The Big OneNext California's Big One could kill hundreds, cause $100 billion in losses, trap 20,000 in elevators
What will happen when the next big earthquake hits northern California? Researchers say that if a tremor similar in magnitude to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake were to hit today, it could kill 800 people, cause more than $100 billion in economic losses from the shaking and subsequent fires, and trap roughly 20,000 people in elevators across northern California.
What will happen when the next big earthquake hits northern California? A team of researchers including CU Boulder Professor Keith Porter last week explored that question at an event today marking the anniversary of the 1906 temblor that leveled much of San Francisco.
A modern earthquake could kill 800 people and cause more than $100 billion in economic losses from the shaking and subsequent fires, according to estimates come from the HayWired Scenario, a project spearheaded by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), which is organizing the event on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The exercise looked at the potential outcomes of a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on California’s Hayward Fault in the east San Francisco Bay Area (see “The HayWired scenario: a major earthquake in the San Francisco Bay area,” HSNW, 23 April 2018).
Porter, a professor in CU Boulder’s Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, said that the toll of such a disaster could be huge—on par with the impact of Hurricane Katrina on the southeastern United States in 2005.
“It’s fairly likely that a person living in the Bay Area today will live to see a major Bay Area earthquake,” Porter said. “The HayWired scenario reveals weak points in our designs for new buildings, our existing water infrastructure, not to mention problems with fires after earthquakes and with older elevators.”
Colorado notes that California hasn’t seen a major tremor since the rise of the Internet age—the last was 1994’s Northridge earthquake in the Los Angeles area. The Hayward Fault itself last ruptured 150 years ago. Scientists estimate, however, that it or another Bay Area fault will likely produce a large earthquake in the next 30 years. The HayWired scenario seeks to help the region learn from the lessons of this when-not-if event without having to experience the costs.
“We tend to improve our building codes and other aspects of our infrastructure after a big disaster,” Porter said. “We learn our lessons the hard way. But what the USGS’s Science Application for Risk Reduction program has found is that simulated disasters can teach us the same lessons.”
