HLS 501: San Franciscos Natural Disaster Vulnerability Discussion Forum

HLS 501 DISCUSSION FORUM 4
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San Francisco’s Natural Disaster Vulnerability
San Francisco is a city in the state of California. The city is most vulnerable to earthquakes. The most memorable earthquake fatalities occurred in 1906 and 1989, and left almost all erected structures destroyed. San Francisco is mostly vulnerable because of the San Andreas Fault line that is found between the North American and Pacific tectonic plates (Sleep, 2016). The San Andreas Fault runs some 800 miles (approximately 1,300 kilometers) along the Californian coast; it also extends 16 kilometers deep into the earth’s crust (Prescott & Lisowski, 1983). The San Andreas Fault acts like a master fault in a complex network of minor faults. A particular concern for the San Francisco metropolis is the Hayward Fault line which runs through the San Francisco metropolitan area (Wesson, 2003).
The soft and poor soil found in the San Francisco Bay Area is also to blame for the city’s vulnerability to earthquakes. Most of the city is built on poor soils that do not have proper drainage. Additionally, much of San Francisco is now covered by old structures and residential homes that are not up to mo...