Travel, Earthquakes, and Northern California

A traveler to Northern California needs to factor in some risk of earthquakes, whether you are a visitor to the region or someone living here, as I am, and traveling about.

The massive recent quake in China brought this again to top of mind. 

I also traveled this past weekend on the 880 freeway between my home in Berkeley and San Jose.

This was the freeway that collapsed in the Loma Prieta quake of 1989, crushing all the people who happened to be traveling by in their cars at that moment.  I was not driving by at that moment.  My good friend Robert Black, a sculptor, was also not driving by at that time, though that was the usual time of his commute.  He was distracted that day and stayed at his studio an hour later.

If you are traveling in the San Francisco region 2008 and beyond, your chances of surviving an earthquake are better than ever.  Of course, there are earthquakes and then there are earthquakes.  Go up one point on the Richter Scale, from 5 to 6, for example, and you are going up exponentially in earthquake force.  That's why Californians have a special concern when we hear that the China quake was 7 plus.

California is making a huge, quiet investment in infrastructure to make this a safe place.  This, in itself, is a controversial matter.  If there never is another major quake, then this is wasted money.  It should have gone into social services. 

But responsible citizens have determined that the investment needs to be made.  We can't have schools collapsing on our kids.  We can't have freeways collapsing on drivers.  The Bay Bridge is being redone at a mega cost.  Brick buildings, the likes of the Coffee Roasting Company in Santa Cruz, which collapsed and crushed people to death, are being replaced or retrofitted.  Some major historic structures, such as the brick Cooper House in Santa Cruz, are gone forever, but that needs to be accepted for safety's sake.

Downtown San Francisco is going through a building boom, with high rises higher than ever before.  The engineering appears to be there to support the risk.  Let's hope the calculations are correct if there is another major quake within the foreseeable future.

Many of those of us who live here have our own earthquake emergency supplies system.  It's time for me to renew mine.  The foods grow old.  That is another cost, the renewing of earthquake preparedness systems in the average home.  It is an investment that many of us choose to make.