SAN FRANCISCO AT RISK: Highrise buildings settle and tilt as fears rise
San Francisco’s Salesforce Tower, the tallest office building in the West, rises 1,070 feet on the edge of San Francisco Bay, surrounded by a big cluster of other downtown highrises. Nearby, Millennium Tower rises 645 feet on the same soft soil and sand, but the building’s recent sinking and tilting have sent alarms through the city and beyond: experts now warn that building codes may not adequately protect the city from tectonic risk.
In 2016 -- a century after an infamous earthquake and fire destroyed much of the city -- the Millennium Tower’s developer publicly revealed what city officials already knew: recent measurements show that the building, built in 2009, has sunk a foot and a half and is leaning 14 inches toward neighboring high rises. It is across the street from Salesforce Tower and right next to a transit hub for buses, trains and eventually high speed rail that is being touted as the Grand Central of the West.
The photos above reveal the broad contours of this problem: will the City by the Bay survive the next Big One?
Source: The New York Times (17 April 2018)