Lessons from the San Francisco Earthquake

(5 of 5)

While it is true that the communities in and around San Francisco have taken a number of laudable steps--constructing a whole new span for the San Francisco--Oakland Bay Bridge, for example--it is also plain that they need to do more. There are tens of thousands of older buildings in the Bay Area that do not meet modern earthquake standards, among them office and apartment buildings whose upper floors rest atop an unreinforced storefront or garage. In an earthquake, such "soft-story" buildings are likely to collapse or sustain damage so severe that no one will be able to live or work in them.

That is what the flooding from Katrina did to New Orleans, and the vividness of what it means to a modern city to lose so much housing and so many jobs has given the 1906 centennial a somber emotional edge. At risk in this case is not just a very large metropolitan population--the Bay Area now has about 7 million residents versus perhaps 800,000 in 1906--but also a vibrant $350 billion economy that includes one of the nation's largest financial hubs, one of its busiest ports and one of the world's densest concentrations of technical and scientific talent.

Time, unfortunately, is not on the Bay Area's side. Scientists say the "shadow" of the 1906 earthquake--a kind of protective umbra generated by the enormous release of stress 10 decades ago--is already beginning to dissipate. That means the Bay Area will soon be rocked by the next cycle of seismic unrest, with smaller but still damaging earthquakes signaling the start of a new era of danger for a city that's had more than its share.