Saw this great twitter thread about the “San Francisco Seawallpocalypse”

quentin - October 26, 2022

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Hello all! This is my first post after lurking for a couple months. I just saw this great twitter thread about the seawall situation in SF and thought I would post it here. Really fascinating.

Earthquake today is a good reminder of the pending-urban-disaster-no-one-talks-about:

San Francisco Seawallpocalypse! 🌊💀🔥

Thread/

— fry (@anniefryman) October 25, 2022

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Welcome, Quentin, and thanks for sharing. That would definitely freak me out if I lived in that section of San Franscisco.

 

Excellent find! I was born and raised in SF and am a huge earthquake nerd, but all this seawall stuff is totally news to me! Going to read all about it! Thank you!

Additionally, if you see anything questioning the seismic resilience of the new (i.e., last 20 years) high-rise construction downtown, I’d be really interested. The Chronicle did a feature a while back on how modeling (of how a building would perform in an earthquake, i.e.) is being used to justify designs that don’t comply with what seismic code would ordinarily prescribe. It’s all totally legal (i.e., the code allows for exceptions if this kind of modeling demonstrates that they are safe), it’s just… maybe a little worrying. I wonder if there has been any further attention to that issue. 

 

Well, that’s a heck of a conundrum! How does a person prepare for that? Seems like folks might think about moving. Easy to say, hard to do, I know, but yikes!