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You may have seen a tsunami hit San Francisco the action film "San Andreas." Today's big off-shore quake had us wondering again: what would it be like in reality?
Why now: A late morning 7.0 magnitude quake in Northern California generated a wide-ranging tsunami warning for coastal California. While no tsunami was generated, it got a lot of people thinking.
Keep reading... for a look at what non-movie science tells us about the real-life risks.
In light of the tsunami advisory issued Tuesday, July 29, following an 8.8 magnitude quake in Russia, we're resurfacing a 2017 story from our partner newsroom KQED in San Francisco.
In 2015, Steven Horowitz was watching one of the summer’s big blockbuster action flicks, San Andreas. In the movie, the San Andreas fault shifts, triggering a magnitude 9.6 earthquake in San Francisco. Disaster ensues — and for the rest of the movie we watch as all of the West Coast’s greatest landmarks are destroyed one by one in an epic, computer-generated spectacle.
“I was sitting there watching the giant tsunami course through the Golden Gate and into the bay,” he says. “I looked at that and thought: Wouldn’t there be some kind of dissipation coming through the Golden Gate?”
In 2017, he asked KQED's Bay Curious: If a tsunami were to hit the Golden Gate, what would be its real effect on communities facing the San Francisco Bay?
Despite the terrifying image of a 250-foot wave about to wash over the Golden Gate Bridge, tsunamis do not actually pose a considerable threat to the Bay Area.
It all has to do with the kinds of geologic faults that we have (and don’t have).
Tsunamis are caused when one tectonic plate slides underneath another — a process called subduction. This slow movement is happening all the time, but sometimes a plate will get stuck and pressure starts to build. When it finally lets go, there’s an underwater earthquake that can move the seafloor up and down, sending a wave to the surface of the ocean.
But the San Andreas Fault is different. It’s called a slip-strike fault because the two plates slide past each other horizontally. Of course, whenever plates move, the ground shakes. But here, there is no subduction and little displaced ocean.
Meaning no killer tsunamis. Even San Francisco’s infamous 1906 earthquake generated only a 4-inch wave at the Presidio gauge station.
Although they aren’t generated here, tsunamis do occasionally hit our shores. Since 1854, more than 71 tsunamis have been recorded in San Francisco Bay. Most were generated by earthquakes in subduction zones near Russia, Japan or Alaska.
Eric Geist, a geophysicist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, says that size is the most important factor in evaluating risk.
“We can look at anything, from huge waves to micro-tsunamis, that you’d never see with your eyes but our instruments can detect,” he says.
The worst tsunami to hit the Bay Area was triggered in 1964 by a magnitude 9.2 earthquake in Alaska, Geist says, that killed 11 people in Crescent City. That wave rolled in at just under 4 feet and damaged marinas and private boats in Marin County.
The infamous 2011 tsunami that devastated parts of Japan also arrived in the East Bay 10 ten hours later at just over a foot in height, and caused millions of dollars of damage in Crescent City.
The Cascadia subduction zone, which runs roughly from Mendocino County to Vancouver Island, could also produce a massive earthquake and tsunami. But Geist says it’s unclear how a tsunami from “The Really Big One” would affect the Bay Area.
“Oregon, Washington and California north of Eureka would really bear the brunt of that tsunami,” he explains.
Although it’s unlikely, Steven Ward, a professor of earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz, has created a series of animations to show how a big tsunami might spread through San Francisco Bay.
In Ward’s simulations, the incoming wave stands just over 16 feet tall. This is much larger than historical tsunamis, but Geist agrees that a wave this size is theoretically possible.
Approaching the Golden Gate at 55 mph, the wave would first hit the outlying areas of Point Reyes National Seashore and Montara. It would then start to flood low-lying areas like Half Moon Bay.
“It’s not like splash and dash,” explains Ward. “When the water comes in, it’s going to flood.”
It would feel like a 12-hour tidal cycle was packed into an hour.
“And it will do as much damage when it goes back out and drags along cars and debris,” he adds.
The original wave and splashbacks from shore would then start to pile up as they squeeze through the 1-mile-wide Golden Gate. In Ward’s simulations, the wave reaches a maximum height of about 30 feet.
“That’s barely to the top the pylon,” says Ward, who is confident that the bridge would have no trouble withstanding the wave energy. “It probably wouldn’t even touch the steel.”
