro apartment building left the structure unstable after a 2010 earthquake

(Fred Turner/California Seismic Safety Commission)

The study by structural engineer Keith Porter, an expert on California seismic safety issues, estimated that the retrofit of 8,100 soft-story apartment buildings in Los Angeles — that was the total when the analysis was conducted — strengthened 117,000 housing units. Officials estimate that the typical retrofit of a soft-story building in LA costs $80,000 to $160,000.

Porter estimated that property owners in LA have spent $1.3 billion so far on these retrofits.

But the benefits are already immense. Porter calculated that the retrofits will reduce future financial losses by $41 billion and avert 1,500 deaths and 27,000 nonfatal injuries and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. The retrofits also are expected to prevent 5,000 housing units from collapsing and an additional 60,000 from being significantly damaged.

Calling it “a very cost-effective investment,” Porter calculated that every dollar invested in a retrofit will save $32 had the property owner not paid for seismic upgrades.

“These estimates omit important but hard-to-quantify benefits such as protecting mementos, pets, peace of mind, community and culture,” Porter wrote. “They ignore debris disposal, the energy embodied in repairing or replacing the buildings, and the increase in housing costs that accompany reduced housing supply.

“And this analysis is silent on the potential for displaced residents to become homeless, with attendant mental and physical health impacts, demands on public services and other harms,” he added.

“Retrofitting these buildings today will keep many tenants in their homes,” Porter said. “The retrofits will avoid thousands of injuries that would otherwise require emergency medical care, freeing up medical resources when they are in sudden, severe demand. The avoided losses benefit everyone.”

LA’s seismic retrofit law was passed after a Times analysis published in 2013 found that more than 1,000 old concrete buildings may be at risk of collapse in a major earthquake. The city had long known about the risk but had done little about it in the years after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Early in his term in January 2014, Garcetti announced a partnership with Jones to develop recommendations on addressing earthquake vulnerability issues. Jones, previously a scientist with the US Geological Survey, was a key figure behind ShakeOut, the name for both the giant earthquake drill and the release of a report in 2008 showing the effect of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault. In that scenario, scientists estimated a quake could cause 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage and other losses.

By the end of 2014, Garcetti proposed a sweeping set of seismic safety rules that won the unanimous support of the City Council the following year.

Vehicles crushed when a soft-story apartment building collapsed during the Northridge earthquake in 1994.

(Roland Otero/Los Angeles Times)

But the work is not done. Improvements on the reliability of the electrical grid and fuel pipelines has been uneven, Jones said, and she remains concerned about the stability of Southern California’s water supply.

LA has made slow progress on getting brittle concrete buildings retrofitted. City data show that only two of LA’s 1,337 brittle concrete buildings have received certificates of compliance showing they meet the standards of the retrofit law.

Owners of concrete buildings were given much longer to get them retrofitted — 25 years, compared with the seven years that owners of soft-story buildings had to upgrade.

Some owners of soft-story buildings began receiving orders to retrofit in 2016, meaning they still have some time before the seven-year deadline passes. Other owners started getting orders in 2017.

Concrete buildings can be especially deadly because they are so massive. The collapse of two concrete buildings in a quake in New Zealand in 2011 resulted in 133 deaths.

Jones remains particularly concerned about old brick buildings. A Times analysis in 2018 found that there were as many as 640 unreinforced masonry buildings in more than a dozen Inland Empire cities, including Riverside, Pomona and San Bernardino, that have been marked as dangerous but remained unretrofitted despite decades of warnings.

Little has been done to get those buildings retrofitted, despite the fact that the San Andreas fault runs through the region. By contrast, LA ordered that such structures be retrofitted or demolished decades ago.

In a statement, Garcetti said he hoped LA could be a model.

“While there’s still work to be done, we’ve positioned the city to continue expanding critical building requirements and serving as a model for cities around the world of what it looks like to be earthquake-ready,” he said.

In the 2011 New Zealand earthquake, more than 40 people died when brick and stone buildings collapsed. Most were not inside the buildings, but were killed by falling debris while on the sidewalk or in a vehicle on an adjacent road.

