11 ms·

There are always ways to build the tall buildings safely- they're just more expensive. These buildings aren't unsafe because there's no choice, they're unsafe b

• kakwa_ 9y ago
  Also, If I recall correctly, what did the most damages in the 1906 SF earthquake was not the actual earthquake itself. What caused the most damages was the fires after the earthquake. Hopefully SF has a better fire department now than in 1906.
  • ekianjo 9y ago
    same thing for Kobe in 1995. Fires were responsible for most of the deaths.
  • cobbzilla 9y ago
    It's not just the fire department that's better - in 1906 a lot of those fires were caused when the quake would pull a gas appliance from a wall and leave a gas leak that later ignited. Nowadays everyone has their hot water heater and oven bolted or strapped to the wall. I'm sure there are other useful fire codes California has adopted since then but this one rule will probably prevent more fires in the next big quake than any other.
    • JshWright 9y ago
      Additionally, gas fittings that are designed to (safely) breakaway are more common.
    • mturmon 9y ago
      My LA house has to have a shutoff that automatically kills the main gas line during an earthquake. One must be installed when the house changes hands. No grandfather clause exception allowed.
      • cobbzilla 9y ago
        yes, i'd forgotten about those; we got one installed at our house a couple years ago, iirc at no charge from PG&E. it's definitely better/safer than the per-appliance solutions.
  • pcl 9y ago
    Going a bit deeper, the earthquake took out most of the water supply to the fire hydrants in the city, and so the fire department couldn't put out the fires that started during the quake. As a result, SF now has a backup hydrant system! Those big fat multi-colored hydrants are all connected to a fire-only water system that's gravity-fed from cisterns all over the city. The colors of the hydrants encode information about which cistern the water comes from, IIRC. And whenever you see a random arc of a circle made of brick inlaid in the road, that's outlining the location of a cistern. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-golden-fire-hydrant https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-golden-fire-hydrant https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/05/the-sublime-subterranean-cisterns-of-san-francisco/524853/ https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/05/the-sublime-subterran...
    • carapace 9y ago
      I don't have the link handy, but I was reading an article about how the backup water system is inadequate for the western part of the city (Sunset district mostly) and they're figuring out now how they want to extend it.
    • kelnos 9y ago
      I recall reading an article from a year or two ago stating that a lot of those cisterns are empty, and the overall backup water supply is woefully insufficient.
  • almost_usual 9y ago
    San Francisco has 66 fire trucks the last time I checked (I’m an SFFD volunteer). If there is a bad enough earthquake they will not come for you. The sheer volume of fires and service response calls will overwhelm them. It is your responsibility and the responsibility of volunteers in your community to make sure everyone is safe or triaged correctly the first 2 days (7 days better) after a disaster. Neighborhoods will definitely burn but containment will be more of a factor of how windy it is and how easy it is to get to water.
    • et-al 9y ago
      > If there is a bad enough earthquake [the fire department] will not come for you. The sheer volume of fires and service response calls will overwhelm them. Wish your comment was higher up. If you're in the Bay Area: sign up for a NERT/CERT class, buy an ABC fire extinguisher, and know where and how to shut off your gas line. Assume the fire department will not get to you. SF NERT: http://sf-fire.org/neighborhood-emergency-response-team-nert http://sf-fire.org/neighborhood-emergency-response-team-nert
      • kakwa_ 9y ago
        If there are wide spread fires all around your building, I don't think small extinguishers from few uncoordinated volontaries would help. In such event, I would do only one thing: run.
        • et-al 9y ago
          Fires start off small then grow. If you have a fire in your home and can put it out early by yourself, that's the best scenario. I'm not advocating for anyone to run around playing fire fighter.
  • drfuchs 9y ago
    Many 1906 SF fires were intentionally set by the owners themselves, after the earthquake had damaged their buildings, because most insurance policies covered losses due to fire, but not those due to earthquake. So, if you burned your building down completely, leaving no evidence that it had been first damaged by the earthquake, you had a chance at being reimbursed. http://www.sfmuseum.org/1906.2/arson.html http://www.sfmuseum.org/1906.2/arson.html It's not clear how much of the fire damage was due to intentionally set fires; there were also a significant number of fires started unintentionally when the fire department dynamited various buildings in failed attempts to establish fire breaks. (And, hey, you were still covered if your building was dynamited!) So, lets hope the SFFD is better in this regard than in 1906 as well. The insurance industry claims that only 2% of the destruction was directly due to the earthquake; 98% was from the fires. https://www.iii.org/article/san-francisco-earthquake-1906-insurance-perspective https://www.iii.org/article/san-francisco-earthquake-1906-in...
