“No more anything goes without accountability. No more handouts without accountability,” Breed said on Tuesday.

It was a striking moment for the mayor of San Francisco, long an ultra-liberal bastion of Democratic politics. It illustrated how homelessness and fentanyl addiction have frustrated residents and upended political norms. Breed has increasingly leaned into tough-on-crime rhetoric in recent months as she faces a growing field of challengers.

Critics framed Breed’s proposal as an expedient shift as she runs for reelection. She announced the effort on the same morning that Daniel Lurie, a nonprofit executive and Levi Strauss heir, announced that he will challenge her in next year’s election.

Lurie, speaking to supporters a few miles away in Potrero Hill, said he would seek to dramatically increase San Francisco’s police force. He vowed to “slam the door shut on the era of open-air drug markets and end the perception that lawlessness is an acceptable part of life in San Francisco.”

Breed also faces a tough road getting the progressive-leaning Board of Supervisors to go along with her proposal. Several were swift to call her plan inhumane and politically motivated.

Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin, a progressive and potential rival in the mayoral race, said Breed has failed to work with police to close open-air drug markets. “We need serious ideas, not politicians desperately grasping for a political lifeline.”

The flurry of startled reactions reverberated through San Francisco political circles. Honey Mahogany, chair of the San Francisco Democratic Party and a progressive, framed Breed’s proposal as a political gambit that could push people out of their homes.

“Perhaps she thinks this will differentiate her by moving more to the right,” Mahogany said. “But it might be at the cost of seeing homelessness increase.”

Breed was already facing a mayoral opponent in Ahsha Safaí, a moderate on the Board of Supervisors. Breed is likely to face as much — if not more — incoming criticism from moderates as she does progressives.

Maggie Muir, Breed’s campaign consultant, said the mayor’s proposal is about responding to a crisis, not her reelection strategy. “Whatever the progressives are offering, it’s just not working. People are dying every day on the street,” Muir said.

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The post A seismic shift to the suitable in San Francisco appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

RONG-GONG LIN II
Los Angeles Times

The expected annual cost from earthquake damage in California is climbing sharply amid an increase in property values and a better understanding of how soft soils could result in greater damage during shaking.

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California is projected to lose an average of $9.6 billion a year from earthquake damage, the new estimates show. That’s a 157% increase from the last estimate, in 2017, when the price tag was $3.7 billion a year, according to a new report from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“In any given year a big earthquake strikes … you can easily anticipate a $100 billion loss,” USGS research structural engineer Kishor Jaiswal, the principal investigator for the report, told the Los Angeles Times.

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The totals underscore just how much the value of older buildings has soared in recent years, yet they remain vulnerable to major damage or collapse in the next big earthquake.

It is also a sober reminder of the seismic toll facing California. After the state’s other major earthquakes — in 1906 in San Francisco, 1933 in Long Beach, 1989 in the Bay Area and 1994 in Northridge — it took years, if not decades, for cities to recover, and massive costs had to be paid not only by governments and insurers but also individuals who were never made whole.

According to the new report, Los Angeles and Orange counties share the highest price tag of any metro area in the nation, with a combined projected average annual loss of $3.3 billion a year. In second place is the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metro area, with a projected loss of $1.8 billion a year.

The seismic price tag for California is about 65% of the nation’s annual earthquake cost, which is $14.7 billion a year.

The projected annual average earthquake losses in other areas of California include $1.3 billion for Riverside and San Bernardino counties, $917 million for the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, $285 million for San Diego County and $220 million for Ventura County.

Assuming the yearly earthquake loss projection remains the same, over the course of three decades, California is projected to lose $288 billion from earthquake damage. Such a figure is consistent with recent earthquake scenarios, such as a magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault or a magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault.

Of that total, the five-county Southern California region — L.A., Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties — would lose nearly $150 billion. And the nine-county Bay Area would lose roughly $90 billion.

