The Earthquake Safety Implementation Program (ESIP) is a thirty year plan to implement the recommendations of the CAPSS study, completed in 2010. ESIP began in late 2011 under the City Administrator’s office and continues on today to make San Francisco a more prepared, safer, and resilient city.

Please click here for the Earthquake Safety Working Group

The Earthquake Safety Implementation Program Table, Earthquake Retrofit Fair

The program outlines a 30-year program of 50 tasks based on the extensive CAPSS analysis and recommendations. Because of the likelihood of an earthquake in the near future, the plan begins with a major effort to address our most severe problem, the likely failure of many of San Francisco’s larger soft-story apartment buildings. Many other plan elements are currently underway or already completed, including a study into the earthquake safety of the City’s private schools, passing administrative bulletins (found on this page) to set standards for repair and retrofit after an earthquake, aiding in the passing of the Community Safety Element (found on this page), and many other tasks. Please take a moment to review the timetable below.

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Many of these tasks will take many decades to complete, some just a few months, but all with community support, ranging from the technical community who provides the ESIP team with solutions to some of the City’s most difficult problems to community members providing the City guidance on the day-to-day work of neighborhood-level resilience efforts like the neighborhood support center.

The Earthquake Safety Implementation Program RFP

The City and County of San Francisco’s (City) Controller’s Office, on behalf of the Office of the City Administrator, is requesting proposals to administer and finance a City-sponsored Soft Story Retrofit Loan Program (Loan Program). As described further in this Request for Proposals (RFP), the Loan Program is designed to enable San Francisco property owners to make seismic improvements in accordance with the Mandatory Seismic Retrofit Program Ordinance (No. 66-13) (Ordinance) passed by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and signed into law by Mayor Ed Lee on April 18, 2013. Through the Loan Program, property owners would be able to finance the cost of such improvements over 20 years (or less) through a special tax on their property tax bills.

The Ordinance amended the Building Code to establish a mandatory seismic retrofit requirement for wood-frame buildings of three or more stories, or two stores over a basement or underfloor area that has any portion extending above grade, and containing five or more dwelling units, where the permit to construct was applied for prior to January 1, 1978 and the building has not been seismically strengthened.

Please click here for more information.