• abduhl 9y ago
  I see things like this ("These buildings aren't unsafe because there's no choice, they're unsafe because the builders wanted to save money and the building code was too loose to stop them.") posted by people on HN quite often. As someone who has worked in the Bay Area on buildings, I read things like this and laugh. They come from a place of ignorance - anyone who thinks the building code is "too loose" has never successfully engineered something which complied with it.
  • bogomipz 9y ago
    I don't doubt you but could you elaborate? Thanks.
  • phkahler 9y ago
    >> anyone who thinks the building code is "too loose" has never successfully engineered something which complied with it. Perhaps, but have you compared it to the building code in Japan? I personally have qualifications in this area so I'm just asking.
    • phkahler 9y ago
      Too late to edit. Why oh why did I omit the word "don't" in front of "have qualifications"? It was meant to be an honest question to fill a gap, not a weird confrontational thing.
  • babygoat 9y ago
    Your comment would have more gravity if you pointed to specifics instead of touting some vague credentials and telling other people they're wrong.
    • JackFr 9y ago
      > more gravity Now that would be a serious problem.
  • kadenshep 9y ago
    Shallow dismissals make you look like you have nothing to say. The article posits one thing, then the OP gave a concrete example clarifying why one region is having problems the other doesn't. You then come in and just claim that the building codes aren't actually that loose while jerking yourself off about your experience in the matter, despite the article's position on unsafe buildings and the OP correctly pointing out that a region with similar problems doesn't have an issue with its high rise buildings that they allowed to be built. Do you have anything else to say besides vague claims on your credentials and experience?
• swebs 9y ago
  How would you build to withstand against soil liquefaction? It could be likely that Tokyo is built on more stable bedrock.
  • Retric 9y ago
    Either go deep enough to hit bedrock or design your building to float. They both work fine, it's just a question of cost.
  • mabbo 9y ago
    Well, option #1 is to build somewhere else. Is every square foot of SF subject to liquifaction? Or is it just the cheapest piece of ground? Is it that the local government has zoning rules that simply prevent development and density in the places that would be safer? To be clear, I don't blame developers for finding the cheapest option- that's how capitalism works. It's up to governments to make the rules such that the cheapest options are also the best ones. Second, is there anything that can be done such that the soil won't suffer from liquifaction or will to a lesser degree? Probably expensive to do, yes, but surely there are means. And there's probably a million other ideas that might work that I don't even know of. It's silicon valley, that's where ideas come from, right? "Impossible" usual gets San Francisco types all excited. There's a downvoted reply to my original comment saying that I haven't actually tried to build these- and they are correct. I'm not a civil engineer. But I am a firm believer that if you make strong regulations and enforce them, clever engineers always find a way, at a cost. But the hard part of that isn't the engineering, it's having the political willpower to enforce strong rules.
  • sologoub 9y ago
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038080612000959 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S003808061... > The 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake caused the severe liquefaction of reclaimed lands in the Tokyo Bay area, from Shinkiba in Tokyo through Urayasu, Ichikawa and Narashino Cities to Chiba City.
    • timr 9y ago
      Those aren't the parts of Tokyo with skyscrapers. Most of Tokyo comprises low-rise (1-10 story) buildings.
• gibsonf1 9y ago
  As an architect in San Francisco, I would definitely prefer to be in a modern high rise here over other buildings for safety purposes during an earthquake. I am highly skeptical of this article as I have in depth knowledge of seismic engineering, the building code and the updates after every earthquake around the world to the code and engineering practices. The leaning building across from my office, for example, has nothing to do with seismic issues but basic design/engineering/construction flaws in not extending the pile footings deep enough to solid ground as others in the area have such as the new Salesforce tower.
  • progers7 9y ago
    Are design parameters such as pile depth part of the public record? Is there a way to lookup the design of a building?
    • ggcdn 9y ago
      Most cities keep a set of permit drawings, but generally you need to have a proximate relationship to the building to get access to them
  • ItsMe000001 9y ago
    > The leaning building across from my office, for example, has nothing to do with seismic issues Nowhere in the article did anybody make such a claim. It was to illustrate the general problems of building in that area even without an earth quake, which leads me to the other point, what IMO is the main issue, and I think is pretty independent of how much effort is spent on any one building: The potential for soil liquefaction. They included several maps showing that many of the tallest buildings are built pretty much exactly over ground that might suffer that fate in a big earth quake. How would any individual design help? Compared to the alternative of not building the tallest structures right over those spots. The maps also showed plenty of more solid ground, but that is where there are mostly lower buildings. I would like to hear your opinion on that issue. As for your doubts on the entire article, it seems to me they asked quite a few specialists? Are they all mistaken? Well, I certainly would like you to be right, I used to live in SF and I still love the entire greater Bay Area.