“It’s a sobering reminder about why we need to prepare for those rare but large earthquakes, as just one major event can eclipse the costs of the more frequent but smaller ones,” USGS Director David Applegate said in a statement.

The authors of the report calculated an “annualized” earthquake loss to average out the cost of earthquake damage on a yearly basis.

It’s similar to how car insurers calculate the premium people pay yearly: People might be in a collision once every few years, but insurers calculate a yearly bill for drivers that takes into account the annual average projected cost of future collisions. How much the yearly car insurance premium will be can vary, depending on factors such as the driver’s age, accident history and the type of vehicle driven.

The magnitude 6.7 earthquake that hit Northridge in 1994 caused as much as $20 billion in damage and more than $40 billion in economic loss, “making it the costliest earthquake disaster in U.S. history,” according to the California Geological Survey.

And the damage from that earthquake, centered in the suburban San Fernando Valley, pales in comparison to the destruction that a major quake centered beneath older neighborhoods, such as in downtown L.A., would cause.

The 1994 earthquake’s magnitude was relatively moderate. By contrast, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake would produce 45 times more energy, and such a temblor hasn’t hit Southern California since 1857 and Northern California since 1906.

The world’s last magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck in February, resulting in strong shaking in Turkey and Syria. More than 50,000 people died.

A significant portion of California’s buildings constructed in the 20th century are vulnerable to earthquake damage or collapse. Retrofitting them now would leave cities far more resilient — keeping people alive, homes intact, and workplaces and neighborhoods functional.

The state’s rise in property values could enable some owners to use the equity they’ve accumulated to finance retrofits, experts say. A retrofit now can cost far less than repairing extensive damage after an earthquake, which could leave a building so wrecked it might need to be replaced.

Some cities in California have required property owners to retrofit certain types of vulnerable buildings. A Los Angeles law passed in 2015 requiring that apartment buildings with flimsy first stories — often used for carports — be strengthened has resulted in retrofits of more than 8,700 out of 12,400. That’s a completion rate of 70%. An analysis estimated that at least $1.3 billion was spent on those retrofits.

FEMA and state officials have worked to make grants available for retrofits. Homeowners in certain ZIP codes in Los Angeles, Pasadena, San Francisco, Oakland and Berkeley can apply for retrofit grants of up to $13,000 through the end of May to strengthen “soft-story homes,” where there’s a top-heavy living space built over a garage that is vulnerable to collapse in an earthquake.

“This study reinforces the nation’s need to be proactive about making communities safer from threats like earthquakes,” FEMA Deputy Administrator Erik Hooks said in a statement. “This includes adopting the latest seismic building codes and investing in earthquake resilience projects.”

But many other cities in California have not acted to require retrofits. And even in L.A., city officials have yet to address the potential seismic risk of older steel-frame high-rises built before the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The USGS has said that it is plausible that five steel-frame buildings in Southern California could collapse in a hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas fault, and 10 could be so damaged that they would be no longer safe to occupy.

Some cities remain far behind. Much of the Inland Empire, which covers Riverside and San Bernardino counties, still has many older brick buildings that are not retrofitted — among the highest-risk structures in an earthquake. They can collapse, not only killing the buildings’ occupants but also raining projectiles onto nearby sidewalks, parking lots and roads, with the remains of brick walls hurled with such force that they could crush cars and buses.

In the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989, a brick wall in San Francisco fell onto a parking lot, leaving cars crushed; five people died. And in a magnitude 6.3 quake that hit Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2011, falling bricks rained onto Red Bus No. 702, killing eight people, including the driver.

The number of people who need to be housed after a major earthquake could be enormous. The study estimated that a quake so large it had a 1-in-250 chance of occurring in any given year could result in more than 200,000 people needing short-term shelter in California. In an earthquake so large it had a 1-in-1,000 chance of occurring in any given year, more than 700,000 people would need short-term shelter.

