
Ask HN: Are thousands of Bay Area workers going to die in a big earthquake? - staunch
Looking at liquefaction maps of the Bay Area, it really seems like we&#x27;re in for a huge disaster at some indefinite point in the future. Many buildings are very old, made of brick, and seem unlikely to survive a big earthquake.<p>1. Why is it that we have people working in San Francisco in buildings that we know will likely collapse in a large earthquake?<p>2. How is this legal? How are companies able to ignore the obvious safety implications of having people work inside deathtraps?<p>3. Will the families of workers get paid when workers are inevitably buried under tons of rubble?<p>4. Is there something workers can do to force their companies to provide earthquake life insurance and&#x2F;or move out of unsafe buildings?<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;geomaps.wr.usgs.gov&#x2F;sfgeo&#x2F;liquefaction&#x2F;maps.html
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joshe
Two points.

It's not so bad! And it could be really bad!

The not so bad case. The 6.9 Loma Prieta 1989 quake killed 63 people. 42 of
those deaths were on the highway collapse. And since then we reinforced the
highways and any building touched by construction in the last 30 years was
seismically upgraded. Lots of property damage, but we've already paid for that
with insurance and taxes. Btw SF's many wood frame buildings that lean against
each other do quite well.

    
    
      Magnitude      | 30 year chance of one or more
      greater than
    
      7                51%
      7.5              20%
      8                4%
    
    

From:

[https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2015/3009/pdf/fs2015-3009.pdf](https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2015/3009/pdf/fs2015-3009.pdf)

The bad news is the 4% chance event. An 8 or (omg!) 9.0 earthquake. There are
few buildings that would survive, some hospitals and data centers that are
built to very high standards. (Like the datacenter at 365 Main for example,
cool video here [1] about how that works. [2]).

Everything else is likely to be in really bad shape, with thousands of deaths
and whole blocks leveled. Current standards don't go that high because it
would be much too expensive. Imagine spending $5 million on every house and
office building in San Francisco.

The other it-might-be-really-bad direction is that NY Times story below [3]
points out that we don't really know how our new skyscrapers will behave even
in 7.0 earthquakes, it seems quite possible that a few could fall over and
wreck 2-3 blocks of other buildings.

Keep in mind that about 2,500 people die in car accidents every year in
California. And that the 4% 8.0+ event only happens every 825 years.

So... not so bad! Could be really bad!

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OVDKZB9r1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8OVDKZB9r1Q)

[2]
[http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/04/14/quake...](http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/04/14/quake-
proofing-an-entire-data-center)

[3] [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/17/us/san-
franci...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/17/us/san-francisco-
earthquake-seismic-gamble.html)

~~~
scarmig
The 1906 quake (the biggest in recorded CA history) was a touch under 8.0, and
it killed 3000. But the majority of the damage from it was from fires, which
are a much smaller danger nowadays. Building codes are better as well. I'd be
surprised if an 8.0 got into the thousands.

A 9.0 quite simply won't happen in CA, because our fault lines aren't capable
of generating that magnitude.

~~~
idunno246
If you notice the red brick circles in various intersections around the city.
One of the problems with the fires after a quake is that running water may not
work anymore, so they installed these cisterns filled with water to try to
make sure firefighting water was available if needed.

------
mchannon
When I started a software dev contract in a Southern California high-rise, I
had to undergo 2 hours of earthquake safety training before I could start
working.

I think it would be unusual for any Bay Area employer to require any
earthquake safety procedures, despite a far higher potential for risk to life
and limb.

Very few buildings will collapse in a Bay Area earthquake, but the number is
not zero. Far more will be "damaged" and that may still involve plenty of
lives lost.

San Francisco I'm not as worried about- the east bay and parts of the
peninsula (esp. Foster City) would concern me more.

Best link I've found:
[http://gis.abag.ca.gov/website/Hazards/?hlyr=liqSusceptibili...](http://gis.abag.ca.gov/website/Hazards/?hlyr=liqSusceptibility)

------
MilnerRoute
I'm not sure how many brick buildings there actually are. (After the 1906 and
1989 quakes, the flimsiest buildings were knocked down.) San Francisco has
fewer brick buildings than most major cities...

And it's also something people (including the government) are aware of and
watching carefully. San Francisco retrofits its brick buildings -- over 2,000
by the year 2008 -- and it actually made headlines that there were 150 at that
time which hadn't already been retrofitted.

[https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/150-S-F-brick-
buildings-...](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/150-S-F-brick-buildings-
yet-to-be-reinforced-3278984.php)

------
kochb
The New York Times recently did an article on the topic:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/17/us/san-
franci...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/04/17/us/san-francisco-
earthquake-seismic-gamble.html)

The short answer is that while a natural disaster is possible, the time frame
between disastrous earthquakes is long enough for people to get by anyway.
Builders do have a legal standard to follow, but whether that standard is safe
enough is another question entirely.

Re insurance, many employers offer benefits packages that include basic life
insurance coverage for employees, which would likely offer some compensation.
YMMV.

------
canterburry
Just like in 1906, it won't be the earthquake that kills the most people but
the resulting fires.

Think of the forest fires that burnt down Santa Rosa.

In a dense city like SF, it will only take the fire spreading to a few
adjacent blocks before it overwhelms the fire departments ability to put it
out and that will be it. SF will turn into Coffey park.

------
bsvalley
Companies don't force people to come and work for them. People make that
choice. As of earthquake protection in SF, unfortunately most of the owners
don't have earthquake insurances because the premiums are ridiculous. In other
words, companies might have earthquake protections in SF if they own their
office buildings. Otherwise, not sure it's their responsibilities.

------
brian-armstrong
I mean, things aren't really that different from when the Loma Prieta hit.
Most of the people who died in that earthquake were on the bridge when it
happened. It caused a lot of property damage and injuries but not many
fatalities.

~~~
godot
That was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake. For context, it has been speculated
(source: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-
big...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one) )
that the next "really big one" could be in the range of 9.0.

> If the entire zone gives way at once, an event that seismologists call a
> full-margin rupture, the magnitude will be somewhere between 8.7 and 9.2.
> That’s the very big one.

I'm not well-versed in earthquakes, but from what I know the Richter magnitude
is logarithmic in scale, I can't really even imagine in my head what a 9.0
quake is like.

I'm glad OP / someone is asking these questions, I often wonder about this
myself, being a tech worker in San Francisco.

~~~
icodestuff
This is for the PNW. The Bay Area is south of that. We won't be hit by one
that big. "The big one" here will be an 8, not a 9.

------
rajeshpant
Yes and thousands of Bay area workers can also die from Alien attack.

