That \u201cheavy responsibility\u201d for Carroll shakes up every April 18, the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake<\/a>. This year marks 120 years since the magnitude 7.9 rupture along the San Andreas fault roughly two miles offshore.<\/p>\n The quake and the fires that followed killed 3,000 people, leveled much of San Francisco and left more than half the city\u2019s residents unhoused<\/a>.<\/p>\n The anniversary reminds Carroll that the Bay Area remains extremely vulnerable.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a 72% chance that a magnitude 6.7 earthquake or stronger will occur here in the next three decades, according to a 2014 analysis<\/a> from the United States Geological Survey.<\/p>\n When the earth shakes wildly again, it will do so in a Bay Area transformed from 1906, now home to a population more than 10 times larger.<\/p>\n San Francisco spent more than $20 billion on seismic upgrades over the past several decades. The money went to retrofitting older brick and wood buildings<\/a>, seismic improvements to infrastructure, constructing new, safe hospitals, police and fire stations and strengthening emergency response systems.<\/p>\n But a new policy brief from the Bay Area think tank SPUR<\/a> warns that more than 3,700 pre-1995 concrete buildings \u2014 concentrated downtown \u2014 could face significant risk, and some fire hazards have gone unaddressed.<\/p>\n \u201cThere would definitely be buildings that could collapse,\u201d said Sarah Atkinson, author of the report.<\/p>\n The state has significantly improved its early warning system, too. While phone applications and alerts give people an extra moment to drop and hold on<\/a>, they do little to improve a building\u2019s seismic safety. Some researchers point to evidence that a much larger earthquake than the 1906 quake could shake the Bay Area.<\/p>\n Carroll said most San Franciscans cannot grasp what a colossal rattling will feel like.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to take an earthquake for us to take an earthquake seriously,\u201d Carroll said. \u201cThere will be catastrophic damage. It will interrupt the economy, likely take lives, and we\u2019ll take considerable time to recover.\u201d<\/p>\n Predicting where the next damaging Bay Area earthquake isn\u2019t an exact science. Seismologists know a lot about faults: their general size, stress and history. But scientists can\u2019t tell exactly when or where a rupture will occur.<\/p>\n Beneath the region, there lie many medium- to large-faults, including the San Andreas and Hayward faults, as well as many smaller fissures. Evan Hirakawa, a USGS research geophysicist, said seismologists are watching the Hayward Fault, which runs beneath the East Bay Hills, because it has the highest likelihood of a major earthquake.<\/p>\n The San Andreas has a lower probability because it experienced an intense quake a little more than a century ago, which is \u201crecently\u201d in geologic time.<\/p>\n But an impressive quake could also happen on a separate fracture.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see these old black and white pictures of people in 1906, dealing with the rubble, but in some ways [the next big quake] might not be that different,\u201d Hirakawa said. \u201cPeople should know that a big earthquake can happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n Stephen Sherman Wade was 8 years old and living in Southern California when the 1994 Northridge earthquake shook his family\u2019s home for more than 20 seconds.<\/p>\n \u201cBeds shuddered against the wall,\u201d Wade said. \u201cIt was terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n After moving to San Francisco\u2019s SoMa neighborhood in 2020, he made it a priority to find a home that was seismically safe.<\/p>\n \u201cNo building is ever going to be 100% structurally sound against an earthquake,\u201d Wade said, \u201cbut you can build pretty well for it.\u201d<\/p>\n San Francisco\u2019s earthquake dilemma is long-standing. The SPUR brief states that 60% of the city\u2019s buildings were constructed prior to 1940, \u201cwithout consideration for modern earthquake codes.\u201d<\/p>\n Many are made of concrete, and in previous quakes elsewhere, similar buildings \u201cpancaked on themselves,\u201d causing \u201ca lot of deaths,\u201d Atkinson said.<\/p>\n In 1992, San Francisco developed a seismic hazard rating system to assess more than 200 city-owned buildings, using a 1-to-4 scale (best to worst). The city is still working to address<\/a> many at-risk buildings.<\/p>\n Officials are now turning to concrete buildings and requiring owners to self-report to staff by June 2027. The thousands of commercial, government, industrial and multi-family buildings are scattered throughout the city, but a concentrated block is in downtown.<\/p>\n On the emergency services side, Carroll\u2019s team is modernizing the city\u2019s earthquake plan, transforming a big binder of scenarios into actionable lists that staff can also pull up on their phones during a disaster. The update is due by the end of the year.<\/p>\n Simultaneously, the city is asking voters to approve a $535 million bond<\/a> in June. The measure would fund seismic upgrades to fire stations, police stations, the 911 center, the emergency firefighting water system<\/a>, and improvements to the bus system.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve touched every neighborhood in the city, and we still have a lot of work to do, which is why another bond is coming up,\u201d said Brian Strong, the city\u2019s chief resilience officer.<\/p>\n But there\u2019s a new complication, he said. The city cannot rely on federal disaster aid under the Trump administration, and city budget constraints are limiting its office\u2019s capacity to focus on seismic issues.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to start making investments upfront so that when an earthquake happens, we don\u2019t need to have that sort of high level of support from the federal government,\u201d Strong said.<\/p>\n Robert Olshansky remembers when there was no early earthquake warning system. Phones didn\u2019t blare in the middle of the night, agencies didn\u2019t text warnings.<\/p>\n Olshansky was rocked by a moderate-sized tremor in Southern California in 1971 and lived in North Berkeley during the Loma Prieta quake in 1989. By contrast, the 1906 quake released about 16 times as much energy as the Loma Prieta quake, according to the USGS<\/a>.<\/p>\n At the time, Olshansky was about to put his home on the market that weekend so he and his family could move out of state. When he got home early from work, the house began to shake. His impulse was to run out, but he froze and endured the shaking.<\/p>\n \u201cI turned on the news to try and find out what happened, but it wasn\u2019t clear at first,\u201d Olshansky said. \u201cThere was the Bay Bridge, there was a fire in the Mission District. We were seeing all these bits of news.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, systems like the MyShake app developed by UC Berkeley\u2019s Seismology Lab can send alerts within seven seconds of a magnitude 4.5 earthquake or larger. But in the case of a \u201c1906-type earthquake,\u201d communities closest to the epicenter will likely get no warning, said Angie Lux, a project scientist for earthquake warning with the lab.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/260415-SPUREARTHQUAKE-01-BL-KQED.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/240416-1906-san-francisco-KQED.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/260413-SPUREARTHQUAKE-03-BL-KQED.jpg\")
\u2018A big earthquake can happen again\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/260415-SPUREARTHQUAKE-02-BL-KQED.jpg\")
\u2018We still have a lot of work to do\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/260416-SPUR-Map-KQED.png\")
\u2018It\u2019s a known limitation of earthquake warning\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/04\/260413-SPUREARTHQUAKE-07-BL-KQED.jpg\")