The latest study also presents a more realistic picture of expected damage in places including L.A. and the Bay Area, where many buildings are on top of basins that amplify ground motions during an earthquake, Jaiswal said. Such shaking can result in a worse outcome for tall buildings that are atop basins compared with those built directly on bedrock.

“If you have a deep basin, with sediments overlaying on the hard rock, those ground motions get amplified,” Jaiswal said.

Compared to earlier models, the latest report factors in localized softer soil and basin conditions, which contributed to the increase in the projected damage cost for places such as L.A. and the Bay Area.

Other areas that saw an increase in earthquake hazard from the previous model include the Salt Lake City area, and much of the Big Island of Hawaii, Maui’s valley region and the southern coast of Oahu.

The Seattle area was estimated to have an annual earthquake loss of $781 million; the Portland, Oregon area, $403 million; the Salt Lake City area, $174 million; the Memphis, Tennessee area, $131 million; and the New York City region, $49 million.

The fact that earthquake risk exists in areas of the eastern U.S. may come as a surprise, but such quakes can happen. A magnitude 5.8 earthquake near Mineral, Virginia in 2011 caused $200 million to $300 million in damage, and necessitated $15 million in repairs to the Washington Monument.

Other damaging earthquakes in the eastern U.S. on record include one off of Cape Ann, Massachusetts in 1755, estimated to be magnitude 5.9, which resulted in damage to the Boston waterfront; an estimated magnitude 4.5 quake near Petersburg, Virginia in 1774, which shoved homes from their foundations and was felt by future President Thomas Jefferson; and an estimated magnitude 7 quake near Charleston, South Carolina in 1886 that killed 60 people, according to the USGS.

In the early 19th century, there were three large earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone, around the area along the Mississippi River where Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Arkansas meet. The largest earthquakes were a magnitude 7.5 in December 1811, a magnitude 7.3 in January 1812 and a magnitude 7.5 in February 1812.

“Earthquakes are a national problem,” the USGS said in a statement.

New York City has a low probability of a damaging earthquake, but one that occurs could still cause significant damage because of the city’s density and the age of its buildings, according to the city’s emergency management agency. One big risk for New York City is a large number of older brick buildings that have not been retrofitted.

In early October, a group of volunteers from Napa County Landmarks gathered at the Napa’s downtown historic post office. Their goal: rewrap the huge lanterns that flank the post office entrances. The post office was heavily damaged in the 2014 earthquake and has since been sold for development.

Jennifer Huffman, Register

Throwback Thursday: Photos from the 2014 Napa earthquake

Fire damage after earthquake in Napa

Four homes were destroyed by fire after the quake and up to eight more were damaged at the Napa Valley Mobile Home Park, according to the Napa Fire Department. No injuries were reported.

Howard Yune/Register

Napa Earthquake

This building, located at Second and Brown streets, sustained major damage in Napa’s 6.0 earthquake. California is predicted to have a much stronger quake in coming decades.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

Browns Valley Market employees clean up the disaster left by the 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. on Sunday morning, August 24, 2014.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Larry Giovannoni, owner of Browns Valley Market in Napa, pauses while cleaning up the disaster left by the earthquake. Giovannoni estimates that their losses will be over $1 million.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Skateboarders use the buckled pavement of Meadowood Court as ramps for performing stunts after last August’s earthquake.

Register file photo

Napa Earthquake

While waiting for inspectors, Vintner’s Collective manager Garret Murphy stands outside the historic Main Street building whose facade was badly damaged in the Aug. 24 earthquake. 

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Nicholas George of Carneros cranes his head down into a deep fissure in front of his house on Old Sonoma Road on the day of the South Napa earthquake Scientists used more sophisticated tools for measuring the quake. 

