>> we broke ground in december of last year. we broke ground the day after sandy hook connecticut and had a moment of silence here. it's really great to see the silence that we experienced then and we've experienced over the years in this playground is now filled with these voices. >> 321, okay. [ applause ] >> the park was kind of bleak. it was scary and over grown.

we started to help maclaren park when we found there wasn't any money in the bond for this park maclaren. we spent time for funding. it was expensive to raise money for this and there were a lot of delays. a lot of it was just the mural, the sprinklers and we didn't have any grass. it was that bad. we worked on sprinkler heads and grass and we fixed everything. we worked hard collecting everything. we had about 400 group members. every a little bit helped and now the park is busy all week. there is people with kids using the park and using strollers and now it's safer by utilizing it. >> maclaren park being the

largest second park one of the best kept secrets. what's exciting about this activation in particular is that it's the first of many. it's also representation of our city coming together but not only on the bureaucratic side of things. but also our neighbors, neighbors helped this happen. we are thrilled that today we are seeing the fruition of all that work in this city's open space. >> when we got involved with this park there was a broken swing set and half of -- for me, one thing i really like to point out to other groups is that when you are competing for funding in a hole on the ground, you need to articulate what you need for your park. i always point as this sight as a model for other communities. >> i hope we continue to work

on the other empty pits that are here. there are still a lot of areas that need help at maclaren park. we hope grants and money will be available to continue to improve this park to make it shine. it's a really hidden jewel. a lot of people don't know it's here. >> hi, i'm lawrence corn field. welcome to building san francisco. we have a special series, stay safe. we're looking at earthquake issues. and today we're going to be talking with a residential building owner about what residential building owners and tenants can and should do before earthquakes and after earthquakes.

♪ ♪ >> we're here at this wonderful spur exhibit on mission street in san francisco and i have with me today my good friend george. thanks for joining me, george. and george has for a long time owned residential property here in san francisco. and we want to talk about apartment buildings and what the owner's responsibilities might be and what they expect their tenants to do. and let's start by talking a little bit about what owners can do before an earthquake and then maybe after an earthquake. >> well, the first thing, lawrence, would be to get together with your tenants and see if they have earthquake insurance or any renters insurance in place because that's going to be key to protecting them in the event of a quake. >> and renters insurance, there

are two kinds of insurance. renters insurance coffers damage to goods and content and so forth. earthquake insurance is a separate policy you get after you get renters insurance through the california earthquake authority, very inexpensive. and it helps owners and it helps tenants because it gives relocation costs and it pays their rent. this is a huge impact on building owners. >> it's huge, it really is. you know, a lot of owners don't realize that, you know, when there is an earthquake, their money flow is going to stop. how are they going to pay their mortgages, how are they going to pay their other bills, how are they going to live? >> what else can property owners do in residential rental housing before an earthquake? >> well, the first thing you want to do is get your property assessed. find out what the geology is at your site. get an expert in to look at structural and nonstructural losses. the structural losses, a lot of times, aren't going to be that bad if you prepare. an ounce of prevention is worth

a pound of cure. get in there and get your property assessed and figure it out. >> so, what is a nonstructural issue that might cause losses? >> well, you know, pipes, for instance. pipes will whip around during an earthquake. and if they're anchored in more numerous locations, that whipping won't cause a breakage that will cause a flood. >> i've heard water damage is a major, major problem after earthquakes actually. >> it is. that's one of the big things. a lot of things falling over, ceilings collapsing. but all of this can be prevented by an expert coming in and assessing where those problem areas and often the fixes are really, really cheap. >> who do you call when you want to have that kind of assessment or evaluation done? >> the structural engineering community is great. we have the structural engineers association of northern california right here in san francisco. they're a wealth of information and resources. >> what kinds of things might

you encourage tenants to do besides simply get tenants renters insurance and earthquake insurance, what else do you think tenants should do? >> i think it's really important to know if they happen to be in the building where is the safest place for them to go when the shaking starts. if they're out of the building, whats' their continuity plan for connecting with family? they should give their emergency contact information to their resident manager so that the resident manager knows how to get in touch. and have emergency supplies on hand. the tenants should be responsible to have their extra water and flashlights and bandages and know how to use a toilet when there's no sewage and water flows down. and the owners of the building should be proactive in that regard as well. >> so, george, thank you so much for joining us. that was really great. and thanks to spur for hosting us here in this wonderful exhibit. and thank you for joining us