Finally, the wave would fan out into San Francisco Bay. Parts of Crissy Field, Mission Bay and the Marina could see significant flooding, but by the time it reached Treasure Island or the East Bay, the wave would be less than 3 feet tall. It would probably not even make it to the South Bay.
Inundation maps for coastal counties are a great resource for understanding how high ocean waters could rise near you. Here’s San Francisco.
Steven Horowitz, who asked Bay Curious the question, was glad to hear that the tsunami would be nothing like the movie.
“By the time it gets to Berkeley, which is where I’m sitting right now, I think I’m pretty safe,” he says. “Sounds like it’s not going to come rushing up University Avenue.”
Bay Area residents can also rest assured that there have been no recorded deaths from tsunami-related events in San Francisco. And even a worst-case-scenario Cascadia tsunami would take several hours to reach the city, providing ample time to mobilize a response.
And just in case, the City and County of San Francisco has a tsunami plan in place. It includes a strategy for evacuating people from vulnerable areas like Ocean Beach, coordinating basic services (like shelter, water, food, and medical attention) and performing search and rescue.
Still, “if you get a warning and are in a tsunami zone, follow the evacuation instructions,” says Ward. “What do you have to lose, a couple hours of your time?”
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Good news for frog fans — the California Fish and Game Commission voted this month to designate the Western spadefoot as a candidate for the state’s endangered species list. One thing that makes this frog unique? It smells like peanut butter.
Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.
What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.
Topline:
Good news for frog fans — the California Fish and Game Commission voted this month to designate the Western spadefoot as a candidate for the state’s endangered species list. One thing that makes this frog unique? It smells like peanut butter.
Why it matters: The small amphibian is found in the grasslands of Southern California and the Central Valley. But habitat loss, urban sprawl and longer droughts have been threatening the species’ population in recent decades.
What the protections do: Now that the Western spadefoot is a candidate for permanent protections, any development project planned for Western spadefoot habitats will have to take the amphibians into account.
Some exceptions may apply: The commission did carve out exceptions for solar projects in the Central Valley. To take advantage of federal tax credit deadlines, some projects can continue to be built, as long as they protect breeding pools and curtail construction during the season when spadefoots are most active.
What conservationists say: Brendan Cummings, conservation director with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in Southern California the biggest threat to the Western spadefoot is not solar development: “It’s warehouses or data centers and road widenings and all manner of construction activities.”
What happens next: The California Department of Fish and Wildlife will conduct a year-long review to determine if the Western spadefoot should be permanently protected.
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Fullerton city officials this week closed a multi-million dollar budget deficit without dipping into the city’s reserves. Some of the largest cuts were made to vacant city positions and library programming.
What happened: The City Council voted 3-2 to approve the budget on Tuesday night, with Councilmembers Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles opposing the spending plan. Zahra called the cuts “drastic.”
Why the cuts matter: On the chopping block were 26 vacant positions from various departments, including Parks and Recreation, Police and Public Works. More than $400,000 was cut from the library budget for security, electronic resources and the book collections in the adult and teen sections.
The city’s graffiti removal team was reduced from two truck units to one.
How did we get here? City spending outpaces incoming revenue, according to city staff. The City Council rejected a sales tax measure to fill up the city coffers.
Why is the budget so late? The vote comes a month after the start of the new fiscal year because of an internal audit. Staff identified that nearly $10 million had been incorrectly categorized for specific uses rather than general spending. The city hired an independent auditing firm to look into the city’s accounting.
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More than two dozen California Assembly Democrats and one state senator sent a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders asking them to delay fees under SB 54, the state’s landmark plastic reduction law, for two years — an eleventh-hour push as the Legislature hurtles toward the end of session.
The ask: Signed by 23 Assemblymembers and Sen. Melissa Hurtado, the letter asks lawmakers to pause fee assessment and collection this year and next, commit to a “reform package” next session, and increase legislative oversight of the program going forward.
The context: The request lands amid a broader fight over how the plastics law is rolling out. Little by little California is demanding that the packages you pick up at your doorstep or at the store contain less plastic. A law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed four years ago aims to phase out 25% of non-recyclable, non-compostable plastic by 2032.
Industry response: Industry groups say the price tag for complying with the law could be tens of billions of dollars higher than California originally estimated. An industry-commissioned study found the law could cost consumers three times what the state projected — between $683 and $948 a year, rather than $190. That means groceries, shampoo bottles and other consumer goods packed in plastic could cost a little more as the law takes effect.