Register file photo

Napa Earthquake

Two men walk past an earthquake-damaged home on First Street on Monday morning. Residents throughout the valley spent Monday assessing the damage and cleaning up from the 6.0 earthquake that struck Sunday.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

Damage is visible to the facade of the Napa post office on Second Street on Sunday morning following the quake. Repairs have not yet begun on the downtown building.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

The damaged facade at Alexandria Square at Brown and Second streets became an iconic image of Napa’s earthquake.

J.L. Sousa/Register file photo

Napa Earthquake

A number of glass panes were broken at the downtown Napa Post Office following a 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday, causing major damage to a number of downtown buildings.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

One of the many cracks that developed following Sunday mornings earthquake is seen on Old Sonoma Road on Monday morning. City and county crews were patching roads throughout the valley.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

The Historic Courthouse was red-tagged after a section of building fell off during Sunday’s 6.0 earthquake. Repairs will be expensive and take a year or more, officials say. 

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

Buckled and cracked asphalt, like seen here on Craigie Court, is a common sight throughout Napa following the 6.0 magnitude earthquake that struck on Sunday, Aug. 24 at 3:20 a.m.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

Jim Nichols of South Dakota disposes of debris at Browns Valley Elementary School on Monday morning following the 6.0 magnitude earthquake that struck Napa on Sunday morning. He was visiting his mother who lives in Napa when the quake struck and was cleaning up at her home. There are a number of locations where local residents can get rid of debris from the quake.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa quake debris

A mountain of earthquake debris — damaged dishes, furnishings and treasured possessions — is piled up in front of the Education Center at Jefferson Street and Lincoln Avenue Tuesday afternoon in Napa Valley. With schools reopening Wednesday, Napa Valley Unified School District is asking the community to cease using the Ed Center site. Debris boxes are available at a half-dozen city parks.

Howard Yune — Napa Valley Register

Napa Earthquake

Dennis Fagent, right, of ZFA Structural Engineers, and local architect and consultant Stephen Cuddy assess the damage done to the historic Vintner’s Collective building by Sunday’s 6.0 earthquake. The building was red tagged on Tuesday, but inspectors on Wednesday found that the inside of the building was intact, concluding that the repair needed was largely on the outside veneer.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Structural damage to the Napa Square building has forced the closure of some neighboring buildings after Sunday’s 6.0 earthquake.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

Napa’s Chief Buidling Official Dan Kavarian tapes a red tag Thursday morning  to the door of the recently opened Velo Pizzeria on Main Street. Though the restaurant was recently seismically retrofitted, it abuts a masonry building on Brown Street that poses a safety threat to adjacent structures, according to the city. The Brown Street building, which has also been red-tagged, is owned by Brian Silver, a Napa attorney.

who has historically refused to bring his buildings up to earthquake codes.

Janelle Wetzstein/Register

Napa Earthquake

Residents of the Charter Oaks Apartments on Browns Valley Road are seen near one of the carports that collapsed following a 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

This home at Vallejo and Yajome streets was knocked off its foundation following the 6.0 earthquake August earthquake. 

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

The sidewalk buckled where a crack went across Twin Oaks Drive and through the home of Tim and Ann Whitlock, knocking the two story home 5 inches off its foundation.

Register file photo

Napa Earthquake

A brick chimney on a home on Hermosa Drive lies in shambles after last August’s earthquake.

Eagle file photo

Napa Earthquake

A broken water pipe gushes a stream of water over a deep crack in the pavement along White Cliff Circle after a 6.0 earthquake struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. on Sunday morning, August 24, 2014.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Napa firefighters spray down one of four homes at the Napa Valley Mobile Park destroyed by fire after a 6.0 earthquake struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Aug. 24. The fire department believes the fire was caused by a ruptured gas line.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Falling debris damaged this car at Third and Brown streets following a magnitude 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

The Sam Kee Laundry building, which currently houses The Vintner’s Collective, shows damage from the 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday.

