Preliminary findings show two South Bay dams are vulnerable to earthquakes

Preliminary findings of a seismic study conducted by the Santa Clara Valley Water District has found that Calero and Guadalupe dams are subject to significant damage if a major earthquake were to occur within close proximity of either dam. The analysis also found that a major earthquake would only cause minor damage to Almaden Dam. READ MORE

Anderson Dam Seismic Risk

The Santa Clara Valley Water District announced the results of a seismic study that determined the 60-year-old Anderson Dam might collapse if a "maximum credible earthquake" of 7.2 magnitude on the Calaveras fault struck within 1.25 miles of the dam. That quake has a less than 1 percent chance of happening. But if by bad luck it did, the sand and gravel in the foundation of the dam would liquefy, causing the structure to fail. READ MORE

Santa Clara Valley Water District Press Release

Santa Clara Valley Water District Report

Update: Soft-Story Risk in South Bay Aparttments

Eight years after a survey counted 2,630 earthquake-vulnerable "soft story" apartments in Santa Clara County, little progress has been made in publicly identifying, inspecting and fixing these buildings. READ MORE

Updated Hayward Fault Scenario

You are cordially invited to join the Northern California Chapter of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute at our next meeting where the newly updated Hayward Fault Scenario will be released. We are confident that you will enjoy this meeting, given your interest in reducing seismic risk in the Bay Area.

The evening's presentation will share expected consequences of an anticipated magnitude 7 Hayward fault earthquake, and discuss how impacts have changed since the original Hayward fault scenario study was released in 1996.

For more information, please visit our website ...

Meeting Details:
Date: Wednesday September 15, 2010,
Time: 5:30pm to 7:30pm, at the
Location: ABAG Auditorium, located at 101 8th Street, Oakland, CA 94607
Public Transportation: Lake Merritt BART Station (directly across the street)

Please RSVP to chapterinfo@eerinc.org

California Earthquake Preparedness Survey

The California Earthquake Preparedness Survey (CEPS) was conducted by the UCLA School of Public Health and Survey Research Center for the State of California. The objective was to provide baseline data describing how prepared California households are for earthquakes and where they get their information about preparedness and mitigation.

Telephone interviews were conducted with a representative sample of 2,081 households in California between June 26 and December 18, 2008. The sample was stratified into: the ten northern California counties at greatest risk of earthquakes, the six southern California counties at greatest risk, and the remaining 42 lower-risk counties. MORE INFO...

California's water supply vulnerable to quakes, floods

The California Department of Water Resources has just released a study that concludes there is a 40 percent chance that a major earthquake will flood 27 delta islands between now and 2030, costing billions in repairs and knocking out the water source for 25 million Californians for more than a year.

Without intervention, it is estimated that about 140 levees of California's could fail in the next century due to storms or rising seas. An earthquake of magnitude 6.7 or greater could result in fatalities, flooding of islands and costs of $15 billion. In California levees have failed about 160 times in the past 109 years. READ MORE

California Department of Water Resources: Delta Risk Management Strategy - Final Phase 1 Report

Next Meeting...
Thursday / Mar 19, 2009 / 1pm - 3pm
The Oakland Scottish Rite Center
1547 Lakeside Drive / Oakland, CA 94612-4520
MORE INFO

Soil Liquefaction During Earthquakes Technical Seminar

Register now for a day-long seminar to be given in San Francisco on March 17th by I. M. Idriss and R. W. Boulanger, authors of the recently published EERI monograph sent to all members in 2008, Soil Liquefaction During Earthquakes. Participants earn 0.7 Continuing Education Units. MORE

Register on-line for class

San Francisco is not prepared for next quake ...

A report by the San Francisco Planning & Urban Research Association (SPUR) concludes San Francisco's buildings and infrastructure are fundamentally unprepared to handle the next big earthquake. READ MORE

SPUR Report

Bay Area Earthquake Liquefaction Maps

USGS has released updated earthquake liquefaction maps the the San Francisco Bay Area. MORE

The new USGS maps also contribute to the California Geological Survey’s Seismic Hazard Zone maps.