State reasoning: The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, which oversees implementation, declined an interview but said in a written statement that the law puts consumers first and pushes producers to design packaging with recycling in mind.
More than two dozen California Assembly Democrats and one state senator sent a letter Wednesday to legislative leaders asking them to delay fees under SB 54, the state’s landmark plastic reduction law, for two years — an eleventh-hour push as the Legislature hurtles toward the end of session.
The letter, addressed to Senate President Pro Tempore Monique Limón and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas, was signed by 23 Assemblymembers and Sen. Melissa Hurtado. It asks lawmakers to pause fee assessment and collection this year and next, commit to a “reform package” next session, and increase legislative oversight of the program going forward.
The request lands amid a broader fight over how the plastics law is rolling out. Little by little California is demanding that the packages you pick up at your doorstep or at the store contain less plastic. A law Gov. Gavin Newsom signed four years ago aims to phase out 25% of non-recyclable, non-compostable plastic by 2032.
To get there, the state tasked a nonprofit, the Circular Action Alliance, with drafting a plan to meet the state goals. The group estimated the work would cost $17.2 billion over five years – and is asking for a three-year exemption from the source-reduction deadline.
But as the state moves to implement the law, questions are mounting over how the organization calculates the fees producers — and eventually consumers — will pay, and how much oversight the group actually faces.
Industry groups say the price tag for complying with the law could be tens of billions of dollars higher than California originally estimated. An industry-commissioned study found the law could cost consumers three times what the state projected — between $683 and $948 a year, rather than $190.
That means groceries, shampoo bottles and other consumer goods packed in plastic could cost a little more as the law takes effect.
The California Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery, which oversees implementation, declined an interview but said in a written statement that the law puts consumers first and pushes producers to design packaging with recycling in mind.
“Californians are facing rising costs and pollution from increasingly complex packaging that wasn’t designed for the recycling systems local governments, ratepayers, and the state developed and funded over the past four decades,” said CalRecycle director Zoe Heller. “The law’s rollout is a dial, not a switch, giving producers flexibility to redesign packaging, invest in recycling systems, reduce single-use plastics, and make adjustments along the way,” she added.
The Circular Action Alliance published its fee schedule in June, spelling out what each producer owes into the system. The fees could add up to more than $10 million for some businesses, according to the Dairy Institute of California. The Dairy Institute is a trade association that represents milk processors and dairy product manufacturers.
But unlike a state agency, the Circular Action Alliance answers to almost no one, said Katie Davey, executive director of the Dairy Institute.
“[The alliance] does not have to go through an audit by the state auditor. They’re not subject to the (California open government law) Brown Act. They’re not subject to public records requests. The Legislature does not approve their budget and does not approve how many employees they need, or how many fees they can charge,” Davey said.
As a private nonprofit, Circular Action Alliance indeed is not subject to the Brown Act or public-records law — but records it submits to CalRecycle or other government entities may be.
CalRecycle must approve its fee schedule and implementation plan, and has the authority to audit the organization’s performance, said CalRecycle spokesperson Lance Klug, who added that the plastics law includes provisions to ensure the group’s budget and fees are appropriate.
The alliance’s role “is not to set California policy,” said its spokesperson, Larine Urbina. “Our role is to implement the framework established by SB 54 under CalRecycle’s oversight.”
Davey said the gap extends to enforcement. Businesses that fall short will face so-called malus fees, which fund bonuses for those that comply. But the Circular Action Alliance hasn’t said what those fees will be.
Shane Gusman, a lobbyist for the Teamsters, which represents hundreds of thousands of California workers, raised similar concerns. “They’re a wholly independent nonprofit organization that has no oversight. That’s part of the problem.” The union backed the plastics law hoping it would boost jobs; Guzman now says the fees could affect workers too.
Shortly after the alliance published its fee schedule, Davey and a coalition of industry leaders — including the California Restaurant Association, the California League of Food Producers, the American Forest and Paper Association and the Print Creative Alliance — commissioned a study disputing CalRecycle’s numbers.
It found CalRecycle’s 2025 estimate of $21 billion in implementation costs, or $190 a year per California household, rests on “idealized assumptions that fail to capture real-world costs and complications the regulations will create.”
The study puts the number somewhere between $35 and $58 billion, rising after the implementation period.
Klug of CalRecycle said the agency’s earlier reports were just estimates. “The actual costs will be determined by producer choices,” he said. “These costs, for example, will reflect the infrastructure needed to recycle materials that producers are choosing to use.”