Brenda Speth/Register

Napa Earthquake

Napa firefighters subdue the last flames of a fire that destroyed 4 homes at the Napa Valley Mobile Park after a 6.0 earthquake struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday morning, August 24, 2014. The fire department believes the fire was caused by a ruptured gas line.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

Quake caused major damage to the tasting room and barrel storage building at Trefethen Family Vineyards. This was originally the Eshcol Winery building, built in 1886, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

One of the glass panels on the 9/11 Memorial in downtown Napa shattered following a 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday. A number of downtown buildings sustained major damage.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

Merchandise is tossed inside of Shackford’s Kitchen Store following a 6.0 earthquake which struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. causing major damage to a number of downtown buildings.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

This fountain in the Christian Brothers Courtyard at Justin-Siena High School was one of the casualties of Sunday morning’s 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa.

J.L. Sousa/Register

Napa Earthquake

A 6.0 earthquake struck Napa at 3:20 a.m. last Sunday. This photo was taken inside the Register newsroom.

Lisa James/Register

Napa Earthquake

People stop to survey the damage to Quent Cordair Fine Art Gallery in downtown Napa following a 6.0 earthquake that struck Napa at 3:20 a.m.

J.L. Sousa/Register

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The post Projected losses from a serious California earthquake soar. What’s behind seismic inflation? appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

San Francisco’s affordable housing plans are on shaky ground. Quite literally.

In July, Mayor London Breed broke ground on Treasure Island’s second affordable housing project, Star View Court, which will include 138 units upon completion. Yet looming over it is the cloud of a possible natural disaster.

Treasure Island is situated entirely atop a seismic hazard zone. Developed in 1936 with artificial fill, the island is designated as a “liquefaction zone.” In the event of an earthquake, strong shaking could lead the water-saturated soil underneath to give way.

Some 178 affordable housing projects encompassing 20,089 total units, 8,630 of which would be designated affordable units — are set to be completed between now and 2029, according to The City’s Affordable Housing Pipeline. More than a third are within seismic hazard zones, according to a map provided by DataSF, as well as the pipeline document.

When the City and County of San Francisco Hazards and Climate Resilience Plan was released in March 2020, the report revealed that more than half of all industrial parcels, a third of all commercial parcels and exactly 39% of all critical facilities (schools and hospitals, for example) were located in seismic hazard zones.

And none of that is a coincidence, says Corey Smith, executive director of the Housing Action Coalition.

As The City map shows, much of San Francisco’s planned affordable housing stock is going up in these hazard zones. Meanwhile, citywide residential construction activity, such as home renovations, is distributed relatively evenly throughout The City.

That’s because San Francisco is building up an affordable housing stock in the only places it can.

“Zoning determines height and bulk, what we are able to build and where on each individual parcel. Every single parcel in The City has a zoning rule,” Smith explains. “And a long time ago, The City decided, OK, we’re going to concentrate all of our big buildings on the east side of The City. For a variety of reasons, that was the wrong decision.”

The 1978 down-zoning of The City made downtown and the eastern waterfront the epicenter of new development. Down-zoning refers to rezoning of land to make it more restrictive to development. So, much of The City was limited to a certain height, 40 feet, and low-density. And it happened that the areas left for high-density, tall buildings were situated on shaky ground — such as downtown, Mission Bay and Bayview.

The down-zoning plan was strongly backed by residents who wanted to maintain the family and neighborhood flavor of The City. But at the same time, it forced large developments to build on seismic hazard zones.

Those large developments include multi-unit market-rate buildings as well as new affordable housing within them — now mandated by the Inclusionary Affordable Housing Program. This program requires new residential project develolpers with more than 10 units to pay an “affordable housing fee” or offer a percentage of the units at “below market rate.”

“If you look at the zoning map, which is a map that says where apartments can or cannot be built, multi-story multi-family apartment buildings … that’s where affordable housing is legal or not legal as well,” says Smith. That is also where large swaths of The City’s seismic hazard zones are centered.