“It’s frustrating because we know those are ones that are going to kill people,” Jones said. “It requires thinking beyond the short term and believing in community and communal investments.”

Bricks from collapsed buildings fill a street in Christchurch, New Zealand, after an earthquake in 2011. More than 40 people died from the collapse of brick structures during the temblor.

(Martin Hunter/Getty Images)

Jones is also concerned about California’s minimum building standards, which still allow the construction of new buildings that can be so severely damaged in a major earthquake that they must be torn down. Quake safety advocates have promoted a new building standard that would have structures built stronger in the first place, so they can be repaired and reoccupied relatively quickly after a major temblor.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 vetoed a bill intended to strengthen the minimum construction requirements. The proposed law would have established a committee to evaluate whether a tougher building standard should be adopted and offer input on whether the new rule should be mandatory.

Porter has previously estimated that strengthening California’s minimum building standards would increase construction costs by 1% to 2%.

“Think of how many buildings have been built in downtown Los Angeles in the last 15 years. There’s a lot of them, and they are built to be a total financial loss” if built to the existing minimum construction standard, Jones said. “What’s going to happen to the economy of Southern California if we can’t use the buildings in downtown LA?”

The post L.A.’s $1-billion earthquake milestone: 8,000 constructing upgrades appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

Seven years into Los Angeles’ landmark earthquake safety campaign, more than 8,000 seismically vulnerable buildings have been retrofitted across the city at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion, a new analysis shows.

The improvements mark the biggest advance in seismic upgrades in decades but still leave thousands of buildings vulnerable to damage or even collapse in a catastrophic temblor.

The regulations, a legacy of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s push for the nation’s most sweeping earthquake safety legislation, require a total of nearly 14,000 buildings to be retrofitted. The rules came after years of stalled efforts to improve the resilience of buildings despite growing evidence of earthquake threats.

The rules target apartments and other structures with soft, flimsy floors first as well as larger concrete-frame buildings of the type that sustained major damage during the 1971 Sylmar and 1994 Northridge quakes.

Many of the completed retrofits have come in wood-frame, soft-story apartment buildings, where upgrades are considerably cheaper than those in brittle concrete-frame buildings. Under the city’s rules, property owners pay for the structural improvements, but landlords can pass on a portion of the costs to tenants.

Cyclists ride past the remains of a collapsed Kaiser Permanente clinic and office building in Granada Hills after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The structure was a vulnerable concrete building.

(Jonathan Alcorn/Los Angeles Times)

Earthquake experts have been pushing communities across California to focus on strengthening key infrastructure to better withstand big quakes, including utilities, water systems and buildings. Though LA has targeted thousands of structures, it still has not dealt with another type of vulnerable construction: steel-frame buildings, of which 25 were significantly damaged in the Northridge earthquake. That includes the Automobile Club of Southern California building in Santa Clarita, which came very close to collapsing.

“Steel-frame buildings have the potential to fracture” a key part of their skeleton, said Ryan Kersting, who chairs the policy committee for the Structural Engineers Assn. of California. “And once you start to have that fracture, you are concerned with instability and possible collapse of those buildings.”

It would be important to conduct a case-by-case analysis to understand which buildings are at the highest risk of collapse, even at lower shaking intensities, Kersting said. A US Geological Survey simulation released in 2008 of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California said it’s plausible that five high-rise steel buildings holding 5,000 people could collapse.

“We should be more informed about the risks that we have of our buildings,” Kersting said.

Nonetheless, LA and a handful of other cities have come a long way in the last few years. Cities such as Santa Monica, West Hollywood, Culver City, Beverly Hills and Pasadena now have laws requiring soft-story buildings to be retrofitted. In Northern California, San Francisco, Berkeley and Oakland have such laws on the books as well.

“That’s really big, and really huge, with really big benefits,” seismologist Lucy Jones said. “The most satisfying thing has been the really big shift about softer story [buildings] and all that’s been able to be done about that.”

The report shows the benefits of LA’s law requiring soft-story buildings, also known as dingbats, to be retrofitted. A telltale sign of these structures are those with housing units above carports propped up by flimsy poles, which are vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake.

