Is San Francisco Ready?

By J. MADELEINE NASH

As they beheld the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, residents of San Francisco had a sense of foreboding about their own proud and beautiful city. Ever since 1906, when a massive earthquake along the San Andreas Fault killed thousands and left an estimated 225,000 people homeless, San Franciscans have lived with the knowledge that one day another cataclysmic temblor will rock the ground beneath their feet, toppling houses and apartment buildings, severing water and power lines and rendering roads and highways impassable.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom quickly decided that the shocking scenes of Katrina provided a teachable moment. Newsom unveiled a long-planned public-service advertising campaign last week that will amplify what may be Katrina's most important take-home message: survivors of a major emergency will probably need to fend for themselves for the first few days after calamity strikes. The goal is to get as many San Franciscans as possible to assemble--and keep current--a basic emergency kit, including a flashlight, a transistor radio, spare batteries, canned goods and, above all, enough water to last at least three days. "If Hurricane Katrina didn't prove it to you, I don't know what will," says Newsom. "When disaster strikes, we're all going to be on our own for a minimum of 72 hours."

The odds are high that the nearly 750,000 people living in the city today will be pulling out those emergency kits, say researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey. The region around the San Francisco Bay is riven by faults, including the San Andreas to the west of the city and, to the east, the Hayward Fault, which geophysicists consider even more likely to rupture. Over the next 30 years, scientists estimate, the Bay Area has a greater than 60% chance of being hit by a damaging earthquake, defined as an earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or higher. And while a replay of the 1906 earthquake is less likely during that time frame--the 1906 quake is thought to have had a magnitude of about 7.9, making it 60 times as powerful as a magnitude 6.7--it's not inconceivable. In now eerie echoes from early 2001, some experts recall hearing officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency list a strong earthquake in California as among the most likely catastrophic disasters that could strike the U.S.--along with a terrorist attack in New York City and a major hurricane hitting New Orleans.

Just how prepared is San Francisco to weather the worst? Newsom told reporters last week that the city has made progress since he took office in early 2004. Among other things, the city has revived its disaster-planning council and regularly stages emergency-response trial runs. It has installed 65 civil defense--style sirens equipped with loudspeakers for broadcasting information about hazards and evacuation routes to outlying neighborhoods. And it is stepping up the training of thousands of civilians in disaster medicine and other emergency skills so they can serve as geographically dispersed disaster workers.

Work is under way to secure vital infrastructure, including the San Francisco-- Oakland Bay Bridge and Bay Area Rapid Transit system's tracks, stations and tunnels. The San Francisco public utilities commission, for its part, has embarked on a major renovation of the aging system of reservoirs, pipelines and canals that bring water to some 2.4 million Bay Area residents. Reservoirs inside the city are being reinforced so that it will have a locally available reserve. In 1906, it was not the ground shaking that destroyed so much of San Francisco but the fires that raged afterward, because fire fighters lacked water to quench them.

That's the good news. The bad news is that those efforts will take years to complete. In the meantime, other critical projects that haven't even been started are taking on more importance. The San Francisco General Hospital, for example, is in such poor condition that it could collapse during a major quake. The mayor is considering a proposal to rebuild it. And after Katrina, the megamillion-dollar bond issue that is needed should be an easier sell.

When the next Big One strikes, the people of San Francisco and the structures around them will be tested up to--and in some cases beyond--their limits of endurance. "I'm certainly not waiting for Air Force One," says Newsom, adding that residents of San Francisco should not wait for assistance from overwhelmed police and fire fighters either. For Katrina has underscored the truth that disaster managers have long tried to hammer home. In the first hours and days after a major catastrophe, a city and its citizens can expect to cope with the horror alone.