And so the placement of affordable housing projects is dictated by the intersection of developers needing to build nearly 100 units per parcel to make a project worthwhile and zoning laws that designate the east side, in all of its seismic vulnerability, as the only place for developments of this size.

A wrinkle in this scenario is the increased cost of building in seismic hazard zones. In order to accommodate safety regulations, construction costs balloon. This makes pricing units below market-rate all the more challenging, says Jeff Brink, CEO of DCI Engineers.

Just what is a seismic hazard zone?

Seismic hazard zones delineate areas in which earthquake-related hazards are concentrated. On the map above, created using data provided by the City of San Francisco, these risks include “liquefaction, earthquake-induced landslides, overlapping liquefaction and earthquake-induced landslides” that may occur during an earthquake of high magnitude.

San Francisco is expected to experience a high caliber earthquake in the coming decades — related to one of two nearby fault lines, the Hayward Fault and the San Andreas Fault. OneSF, The City’s office of resilience and capital planning, which works to plan and fund programs to strengthen The City’s infrastructure, predicts that “there is a 72% probability of one or more (magnitude greater than) 6.7 earthquakes from 2014 to 2043 in the San Francisco Bay Region.”

San Francisco is no stranger to catastrophic quakes. On April 18, 1906, The City was near the epicenter of an earthquake of estimated magnitude 7.9, though studies using different techniques offer different values. The disruption ruptured along 296 miles of the San Andreas fault line. Death and destruction swept The City from the quake and the subsequent fire.

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“Earthquake-induced landslide risks” are scattered along the hills and cliffs of The Outer Richmond, Sea Cliff, Presidio, Lake Shore, Bayview Heights, Midtown Terrace, Twin Peaks, Clarendon Heights, Golden Gate Heights, Forest Hills, Diamond Heights, the Castro, Dolores Heights, Noe Valley, and Yerba Buena Island, according to The City’s hazard-resilience plan.

Liquefaction risks, considered potential “ground failure,” are concentrated in SoMa, the Mission District, Hunters Point and areas near the water, such as the Marina District and Treasure Island. These also happen to be the areas where much of The City’s planned affordable housing is designated.

So what is the city doing to protect housing?

The soft-soil mandate is part of a 30-year program currently underway in San Francisco to mitigate risks, called the Earthquake Safety Implementation Program (ESIP). Its work first began in 2011, following the results of the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety, which determined that The City was ill-prepared for a major earthquake.

The sf.gov page dedicated to the program states that the report found that an earthquake scenario would “devastate The City’s housing stock, and could have long-term implications on The City’s affordability to middle- and low-income residents, who would be displaced for years. Hundreds of people could be killed and thousands could be injured.”

The Earthquake Safety Implementation Program developed 50 tasks to be completed by The City between 2012-2042 to prevent this kind of devastation, and is working in tandem with The City’s Hazards and Climate Resilience Plan to reduce overall risks. Also at play is the California Seismic Hazards Program, created by the Seismic Hazards Mapping Act in 1990. It was introduced following the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 to reduce further damage and loss of life in the event of an earthquake.

In collaboration with the Department of Conservation, California Geological Survey, seismic hazard maps are designed and distributed. Information from past faults and earthquake activity, seismic wave behavior and site-specific conditions are combined to determine risk.

The program also requires San Francisco to use the hazard maps in land-use and development planning. According to The City, anyone developing in hazardous regions could be required to investigate the associated risks and work to mitigate potential harm in the event of an earthquake. The Seismic Hazards Mapping Act also requires real estate brokers to disclose the potential risk of their sites at the time of sale.

Beyond just maps, mitigation programs work to undercut risks. A pre-development plan for the Star View Court project, for example, outlines the “geotechnical improvement program” that Treasure Island is implementing. The plan includes tactics such as “improvement of island perimeter,” “vibratory compaction” and “surcharging.” Vibratory compaction will work to strengthen the soil’s integrity, while surcharging applies a lateral pressure to soil areas to further compact the earth.

