On June 29th the Burlingame Neighborhood Network (BNN) sponsored a webinar about the omnipresent threat of an earthquake here in B'game. Tom Brocher, former Director of the Earthquake Science Center at USGS was the presenter and made many key points that serve as a reminder to Be Prepared. You can find the whole pitch on the Burlingamenetwork.org website titled "It Can Happen Here". I'll just give a couple of teasers:
Historically, we had the '06 quake of 7.8 that lasted 45 seconds, then Loma Prieta in '89 at 6.9 (which was only 10% of the '06–remember it's a logarithmic scale) and '14 at 6.0 centered in Napa. Over the next 30 years we have a 22% chance of a big one on the San Andreas fault.
When, not if, we have a big one it could take at least 3 days for any sort of real help to arrive given roadbeds may subside differentially, landslides will happen on steeper slopes and over the following 3 to 4 days we could see many additional pipes breaking (i.e. gas, water and sewer) as movement settles.
There were only about 40 people on the webcast, so please go watch the video.


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