Gilroy – Red bricks and cement would litter downtown, apartments would collapse on top of cars, and homes along Uvas Creek would crack and sink as though on quicksand if the big one ever hit Gilroy.
The centennial of the April 18, 1906 earthquake that leveled San Francisco and wreaked havoc in cities across the Bay Area has state residents reflecting on the infamous temblor’s effects, and how people might fare in a similar quake today.
Gilroy is situated between three major fault lines – the Calaveras to the east, and the San Andreas and Sargent to the west. Though spared the fate of cities directly above the faults, Gilroy has seen its share of damage over the years.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake forced major repairs to Old City Hall and caused thousands of dollars in damage to homes by Uvas Creek, where the 7.1 quake transformed the sandy soils around its banks into a vibrating quicksand.
“Generally speaking, anywhere around the rivers or creeks tend to be more soft soils,” explained Wendie Rooney, the city’s community development director and a lead formulator of the city’s disaster mitigation plan. “When you’re on a firmer surface, you’re going to have less shaking.”
She said areas such as Eagle Ridge, a gated community constructed in the late ’90s, are “more prone to shaking. However, they are also the areas with the most modern construction techniques. In Eagle Ridge, they have over a foot of concrete foundation with re-bar.”
Homes east of Uvas Creek tend to be older and are less earthquake-proof.
Olga Betancourt learned that lesson the hard way after a temblor last year left a gaping crack in the living room wall of her Crawford Drive home. She has food stores built up in case of a big quake but hasn’t taken other measures to protect her home, such as bolting bookshelves to the walls or placing latches on cabinets.
“We’ve taken some precautions, but not to the extreme where we’ve bolted things down,” said Betancourt, who shares the home with her husband and son. She’s lived in the house for five years and worries about a quake on the order of the 1906 temblor.
That quake, which measured 7.9 on the Richter scale and lasted nearly two minutes by some accounts, damaged a number of unreinforced masonry buildings in the city’s downtown. Roughly 30 red brick buildings, commonly known as URMs, still stand in Gilroy, some of them dating to before the time of the ’06 quake.
“Downtown obviously is going to be a big concern,” Rooney said, also adding “soft-story apartments” with tuck-under parking to the list of problem areas.
“Those were the areas that collapsed during the (1994) Northridge earthquake in southern California,” she said.
If an earthquake like the one that devastated San Francisco 100 years ago struck today, a new study estimates that the toll would be staggering: tens of thousands of buildings damaged, hundreds of people dead and hundreds of thousands left without homes.
The study, “When the Big One Strikes Again,” was released Monday and was prepared for what’s being billed as the biggest earthquake conference ever.
The report calculated that a repeat of that temblor would cause 1,800 to 3,400 deaths, damage more than 90,000 buildings, displace as many as 250,000 households and result in $150 billion in damage.
The report found that a 7.9-magnitude quake would cause up to $34 billion in building-related losses in San Francisco, $28 billion in Santa Clara County, $26 billion in San Mateo County and $15 billion in Alameda County.
Most of the deaths would result from the collapse of old buildings made with unreinforced masonry or concrete, or structures not tied to their foundations, according to the report
The good news for Gilroy residents is that the city has done a considerable amount of planning for such an event.
Last April, officials unveiled a disaster mitigation plan, a document that measures the city’s ability to cope with natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods and landslides. It fits into a wider regional strategy coordinated by the Association of Bay Area Governments.
“Our Emergency Operations Center is set up to manage a disaster like this,” Rooney said. She warned, however, that “if we have a 7.9 in the area, no matter how good we are, we’re not going to get to everyone in time. People should be stock-piling food, energy sources, and have a communication plan with their family and neighborhood.”
Veronica Gil, a resident of Armand Court, has taken some earthquake precautions. She bolted the bookshelves to her wall to prevent them from falling on the children she cares for at her home daycare business, and she has plans to connect kids with their parents in nearby Christmas Hill Park in the event of an earthquake. Remaining calm in a disaster is hard, but as important as any precaution, Gil said. Born and raised in Gilroy, she has lived through multiple earthquakes, though she’s far from used to them.
“I’m always thinking about it,” she said. “It’s always in the back of my mind.”
Associated Press contributed to this story.