Mitigation strategies for existing buildings

San Francisco’s required mitigation strategies often call for capital. The City’s retroactive soft soil mandate, for example, requires a seismic retrofit of wood-frame buildings over three stories built before 1978. The cost of these retrofits range from $3,000 to $7,000 according to Earthquake Brace and Bolt, a grant program under the purview of California Residential Mitigation Program. The city also offers grants to eligible residents, as well as an option to finance the retrofit.

The City’s resilience plan also dictates proactive approaches to preparing for seismic disturbances, such as plans to “continue to meet housing production goals,” “continue to advance the Sewer System Improvement Program,” and “implement the SFMTA Parking Strategy.” The status of all projects at the time of the report’s publication were “sustaining,” meaning at the time of the report, the strategy was already in effect and is an active and ongoing aspect of the mitigation plan.

Outlined in the Earthquake Safety Implementation Program and currently in progress are:

• San Francisco’s Tall Buildings Study, which is evaluating the impact of a quake on buildings over 240 feet and determining strategies for resilience

•The Private Schools Earthquake Evaluation Program, which requires a seismic evaluation of these properties

• The Facade Inspection and Maintenance Program is somewhat self-explanatory and applies to certain buildings over five stories.

• The Chimney Mitigation program, which evaluates risks posed by The City’s masonry chimneys and determines methods of mitigation based on the data.

As the days count down toward the 30 years until the earthquake safety plan is fully implemented, more mitigation strategies kick-start — on pace with city development.

In the meantime, there’s really only one way to find out if The City’s considerations will be enough to counteract the catastrophic risks at play.

And that’s to wait for the quake.   

The post A lot of San Francisco’s inexpensive housing is slated for seismic hazard zones | San Francisco Information appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.

october 11, 2022Updated: Oct. 13, 2022 6:32pm

Opened in 1927, the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite is one of the “great lodges” of the US National Parks system. Many guests have reported strange happenings on the hotel’s sixth floor. (Courtesy of Yosemite National Park Service/MCT)

Handout, HO/MCT

The famous 95-year-old Ahwahnee Hotel at Yosemite National Park will be closed for 8 weeks at the beginning of 2023 for seismic upgrades, according to the park.

The $31.6 million project — funded by the Great American Outdoors Act of 2020 — consists of a major seismic upgrade throughout the hotel as well as a kitchen renovation, according to a Yosemite National Park press release. Kitchen project work is currently underway and the seismic safety upgrade will begin near the end of the year.

“The Ahwahnee is a crown jewel of national park lodges” said Cicely Muldoon, Yosemite National Park superintendent. “This much-needed work will ensure the Ahwahnee is seismically safe for present and future generations of Yosemite visitors.”

The seismic support upgrade will focus on bracing the chimneys and support walls, replacing window frames and dining room glass in high use visitor areas, the release added. The current central cooling system will also be updated along with improvements to the fireplace.

The Ahwahnee — which opened in 1927, contains 97 guest rooms and 24 cottages — will be closed for reservations from Jan. 2 till March 2 and will not be accepting reservations during that time due to the construction.

Famous visitors to the historic park have included presidents and international dignitaries such as John F. Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth II.

Joel Umanzor (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: joel.umanzor@sfchronicle.com

Joel Umanzor joined The San Francisco Chronicle as a breaking news reporter in 2022. A 2021-2023 Hearst Fellow, he was previously a breaking news reporter on The Houston Chronicle’s Metro desk.

Originally from Richmond, Calif., Umanzor graduated from San Francisco State University in 2021. When not in the newsroom or chasing down a source, he can be found painting, listening to hip-hop or watching sports.

The post Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Resort will shut for 2 months to endure $31.6 million in seismic upgrades appeared first on DAILY SAN FRANCISCO BAY NEWS.