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Comment by crorella | Hacker News Reader

After checking the build quality of the places around here (SFO bay area) I'm getting concerned too.

Make sure to have a backpack with some essential items there. Have some gallons of water and make sure to have a plan in the eventuality of an accident, for example, make sure to close the gas main valve. Sync with your family on where to gather if they are at work/school, etc.

I was there for the 9.1 @ Chile in 2010 and all of this was super helpful, within 10 minutes my whole family was gathered in our parents house and we were already saving water in our bathtub and pans (which was super handy, because we had no water for about 3 weeks)

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How ere you able to save water? Was there water pressure for a short period of time?

I always imagine water pressure being lost right away, so if you didn’t have water already stored you’d be SOL

It was not lost right away, it was working for several hours, around 12, but with a very low pressure. Since this happened on February (summer time) we were lucky one of our neighbors had a pool full of water we used for the toilet :)

Not OP, but the distribution system of water is almost entirely fed by gravity from a water tower. Losing water pressure usually means loss of the power to the pumps supplying the water towers, not breaks in the pipelines themselves. There's enough water stored in the water towers to satisfy usually a few hours of demand, and the water in the pipes might satisfy a few hours more if you live at a low enough elevation.

One of the issues in an earthquake is potential damage to the major distribution pipes. From “source” to “buffer” (local reservoirs used to maintain pressure) and the extent to which things in the network of pipes can be rerouted depends a lot on how it was built. In heavily built up areas there’s often “secondary buffers” like storage on the roofs of buildings in New York City.

Pressure in the “customer end” of the water supply network will still be available for a little while (minutes to hours) in the event of damage but damage will take time to repair and the impact of the damages ongoing effect and the time to repair make one of the most basic survival tips for the average person not otherwise maintaining survival supplies: “fill the bathtub and anything else you’ve got”. You might have 15 minutes before the broken pipe washes away enough dirt that pressure drops enough to stop the flow from your tap.

> After checking the build quality of the places around here (SFO bay area) I'm getting concerned too.

Infrastructure or buildings? Wood-frame buildings without a soft story are pretty safe, at least in terms of not killing you.

Buildings mostly, I guess they will move harmonically with the ripples as wood is pretty flexible but I still freak out thinking they could fall over my head lol

Check this out: https://resiliencymaps.org/

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