Kehl Tonga of Cal-Quake Construction installs a steel support to strengthen a quake-vulnerable soft-story apartment building in Hollywood.

(Mel Melcon/Los Angeles Times)

In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, about 200 soft-story buildings collapsed, including one apartment building in which 16 people died.

The report’s release comes 14 years after the first ShakeOut, a giant earthquake drill that asks residents to simulate what they would do in a temblor.

Of the 12,604 soft-story buildings identified by the Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety, 8,228 have been retrofitted, or 65%. Retrofit building permits also have been issued for an additional 2,068 buildings.

The skinny, flimsy columns supporting this El Centro apartment building left the structure unstable after a 2010 earthquake

(Fred Turner/California Seismic Safety Commission)

The study by structural engineer Keith Porter, an expert on California seismic safety issues, estimated that the retrofit of 8,100 soft-story apartment buildings in Los Angeles — that was the total when the analysis was conducted — strengthened 117,000 housing units. Officials estimate that the typical retrofit of a soft-story building in LA costs $80,000 to $160,000.

Porter estimated that property owners in LA have spent $1.3 billion so far on these retrofits.

But the benefits are already immense. Porter calculated that the retrofits will reduce future financial losses by $41 billion and avert 1,500 deaths and 27,000 nonfatal injuries and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder. The retrofits also are expected to prevent 5,000 housing units from collapsing and an additional 60,000 from being significantly damaged.

Calling it “a very cost-effective investment,” Porter calculated that every dollar invested in a retrofit will save $32 had the property owner not paid for seismic upgrades.

“These estimates omit important but hard-to-quantify benefits such as protecting mementos, pets, peace of mind, community and culture,” Porter wrote. “They ignore debris disposal, the energy embodied in repairing or replacing the buildings, and the increase in housing costs that accompany reduced housing supply.

“And this analysis is silent on the potential for displaced residents to become homeless, with attendant mental and physical health impacts, demands on public services and other harms,” he added.

“Retrofitting these buildings today will keep many tenants in their homes,” Porter said. “The retrofits will avoid thousands of injuries that would otherwise require emergency medical care, freeing up medical resources when they are in sudden, severe demand. The avoided losses benefit everyone.”

LA’s seismic retrofit law was passed after a Times analysis published in 2013 found that more than 1,000 old concrete buildings may be at risk of collapse in a major earthquake. The city had long known about the risk but had done little about it in the years after the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

Early in his term in January 2014, Garcetti announced a partnership with Jones to develop recommendations on addressing earthquake vulnerability issues. Jones, previously a scientist with the US Geological Survey, was a key figure behind ShakeOut, the name for both the giant earthquake drill and the release of a report in 2008 showing the effect of a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault. In that scenario, scientists estimated a quake could cause 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and $200 billion in damage and other losses.

By the end of 2014, Garcetti proposed a sweeping set of seismic safety rules that won the unanimous support of the City Council the following year.

Vehicles crushed when a soft-story apartment building collapsed during the Northridge earthquake in 1994.

(Roland Otero/Los Angeles Times)

But the work is not done. Improvements on the reliability of the electrical grid and fuel pipelines has been uneven, Jones said, and she remains concerned about the stability of Southern California’s water supply.

LA has made slow progress on getting brittle concrete buildings retrofitted. City data show that only two of LA’s 1,337 brittle concrete buildings have received certificates of compliance showing they meet the standards of the retrofit law.

Owners of concrete buildings were given much longer to get them retrofitted — 25 years, compared with the seven years that owners of soft-story buildings had to upgrade.

Some owners of soft-story buildings began receiving orders to retrofit in 2016, meaning they still have some time before the seven-year deadline passes. Other owners started getting orders in 2017.

Concrete buildings can be especially deadly because they are so massive. The collapse of two concrete buildings in a quake in New Zealand in 2011 resulted in 133 deaths.

Jones remains particularly concerned about old brick buildings. A Times analysis in 2018 found that there were as many as 640 unreinforced masonry buildings in more than a dozen Inland Empire cities, including Riverside, Pomona and San Bernardino, that have been marked as dangerous but remained unretrofitted despite decades of warnings.

