The 1906 Earthquake Impacts on the San Francisco and Santa Clara Water Systems—What we Learned, and What we are doing about It

Abstract

This paper describes what happened to San Francisco's water transmission and the city of Santa Clara's water distribution systems in the 1906 and the 1989 earthquakes. These two earthquakes showed that many of our existing transmission and distribution pipelines are susceptible to damage, and some of our older water treatment plants, tanks, and pump stations need to be upgraded. Accordingly, seismic upgrade programs are being undertaken to reduce the vulnerability of the regional water transmission and distribution systems. In developing a cost effective seismic upgrade program, both the transmission system operator (San Francisco Public Utilities Commission) (SFPUC) and distribution system operator (Santa Clara) consider what the weaknesses are of both systems, so that the maximum amount of seismic upgrade can be achieved at the lowest overall cost.