4 ms·
> The goal of the code, say proponents of a stronger one, should be the survival of cities — strengthening water systems, electrical grids and cellular networks
by chiph 9y ago
> The goal of the code, say proponents of a stronger one, should be the survival of cities — strengthening water systems, electrical grids and cellular networks — not just individual buildings.
I'm not sure how you'd prevent water & sewer lines from breaking during an earthquake - they're surrounded by earth (or secured along concrete walls in buried vaults) so they're going to get motion & shear all along their length - so not much room to flex. Assuming they were made of a flexible material and not cast iron.
One of the reasons why the 1906 earthquake was so devastating were the fires afterwards, where the fire companies couldn't get water.
- ceejayoz 9y agoAfter the 1906 earthquake, SF started adding large, distributed cisterns to store water throughout the city. I'd imagine there are lots of similar sorts of tweaks you could make - more a focus on a distributed, resilient grid than preventing pipe breaks entirely.
- komali2 9y agoEven in 1989 they couldn't get water, they had to suck it out of the bay.
- ceejayoz 9y agoThat appears to be part of the water supply plan (makes a lot of sense to use the water they've got there), and the cistern system appears to have partially functioned: http://www.sfmuseum.net/quake/revawss.html http://www.sfmuseum.net/quake/revawss.html > The upper zone of the AWSS, however, functioned normally through the earthquake period, and was used to suppress earthquake-caused fires. Looks like they're building more: http://abc7news.com/news/over-30-cisterns-to-be-built-in-sf-to-prepare-for-earthquake/68515/ http://abc7news.com/news/over-30-cisterns-to-be-built-in-sf-...