Little has been done to get those buildings retrofitted, despite the fact that the San Andreas fault runs through the region. By contrast, LA ordered that such structures be retrofitted or demolished decades ago.

In a statement, Garcetti said he hoped LA could be a model.

“While there’s still work to be done, we’ve positioned the city to continue expanding critical building requirements and serving as a model for cities around the world of what it looks like to be earthquake-ready,” he said.

In the 2011 New Zealand earthquake, more than 40 people died when brick and stone buildings collapsed. Most were not inside the buildings, but were killed by falling debris while on the sidewalk or in a vehicle on an adjacent road.

“It’s frustrating because we know those are ones that are going to kill people,” Jones said. “It requires thinking beyond the short term and believing in community and communal investments.”

Bricks from collapsed buildings fill a street in Christchurch, New Zealand, after an earthquake in 2011. More than 40 people died from the collapse of brick structures during the temblor.

(Martin Hunter/Getty Images)

Jones is also concerned about California’s minimum building standards, which still allow the construction of new buildings that can be so severely damaged in a major earthquake that they must be torn down. Quake safety advocates have promoted a new building standard that would have structures built stronger in the first place, so they can be repaired and reoccupied relatively quickly after a major temblor.

Then-Gov. Jerry Brown in 2018 vetoed a bill intended to strengthen the minimum construction requirements. The proposed law would have established a committee to evaluate whether a tougher building standard should be adopted and offer input on whether the new rule should be mandatory.

Porter has previously estimated that strengthening California’s minimum building standards would increase construction costs by 1% to 2%.

“Think of how many buildings have been built in downtown Los Angeles in the last 15 years. There’s a lot of them, and they are built to be a total financial loss” if built to the existing minimum construction standard, Jones said. “What’s going to happen to the economy of Southern California if we can’t use the buildings in downtown LA?”

The post L.A.’s $1-billion earthquake milestone: 8,000 constructing upgrades appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

For the first time in more than a year, there were no COVID-19 patients at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital on Thursday morning, according to ABC 7.

That milestone comes as San Francisco eased its public health regulations even further on Thursday and took a few more steps to fully reopen the city on the least severe yellow row.

People enter the Ferry Building in San Francisco, California on May 12, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE

Here are different ways San Francisco is easing COVID restrictions

– People no longer need to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test to attend sedentary performances and sporting events such as Giants games.

-People no longer have to sit in a restaurant or bar to receive service. “Patrons can stand in groups of up to eight people at stationary entertainment events such as pool tables or arcade games with a distance of at least two meters between the groups and consume drinks, which is in line with guidelines for indoor eating,” according to the revised Public Health the city’s mission.

– Rules have been relaxed for personal care and you can remove your mask when getting a massage or getting a tattoo or piercing in the mouth area.

– Real estate open days can resume by following the rules for small indoor gatherings.

– Houses of worship can set up sections for fully vaccinated parishioners that do not require physical distancing.

See a full rundown of how San Francisco is easing its COVID restrictions here.

People walk past the Red and White Fleet ticket booth at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California on May 12, 2021.

Douglas Zimmerman / SFGATE

“Every day, San Francisco is looking more like the vibrant city it always has been,” said Mayor London Breed. “We showed the world how resilient we are and now we are on the road to recovery. As we near the final stages of reopening, we will do everything we can to rebuild the best parts of our city so we can all thrive. We are ready to do this with the same urgency, partnership with the community and commitment to justice that we had during this pandemic. “

San Francisco moved into the yellow row earlier this month, allowing many activities to reopen and expanding the capacities of companies, but continued to enforce stricter rules than current state guidelines. The loosening of the restrictions on May 20th brought closer coordination with the state.

California is expected to fully reopen its economy on June 15, and while the state has not released details of what a full reopening will look like, city officials said SF in a statement that they are moving “around the level of activity and the To increase flexibility in operation according to the current guidelines, so that the city can continue to smoothly move towards a full reopening. “

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