Study shows massive earthquake could cause Anderson Dam to fail

A study performed for the Santa Clara County Water district indicates that the the largest dam in Santa Clara County could collapse in a major earthquake. DOWNLOAD STUDY

A 6.6 magnitude quake centered directly at Anderson Reservoir near Morgan Hill, or a 7.2 quake centered one mile away, could cause the reservoir's 240-foot-high earthen dam to fail.

In the worst case, a complete failure of Anderson Dam could send a wall of water 35 feet high into downtown Morgan Hill within 14 minutes, and eight feet deep into San Jose within three hours. READ MORE

San Simeon Earthquake Anniversary - 5 Years

The 6.6-magnitude San Simeon Earthquake shook for less than a minute, but the reverberations have rocked San Luis Obispo County life and its economy in the five years since. READ MORE

San Francisco. 'soft-story' buildings at risk in quake

An on-going seismic study concludes that without a costly seismic retrofit, 80 percent of San Francisco's weakest wood-frame buildings are expected to collapse or to suffer damage beyond repair in the large earthquake scientists say is likely to occur in the region within decades. READ MORE

This is not an issue unique to San Francisco or northern California. The risks associated with "soft-story" construction were evident following both the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge earthquakes. MORE

Status Report -Long-Term Disaster Recovery Planning by Local Governments in the San Francisco Bay Area

The Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) as part of their Regional Long-Term Disaster Recovery Initiative recently released the "Status Report - Long-Term Disaster Recovery Planning by Local Governments in the San Francisco Bay Area." Long-term recovery refers to the repair and rebuilding process that government departments, such as planning, finance, housing, public works/building, redevelopment, and emergency management, will need to carry out to start restoring their community after an earthquake or other catastrophic disaster. In advance before any disaster, jurisdictions need to be prepared to finance recovery, expedite long-term housing recovery, support recovery of downtown businesses and the local economy, and ensure that their own facilities and services recover smoothly.

The Survey's summary report documents the areas of recovery planning in which local governments are making significant progress, have mixed levels of progress, and where they need to make improvements. The report examines the collective sum of information and analyzes the status of recovery efforts throughout the Bay Area as a whole, rather than focusing exclusively on what individual jurisdictions have done. The reasoning is that a catastrophic disaster is not localized, but affects the whole region.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
REPORT

Next big quake expected to cause billions in damage to Bay Area

When the Hayward Fault — which snakes from north San Jose to San Pablo — erupts, damage throughout the Bay Area could approach $200 billion. That's more than the combined economic losses from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, 1992's Hurricane Andrew and 2005's Hurricane Katrina, according to geophysicist Mary Lou Zoback of Risk Management Solutions, at a presentation at the recent CONFERENCE ON EARTHQUAKE HAZARDS IN THE EASTERN SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA. This includes losses due to shaking, fire and ruptures of roads, dams and pipelines. READ MORE

CISN Display V1.0

The California Integrated Seismic Network (CISN) has recently released CISN Display V1.0 as a tool for integrating earthquake information in emergency response. CISN Display is an integrated Web enabled earthquake notification system, designed for emergency management 24/7 operations centers. The application provides users with maps of real-time seismicity, and automatically provides access to Web-related earthquake products such as ShakeMaps. CISN Display also offers an open source GIS mapping tool that allows users to plot freely available layers of public highways, roads and bridges, as well as private layers of organizational-specific infrastructure and facilities information.

CISN Display is designed to provide earthquake information for emergency response. First-responders, organizations with critical lifelines and infrastructure, and emergency responders are invited to register for an account. MORE INFO

Retrofit plan to ride out quake at Cal stadium

Seismic engineers say they have solved one of the world's great retrofit puzzles: how to keep UC Berkeley's Memorial Stadium from crumbling into a pile of concrete rubble during a major earthquake. To read more, click here...

Study Shows Odds High For Big California Quake

The latest Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast (UCERF) study concludes that the odds are high for a big California quake.

USGS Press Release
Full Report
Supplemental Information

1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance General Meeting

Mark your calendars ...

1868 Hayward Earthquake Alliance General Meeting

Meeting focus: Mitigation and Preparation: Status of Bay Area Infrastructure - Water, Power, Transportation

Tuesday / September 30, 2008 / 12pm
ABAG Main Auditorium
101 Eagth Street
Oakland, CA 94607
Use the Lake Merritt BART station

Call-in Number: 650-329-5199 / Meeting code: 1868

http://1868alliance.org/