SPA’s Charles Scawthorn spoke on November 30, 2020 to the Port of San Francisco. More than 60 people attended. He provided an overview of San Francisco’s risk from fire following earthquake with a focus on the port and the role it could play in reducing this risk. The port plays a crucial role in San Francisco’s economy. Fire risk for the port is very significant. For most of its history, the port has sustained a major pier fire about once a decade. Most recently, a five-alarm fire at Pier 45 destroyed the crab fishing fleet’s fishing gear, crippling this year’s catch. Scawthorn suggested two key ways the port could help to lower fire following earthquake risk: (1) As part of the port’s multi-billion dollar seawall renovation, it could include a utilidor (utility corridor), which could provide a low-impact reliable utility service for waterfront development, including reliable fire protection; and (2) Develop a distributed series of solar-powered fire protection pumps. The pumps could serve port facility sprinklers (surprisingly, a significant portion of the port’s facilities are not sprinkled) and contribute significantly to the city’s emergency firefighting water supply. Find the full presentation here.
Category: In The News
An earthquake near Vancouver, British Columbia, could ignite hundreds of fires and cause $10 billion (Canadian dollars) of property damage. This amount is over and above shaking damage. So finds our Dr. Charles Scawthorn in a new study sponsored and published by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR). (Links here for video, executive summary, and full report.)
These earthquake are inevitable. Scawthorn considered five earthquakes. One was an expected magnitude-9 earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. That earthquake and several closer, smaller ones, are inevitable. Most of the buildings shown here will exist and be full of people when, not if, these earthquakes occur. Insurers will bear most of the property losses. If the risk is not reduced before then, a leading global reinsurer thinks the losses would bankrupt some insurers. The insurance bankruptcies could lead to financial contagion.
How to reduce the risk. The earthquakes are inevitable. The losses and bankruptcies are not. SPA and ICLR are helping firefighters, City of Vancouver officials, provincial officials, engineers, and others understand three ways to reduce the damage and suffering. They are:
- Seismic gas shutoff valves. Require that all gas meters have seismic gas shutoff valves.
- Portable water supply systems. Integrate portable water supply systems in every fire department.
- Secondary water supply. Add tanks with a 30-minute supply of firefighting water to all high-rise buildings.
Learn more. Dr. Scawthorn presented his results to an audience of insurers, firefighters, and emergency managers on November 13, 2020. Watch the video here. The Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction sponsored and published Scawthorn’s analysis. Read a brief (4-page) executive summary of the report here or here, or find the full report here or here. For more information, feel free to reach out to us.
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American Water Works Association
Charles Scawthorn on June 13-14, 2018 made two presentations at the AWWA Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, on the topic of the PIPE algorithm (Pipe Importance and Priority Evaluation), a new method that solves for the first time the question of how to identify which pipe has the highest benefit if mitigated. The two papers are available here and here.
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Haywired Report Release
Keith Porter represented the Engineering team at the April 18 release of the USGS-sponsored major report The HayWired earthquake scenario—Engineering implications which describes a hypothetical yet scientifically realistic earthquake sequence scenario in order to better understand hazards for the San Francisco Bay region during and after a magnitude-7 earthquake (mainshock) on the Hayward Fault and its aftershocks. Findings, many due to work by Porter, include: (1) 800 deaths and 16,000 nonfatal injuries result from shaking alone, plus property and direct business interruption losses of more than $82 billion from shaking, liquefaction, and landslides; (2) the building code is designed to protect lives, but even if all buildings in the region complied with current building codes, 0.4 percent could collapse, 5 percent could be unsafe to occupy, and 19 percent could have restricted use; (3) people expect, prefer, and would be willing to pay for greater resilience of buildings; (4) more than 22,000 people could require extrication from stalled elevators, and more than 2,400 people could require rescue from collapsed buildings; (5) the average east-bay resident could lose water service for 6 weeks, some for as long as 6 months; (6) older steel-frame high-rise office buildings and new reinforced-concrete residential buildings in downtown San Francisco and Oakland could be unusable for as long as 10 months; (7) combining earthquake early warning (ShakeAlert) with “drop, cover, and hold on” actions could prevent as many as 1,500 nonfatal injuries out of 18,000 total estimated nonfatal injuries from shaking and liquefaction hazards. (8) SPA’s Charles Scawthorn was author of Chapter P of the report, which focused on fire following earthquake, finding about 450 large fires could result in a loss of residential and commercial building floor area equivalent to more than 52,000 single-family homes and cause property (building and content) losses approaching $30 billion. Volume 1 of the report, on Earthquake Hazards, was released in 2017, and Volume 3 will be released later this year.
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Water System Seismic Conference
Charles Scawthorn presented a paper at the 10th Water System Seismic Conference in Tainan City, Taiwan, October 2017, sponsored by the Taiwan, Japan and American Water Works Associations, on the topic of ” Determining Water Distribution System Pipe Replacement Given Random Defects – Case Study of San Francisco’s Auxiliary Water Supply System “.
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ASCE Pipelines 2017
Charles Scawthorn is co-author of a paper, ‘Water Distribution System Pipe Replacement Given Random Defects – Case Study of San Francisco’s Auxiliary Water Supply System‘, for the 2017 Pipelines Conference in Phoenix, Arizona in August 2017.
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Natural Hazards Workshops
Keith Porter and Charles Scawthorn both participated in sessions at the Workshop, convened each July by Natural Hazards Center of the University of Colorado. Porter will be moderating a session on the Mitigation Saves project (click here ) and Scawthorn will be moderating a session on the Global Alliance for Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI, click here ).
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Geller Fest
Charles Scawthorn gave a presentation at the May 2017 retirement party for Prof. Robert Geller of the University of Tokyo, speaking on “An engineer looks at M-S-G (2017)’s criticisms of PSHA”
Charles Scawthorn attended the 3rd Global Summit of the Global Alliance for Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI) in Kyoto in May. He serves on the GADRI Board, and chaired a session during the Summit.
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Haywired
Keith Porter and Charles Scawthorn both participated in the first “All-Team” kick-off meeting for the HayWired scenario on April 24, 2017 at East Bay Municipal Utilities District in Oakland, sponsored by the USGS, Association of Bay Area Governments, Joint Venture Silicon Valley, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center and the State of California Seismic Safety Commission. Porter is lead on the Engineering aspects of the project, and Scawthorn leads the investigation on fire following earthquake.