Hi, im corn field and welcome to doing building San Francisco, we are doing a special series, called stay safe, how you can stay in your home safely and comfortable, and we know that an earthquake is coming and there are things that you can do to reduce the effects of the earthquake on your home. Lets take a look at that. Here at the spur urban center on Mission Street in San Francisco talking about staying in your home after an earthquake. I have guests today, pat buscavich and his dog, harvey and david, and both Structural Engineers and we want to talk about things that you might do before an earthquake to your home to make it more likely that your home will be ha bitable after an earthquake what should we do . Both structural and maybe even important nonstructural things. You hear about how to prepare an earthquake kit and brace your book shelves and water tank and that is important. What you have to be careful is make sure that you are not going the easy things to make yourself feel better. If you have a bad structure, a bad building, then you need to be looking at that and everything that you do to keep your collectables in place is small and compared. If you have taken care of your structure, then there is a lot of stuff that you can do in your house that is nonstructural and your chimney and water tank. Lets talk about what the structural things might be. And he is exactly right. You dont want to make the deck chairs safe on the titanic, it is going down, you are going down, you have to make sure that your house is safe. There are basic things that you need to do including bracing the water heater, not just because of fire hazard but because of the water source and the damage, but basic things are installing anchor bolts, and adding plywood and strapping your beams to column and posts to footings and foundations are really easy things to do and most contractors can do the Building Department is set up to approve this work, and these are things that every home owner should do, and it is a little harder because you have to get a Building Permit and hire a contractor. But you want to be able to after a big earthquake to climb in bed that night and pull the covers up and say i dont have to worry about going to a government shelter. That is the main focus that it is great to have an earthquake kit to be able to bug out for 72 hours. Here is a better idea, stay in your own home and in order to do that you have to be make sure that your structure is okay. If you have a house, the easy things to do with the wood construction is feasible. If you have a renter or you live in a concrete building, you need to talk to the building own , and make sure they have done their Due Diligence and find out what the deficiencies are. When i have looked at damaged buildings,vy seen that a little bit of investment in time and money and structural work provides great dividends. Especially if it is the wood frame, typical house that you can do the things that i was talking about, the anchor and the plywood in the first garage area, you know if you refinanced in the last three years, get some of that savings and it is a really good investment. And the other thing that i try to tell people, earthquake insurance is not the solution to the shelter in place, if there is a big earthquake and your building is damaged, you are not in your house, you may be somewhere else, if you work in the city, it is going to be really hard to commute from sonoma you want to do what is necessary so that your house is retrofitted and a couple of years of earthquake premium could get you to a level that you could be in the house after a significant earthquake and it may have damage and there is still a shelter in place where you are at home and you are not worried for the government taking care of you and you are living in a place where you can go to work and you want to have your wood frame house is really easy to get to that level. On top of the wood frame house, i mean every wood frame house in the west half of the city have a water tank and the water tank fall over because they are gas fired and start fires. And that is something that you could do for yourself and for your neighbors and for the whole city is make sure that your water tank is braced. If you look at the studies that are predicting on fires, we are going to have a lot of fires and for every water tank that is braced there is a potential of one less fire that the Fire Department is going to have to fight and we dont want to have any more fires than we need to. So bracing the water heater is the first thing that you want to do. And so easy, and you go online and you google, earthquake, water and heater and you google the sites where you can find the details and you can put them out there on the Hardware Store and you can hire a small contract tore do that for you. That is a couple of hundred bucks, the best investment. If you are in other types of building it is complicated. If you are in a highrise building you just cant anchor your building down because there are no anchor bolts, but at that point the tenant should be asking questions of the owners and the managers about earthquake preparedness and dont take the easy answer, oh, our building is safe it was designed to code. That is not the right answer, ask the tough questions and see if you can get a report that has been given to you. What is the right question . Will i be able to stay in my home after the expected earthquake . Is that a good question to ask . Yeah, you may be more specific if you talk to the owner, if it is not a recent building, if it is ten or 20 years old see if they had an inspection done and there you will have a written before that will tell you all about the structure. Thanks, pat. Thanks, harvey. And thanks david for joining us and thank you for joining us on here we are at the embarcadero. We are standing at one of locations for the street artists. Can you tell me about this particular location the program . This location is very significant. This was the very first and only location granted by the board of supervisors for the street artist when the Program Began in 1972. How does a person become a street artist . There are two major tenants. You must make the work yourself and you must sell the work yourself. A street artist, the license, then submitting the work to a committee of artists. This committee actually watches them make the work in front of them so that we can verify that it is all their own work. What happened during the holiday to make this an exciting location . This would be a magic time of year. You would probably see this place is jammed with street artists. As the no, there is a lottery held at 6 in the morning. That is how sought after the spaces are. You might get as many as 150 street artists to show up for 50 spaces. What other areas can a licensed street artist go to . They can go to the Fishermans Wharf area. They can go in and around union square. We have space is now up in the castro, in fact. How many are there . We have about 420. Are they here all year round . Out of the 420, i know 150 to sell all year round. I mean like fiveseven days a week. Are they making their living of of this . This is their sole source of income for many. How long have you been with this program. How much has it changed . I have been with the Program Since it began 37 and a half years ago but i have seen changes in the trend. Fashion comes and goes. I think that you can still find plenty of titis perhaps. This is because the 60s is retro for a lot of people. I have seen that come back, yes. People still think of this city as the birth of that movement. Great, thank you for talking about the background of the program. Im excited to go shopping. I would like you to meet two street artists. This is linda and jeremy. Night said to me to print them nice to meet you. Can you talk to me about a variety of products that use cell . We have these lovely constructed platters. We make these wonderful powder bowls. They can have a lot of color. York also using your license. You are also using your license. This means that i can register with the city. This makes sure that our family participated in making all of these. This comes by licensed artists. The person selling it is the person that made it. There is Nothing Better than the people that made it. I would like you to meet michael johnson. He has been in the program for over 8 years. Nice to me you. What inspired your photography . I am inspired everything that i see. The greatest thing about being a photographer is being able to show other people what i see. I have mostly worked in cuba and work that i shot here in San Francisco. What is it about being a street artist that you particularly like . I liked it to the first day that i did it. I like talking to mentum people. Talking about art or anything that comes to our minds. There is more visibility than i would see in any store front. This would cost us relatively very little. I am so happy to meet you. I wish you all of the best. You are the wonderful artist that makes these color coding. Nice to me to. I have been a street artist since 1976. How did you decide to be a street artist . I was working on union square. On lunch hours, i would be there visiting the artist. It was interesting exciting and i have a creative streak in me. It ranges from tshirts jackets, hats. What is the day of the life of a street artist . They have their 2536 in the morning. By the end of the day, the last people to pack the vehicle probably get on their own at 7 30 at night. Nice to me to condemn the nice to meet you. It was a pleasure to share this with you. I hope that the bay area will descend upon the plaza and go through these arts and crafts and by some holiday gifts. That would be amazing. Thank you so much for the hard work that you do
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