good afternoon, everyone, my name is naomi kelly and i'm the city add straight to be. thank you for joining us here at the marine memorial. i'm pleased to share the summary of recommendations from the tall building's safety strategy. this was a report that was commissioned by our late mayor edwin lee. who asked myself and the director of the department of the emergency management to work with outside consultants to help us preview our existing tall buildings in san francisco. copies of the summary and the recommendations and summaries are available here and will be postponed online at one san

francisco.org/resilience/sf. it's a pioneering effort by the city of san francisco is the first of its kind in this nation. and it represents 14 months of city wide collaboration with the san francisco tall building stock. having this information available is a huge step forward and our ability to think collectively and proactively as a city about the seismic safety and the resilience of our tall buildings in the implications of their surround be neighborhoods. here today, we have with -- we just came from a tall building panel discussion and discuss our strategies with us today is professor greg deerloin and a member of the applied technology council. he is an author of the study many of we also have mary ellen carole the director of the department of emergency management and angus carty and

oohed like to bring up professor to discuss a little bit about the recommendations in this report. >> thank you. i've been working on a team with the applied technology council with the team of other academics and technical engineers to develop this. there's 16 recommendations in our plan. i won't a at the present time to go through all of them. a few of the high points, first to get a handle on the issues with tall buildings, we initiated developing a data base of how many tall buildings are there in san francisco. what are their occupancy and about what types of materials were they built out of. depending on the age and materials of the buildings, we learned things through subsequent earthquakes. with concrete structure and in 1994 north ridge earthquake and l.a. we learned about fracture issues

with frames. in the existing building inventory of tall buildings there's many of those tall steel moment frame buildings in the city. so from that, we developed recommendations and some of these are related to what we can do better on new buildings and there's some related to putting more pre and there are looking at tall buildings and recognizing current building codes just to protect life safety of a building. they don't address recovery. thinking that tall buildings, especially those that are residential, are housing increasing number of people on the city and offices. on tall buildings, who we think of upping the seismic design requirements to address the issues of recovery to reduce the risk of damage and down time of the buildings. we also have a number of issues that are related to what you can do before an earthquake to address the existing building stock. one of these is looking back at the types of buildings that

these welded steel moment frames that were damaged in the north ridge earthquake, the earthquake occurred years before that here in san francisco and there's never been a systematic reassessment of those buildings. some of the connection fracture was not obvious. there's a start to look at the existing problem to go back and recommending to. there are things on existing get a better handle on older buildings that may have deficiencies that are the trigger the building code can use to. when major buildings change hands, that might be a time to do an assessment of it and there's a major new tenant lease or something like that. there some of the recommendations for the new

buildings and building eveners and commercial owners have insurance or other financial capital where when there's damage they'll be prepared to repair their buildings for their own ache and collectively for the community and liking and recognizing the stressors after earthquakes and the set of recommendations is looking at what we can do and anticipating inspections after the earthquake. and of course, california the city of san francisco emphasized a lot doing post earthquake buildings inspections, training people and getting volunteered lined up and so fourth but are there issues to tall buildings or systems that can be more proactive. san francisco has pioneered a system program building occupancy program that is voluntary that any building

owners can lineup ahead of time and do studies and inspect and recover and to exercise that board program and run a field exercise and think about if it should be required or some version of it be pride for some, tall buildings or gone back to existing ones. there's a number of sort of recommendations on being better prepared to following an earthquake and to inspect tall buildings and if there's damage to tall building and sometimes that can trigger larger assessment and retro fits and to again, reassess whether those triggers in the building code and how they apply to the inventory of tall buildings that exist there now and also the steel frames, concrete building and they're specialized guidelines that have been developed over the years to inspect those to make sure that they're part of the program here. finally, our last set of recommendations is to continue to enhance this data base of tall buildings with more buildings and with also getting

