Corrections: Certain statements made in the original version of this article (published 5/5/25) were disputed by City officials at San Francisco’s Office of Resilience and Capital Planning. The author published these concerns and addressed them sequentially at the bottom of the article. You’ll spot them everywhere once you know what

Downtown San Francisco is struggling, not because of WFH (work from home), COVID, or even the tech industry’s great abdication. It’s in trouble because it was made to struggle, by force and design. The city’s upper-right quadrant, where it first emerged from the water like some Silurian hexapod, has undergone

Scientists have not yet figured out how to predict earthquakes, as they have not been able to find any differences between minor and major quakes, and the Earth does not have any information about the magnitude of an earthquake before it begins.

It’s been an active year for seismicity in Southern California. Starting with a M4.1 on New Year’s Day, 2024 is the shakiest year in the region’s history. Sunday night’s tremor near Ontario marks the fourteenth quake over magnitude 4.0, breaking the previous annual record of thirteen. There are twelve weeks

Everybody knows the Big One is coming. Depending on where it strikes, it’ll be felt from Oregon to Baja California as well as Nevada and Arizona. Thousands may die. Millions will lose homes. The Big One is a California problem, but it won’t send a tsunami crashing around the Pacific

June was off to a bumpy start in the Bay Area. Three separate tremors happened in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 3rd. The first at 1:40 AM rattled the leeward side of the Berkeley Hills two miles north of Orinda. It was a M2.2, barely perceptible but to

Turkey’s tectonic predicament, responsible for the massive quake that struck Kahramanmaras at 4:17 Monday morning, looks awfully familiar.  The tectonic situation in Turkey nearly mirrors California’s. Similar mechanics are at work here. Our dominant faults shove landmasses past one another in opposing directions, much like theirs. The major difference is,

In June I wrote about the threat to San Francisco posed by Mount Konocti, specifically the Clear Lake Volcanic Field. People seem to have forgotten the volcano, I lamented. Our earthquakes, landslides, and wildfires tend to overshadow California’s windows to the furnace churning beneath our feet. Scientists previously estimated the