[californiadisasters] Grim Forecast Sees Housing in Tatters After Major S.F. EQ

Grim forecast sees housing in tatters after major S.F. quake

May 02, 2004|By Gerald D. Adams, Chronicle Staff Write

San Francisco's residential west and south sides would bear the brunt of destruction in a major earthquake because the city's older stock of wooden, single-family homes and apartment buildings are particularly vulnerable, according to a draft of a seismic vulnerability report that the city commissioned.

The city has shelved the report over questions about its professional quality, but Mary Lou Zoback, the U.S. Geological Survey's regional coordinator on earthquake hazards for Northern California, extolled the report as "the most comprehensive look at a realistic loss estimation for any urban area in the United States." Zoback was part of an advisory committee that oversaw the report's preparation.

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"San Francisco's Earthquake Risk," the product of a yearlong study prepared for the city Department of Building Inspection by the Applied Technology Council of Redwood City, predicted that in a magnitude 7.2 earthquake along the San Andreas Fault:

-- 29,862 buildings citywide would be destroyed by the shaking and post- earthquake fire.

-- 20,857, or 70 percent, of those structures would be in the residential Richmond, Sunset, Twin Peaks, Ingleside and Excelsior neighborhoods.

-- Total economic losses would reach $13.7 billion citywide, with $4.6 billion, or 34 percent, sustained in the neighborhoods and low-rise commercial strips of the Richmond, Sunset, Twin Peaks, Ingleside and Excelsior.

"Until this report, we weren't even thinking about the residential areas of the Sunset and Richmond districts," said Patrick Buscovich, a structural engineer who served on a Building Inspection Department advisory panel set up to assess the seismic vulnerability of private buildings in San Francisco. "We'd never grasped there was going to be a lot of housing losses there."

Source: http://articles.sfgate.com/2004-05-02/news/17424857_1_san-andreas-fault-building-inspection-commission-san-francisco-s-earthquake-risk

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