more information, different types of information on the buildings and in fact, then to use that to look at a plan for dense parts of districts three and six with low rise and just to kind of go through and anticipate what some of the issues might be better prepared for those issues. that's a snapshot of those 16 recommendations. >> are there any questions? we'll open up for q and a. >> yes. >> so, there were 156 tall buildings, why now? and why not before now? >> well, i'll just say this, san francisco has had one of the most -- some of the most stringent building codes in the country. there's been and we always are

looking at how do we improve those codes? just saying that in what was different now is that we're looking at existing buildings. we're always moving forward in improving our code for new buildings. now we're going to go back and look at existing buildings and see what can we do to go back and make those more resilient. not just making sure that we can get out after a major disaster. but now that more and more people in this area, what can we do to make sure everyone stays in place. >> two years ago, when there was a huge attention to tall buildings. as a result, we want to make sure there's trust in government. the trust in our regulators and we want to make sure we do it in a transparent and un bias way and that's why we asked the -- that's why mayor lee asked us to reach out to some of the academics and engineers who weren't conflicted and worked on some of these tall buildings in

the downtown san francisco area. they helped us with our review of our existing building codes. and see what we can do to even go above and beyond what we already do. and again, just look at the resilience. we would like to stay in san francisco when the next one, the next big one hits or anything else and so we want to make sure that we're able to stay and live here in san francisco. and be a safe place for our residents and tourists and visitors. >> thank you for the question. also, i'm one of the authors of the study.

i have a team. so, this type of fractures that occurred in the 1994 north ridge earthquake, occurred in a time of welded steel program popular for buildings of various rights uheights. from the 1970s up to the northridge earthquake. that was the type of construction used throughout, especially the western u.s. it would effect los angeles, seattle, oakland. it's not unique to san francisco. that would have occurred in all of these cities. i think this is kind of one of the first efforts i think to really look back and start to address and be proactive about starting to look more carefully at assessing those buildings. i would emphasize, you hear in the news and l.a. has an ordinance on the book for non ductal concrete buildings the level of risk in those is much, much higher than what we expect

in the welded steel moment frames. it's reasonable that it wasn't on the top of the list but now, because of the large inventory of them here to be proactive looking at them is why now? >> is there a priority? how do you prioritize it? there were 15 major recommendations. what are the priorities with the top? are you going to enact them all at once? >> let me turn it back to naomi. in our report that you have there, we listed the end, out of those 16 recommendations, short, medium and long-term. we didn't feel we could prioritize them. they're all important. the short, medium and long-term, we prioritized in terms of which were low-hanging fluid that you. the others would be long-term. we provided that input to the

city. in terms of priorities, my sense is that needs to be a continuing discussion amongst agencies. >> sure, we can. but i have another question over here. >> what about buildings going down -- >> we did look at that. that was a question we got. so a few things. first, in the building inventory, we tried to identify of the existing 156 buildings what foundation types they have and we have to look at the numbers but out of that 156, there's three or four that have the drilled shafts that go to bedrock. we point out in our reports, one of our recommendations is to for

a group to put together an administrative bulletin or information sheet to take the best practice in geo technical engineering and the foundation design is less pre descriptive in the building code. it's to try to get the best practice from the geo technical engineering community and others to kind of agree on that and for the city to have kind of a incorporate that they're building code or to have that as an administrative bulletin. part of that answer you would get from every geo technical foundation engineer is whether or not a foundation goes to bedrock is building-specific. it's very site specific. so while in the popular press, it might say every building should do that there's no reason to do that. it would be a number one a waste of resources to do that every case and there's also even in more environmental impacts when you are going down to those

depths. >> don. most of the -- out of those 156, except for three or four, some of them are on shallow foundations, map foundations that might be on rock or shallow stand layers and some of them are on pile foundations with the mat. >> are they the most vulnerable? >> going through the site exploration, i mean, geo technical engineers and this is not around san francisco and around the world. this is something geo technical engineers focus on. what's the best foundation type. there's important cost implications in performances so the community at large does a good job on it. what our recommendation does is helps san francisco and the building department here have their own set of a little bit more pre descriptive or requirements on good perhaps that will building departments look at that.