• cmsmith 9y ago
  Japan and California are pretty comparable in terms of science and engineering for earthquake resistance. There are some differences on the public policy side, which influence how the engineering requirements are implemented, but Japanese buildings are not intrinsically safer. Note that the 1994 Northridge (Calif.) and 1995 Kobe (Japan) earthquakes were about the same side - the Japanese quake was ~10x as costly and ~20x as deadly (mostly due to population density around the epicenters).
  • knuththetruth 9y ago
    Yeah. While I don’t support NIMBYism, YIMBY-types seems to love to use Japan as their counterexample, without understanding that Japanese homes tend to be built somewhat dangerously and without regard to earthquake safety.
  • dicemoose 9y ago
    Building standards were first implemented in Japan in 1952 and were revised in 1981 and 2000. Apologies for not having an English source, but of the people who were killed because of the house or building that they lived in, 98% were living in a building/house that did not meet the standards of the 1981 revision to the building codes. https://www.kobe-np.co.jp/rentoku/sinsai/20/rensai/201409/0008708728.shtml https://www.kobe-np.co.jp/rentoku/sinsai/20/rensai/201409/00...
  • stevenwoo 9y ago
    Isn't there is a slight difference - the maximum expected Japanese earthquake (9.0) magnitude is much more powerful than the maximum expected California earthquake along the Calaveras/San Andreas (8.0)? Cascadia looks to be another 9.0 fault line but the epicenter would be closer to Seattle/Portland than California.
• komali2 9y ago
  Regarding Japan: Nara has the Okumura Commemorative Museum [1] that has a bunch of little exhibits demonstrating how Japanese builders have been adapting to earthquakes. You can even look under the building at the foundation to see two of the methods in action - a crazy sort of "rubberized" slide pillar, as well as pillars just plonked on top of plates of teflon. [1] https://www.okumuragumi.co.jp/en/commemorative/index.html https://www.okumuragumi.co.jp/en/commemorative/index.html
• batbomb 9y ago
  Japan is always touted for this, but Chile (Santiago, Viña) are similarly plagued with extremely large earthquakes, with regular occurrence over 7.0, and you see tons of mid-rise buildings in Santiago. The building standards there are exceptionally high after the 1985 earthquake (8.0). If Santiago and Viña del Mar can do it, surely San Francisco can.
• JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > These buildings aren't unsafe because there's no choice, they're unsafe because the builders wanted to save money and the building code was too loose to stop them Side note from a New Yorker, it always shocks me how careful San Francisco pretends to be with building codes and environmental and safety reviews and this and that, only to go on and systematically approve a series of terrible structures. (Not before showering them with ecological awards, of course [1].) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_(San_Francisco) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Tower_(San_Francisc...
  • wahern 9y ago
    I can't remember an article were an architect or engineer flat-out claimed that the Millennium Tower design was fundamentally flawed. I thought this article had such a quote but reading it again the claim is merely implied by the journalists. The Millennium Tower was not flawed. It just unfortunately bumped into the law of large numbers. Even if all future towers in SF rest on bedrock, that still wouldn't reflect poorly the judgment of the Millennium Tower architects. Frankly, New Yorkers should be more concerned about the seismic safety of New York buildings. In terms of seismic risk vs seismic structural resilience, New York may be facing a great chance of catastrophe than San Francisco.
    • 1812Overture 9y ago
      New York also almost had a skyscraper blow over because no one bothered to calculate what the wind hitting it diagonally would do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citigroup_Center
• knuththetruth 9y ago
  >How? By having some of the strictest building codes in the world, yet allowing development within those rules. While this tends to be true for large, commercial architectural projects, it’s not true for residences. A big reason why almost no one buys used homes in Japan(and if they do, they tear them down and build new) is that building codes are very loosely enforced in this domain. If I remember correctly, structural calculations to resist earthquakes aren’t even required for buildings under 2.5 stories (i.e. just about all private residences). It’s a commonly-cited misconception that zoning is what makes housing so cheap in Japan. Zoning is a factor, but in reality it’s because housing is built pretty fast and loose as a disposable commodity.
  • dicemoose 9y ago
    One of the reasons why it's harder to buy some used homes in Japan is because it's harder government backed housing loans for housing that do not meet earthquake standards. For older buildings it's also harder or not possible to get tax breaks.