>> yeah. well, the current building code requirements, these are two in san francisco and across the u.s., it's based on a national standard. it says that under an expected earthquake, which is sort of the one we assessed in the studies we did, that buildings can drift two percent. that means that under this very large earthquake, if you had a story height that was 100 inches, two inches. and under more severe quakes it's more. that's a level where it damages the non structural components. interior partisan walls. curtain walls. they are designed to accommodate that drift and not lose the facade but drop it off. it could cause leakage problems. one of our recommendations is to

revisit that and to think about tightening it up. part of why we do that for tall buildings too, because of a variety of design constraints we did a survey of many of the tall building that's have been until the in san francisco, los angeles, seattle and other cities, and many of the buildings don't approach or don't typically push that maximum limit of that 2%. some of them are close to one or one and a half percent. we're asking look at that and if that could improve the recovery of these buildings to think about imposing that, here in san francisco, it's along the lines of these initiatives to have functional recovery or recovery based or occupancy and it's going in that direction. not yet. when we bantered around, it might be a number of one or one and a half percent instead of the two. but that is something i think, our recommendation is really in san francisco it has a long history of this is to bring

together groups of engineers, structure engineers to really talk about that and sort through the issues and come up with a consensus on what a good number it would be. >> all new buildings are safe. all existing buildings are. all the recommendations are important. the example of puerto rico, you know, we've been reading about in the news media how the biggest loss of life in puerto rico from the hurricane was not during the hurricane but it was the slow recovery for the year after it. part of our recommendations here so to make sure the areas of california can recover better so people get emergency care and all those things. there's not a direct relationship between any of these and say lives.

>> i think from our perspective, and the recommendations that apply to emergency management and response, are around accelerating our ability and resources to do assessments. so we can determine the extent of damage. again, we expect that, as the professor states, we don't expect to have complete failure of these buildings. our bigger concern, probably is the longer term recovery and when we can get people back in the residentses and businesses back up so we're looking at that from that perspective. it will take a lot of resources to get engineers to do the type of assessments we need. and then we're looking at --

we've committed to putting together a financial, a specific financial district response plan because there's some, with all these buildings there's a unique environment and particular challenges that will have as far as that goes. so working with building owners and businesses residential and neighborhoods in these areas to look at longer term recovery and immediate response. >> i really wouldn't add anymore to that many of this is the type of thing that keeps us awake at night. how we can get better at this. the program we have in place we're evolved and trying to improve that. we have a program we're trying to influence new building owners to participate. it will help us and the recovery. getting people back into their buildings quicker and sooner. this is the thing we're always evolving and trying to improve

on. >> that was a great question. anybody else want to answer? [laughter] >> in terms of how it was founded, it's an interesting story. the day after the north ridge earthquake, you didn't read about this in the headlines and the fact it was different ways. it was one building i know that had residual draft. other ended on broading to inspect those in a couple of those and they looked into the connection and spotted some of these fractures and there was one building under construction where the connections were exposed so that is how it was found. and then that -- you know, it

became, it was so obvious in the few that was found, if you look at newspaper articles a time a month or two after the earthquake they said and if we want a year later it was 100 buildings after they had a proactive inspection program. that's how it was found. it was due to a combination of design and detailing practices and how they connection details that were used and the weld medals and the welding processes and since that time, the steel industry has stepped up and have much more stringent requirements on those types of systems and in terms of of what can be done, some of these building have been retro fit and meaning that that would involve going in and removing and replacing the weld medal. it's augmenting with braces or viscuk dampers. i think one of the questions is like how do you start that process if you have a building that is vintage, there's actually inspection protocols and one of our recommendation

snow squalls to bring those forward into make more known in the city. they are statistical based. if you have a building of that vintage you open up and look at connections and if you see damage, look at a few more. at some point, if you don't see damage, you are reasoning you don't have that problem. >> well, in our data base and we focus on buildings and the number is about 60 or 70. i have been asked that question. now there's many buildings, that's 240 feet. there's many other steel frame buildings below that. one of our recommendations, for the city to require an inspection of steel frame buildings that existed in 1989, would trigger that, which could be -- how that's crafted whether it's all buildings or the taller buildings is remains to be seen. i don't know the number for all the steel buildings in the city. >> all right.

well, i do know that the city, along with the department of building inspection, the department of emergency management, my office and our board of supervisors and mayor look forward to this report and start implementing the recommendations. thank you very much for being here today.