The biggest hurdle for producers is cutting plastic use 25% by 2032 — which state regulators say will require redesigning packaging and shifting toward reusable products, such as dishes at restaurants and paper-based packaging for produce.
Business groups say they support the state’s goals but call the timeline unworkable.
Food safety is one sticking point: alternatives like paper-based containers for berries are less breathable and spoil faster, while heavier glass or cardboard adds transportation costs, said Casey Creamer, president of the California Fresh Fruit Association.
“We just don’t want to force something out and not be able to deliver a fresh, healthy commodity, or create a situation that has more significant or adverse environmental concerns just because we look at plastics and packaging in a silo,” Creamer said.
Environmental groups oppose any pause.
“All of us pay for plastic pollution through higher garbage bills and clean-ups of polluted beaches and waterways, not to mention the damage to our environment and our health,”said Nick Lapis, director of advocacy for Californians Against Waste.
Sen. Ben Allen, a Democrat representing coastal Los Angeles County who authored the law, said it’s time plastic producers are held accountable for the waste they produce.
“This 11th-hour Hail Mary is only trying to maintain status quo and avoid due responsibility, throwing years of good-faith negotiations, and affordability and sustainability improvements out the window,” he said in a statement about producers’ efforts to pause implementation of the law.
Whether the plastics law is actually driving up grocery prices yet is hard to pin down. Creamer said businesses may already be factoring the organization’s planned fees into their prices.
Federal data show grocery prices dipped slightly in July from June, though prices have climbed year over year and that rate is accelerating, said Richard Volpe, a consumer-price expert at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Neither the USDA nor the Bureau of Labor Statistics has released August figures, and no data yet isolates the state plastics law’s effect from broader inflation.
Volpe said retailers, who run on thin margins, will eventually pass costs on to consumers — but probably not right away.
“It will not happen overnight,” he said. “And it will still be relatively small, mostly on the order of pennies on the dollar.”
Industry groups warn it will add up.
“If someone’s even on the cusp of food insecurity and they’re looking at $1,000 more a year, that’s pushing them over the food cliff,” said Nate Rose, a spokesperson for the California Grocers Association.
The Teamsters, which backed the plastics law hoping it would boost jobs, now worry the fees could affect workers too.
The law “has been morphed into something that is going to cost California consumers a substantial amount of money at a time when I don’t know if we need to spend thousands more on groceries,” said Gusman, the Teamsters lobbyist. “That also has an impact on the workforce.”
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Uoichiba, Joint Seafood's hand roll bar, has teamed up with Father's Office for a limited-edition hand roll version of Chef Sang Yoon's iconic burger — dry-aged beef, bacon fat-caramelized onions, Gruyère, Maytag blue and arugula, wrapped in nori and rice. It's available through the end of August at Uoichiba's Sherman Oaks and DTLA locations for $16.
Why it matters: Father's Office built its reputation on refusing to let anyone touch its burger — no substitutions, no exceptions. That rigidity runs headfirst into Uoichiba's flexible, build-it-your-way hand roll format, and Chef Liwei Liao, a close friend of Yoon's, said the collaboration still holds the line: no modifications allowed on the roll either.
What’s the verdict: The result tastes remarkably true to the original, transporting you straight back to the outdoor patio of Father’s Office at the Helms Bakery building. Liao says it won't be the last chef collab to land on Uoichiba's hand roll bar.
Father's Office built its reputation on refusing to let anyone touch its burger — no substitutions, no exceptions. Just dry-aged beef, bacon fat-caramelized onions, Gruyère, Maytag blue and arugula.
Which is why a new collaboration with hand roll specialist Uoichiba had me… scratching my head.
Yes, that’s right. For a limited time, the Office Burger can be found in hand roll form at Uoichiba locations (Sherman Oaks and DTLA), packed over rice and wrapped in nori in lieu of a bun, for $16.
Turns out Chef Liwei Liao (owner of Uoichiba/Joint Seafood) and Chef Sang Yoon (Father's Office) are close friends who decided to bridge their culinary worlds.
Liao says he’s actually a burger guy off the clock, and considers the Office Burger one of the most iconic in L.A.
"I'm not even a blue cheese fan, but I enjoy it in that flavor combination with the grilled onions —it's basically French onion soup in a sauce —and then his blend of cheese," Liao said.
While the hand roll combo isn’t something you see every day, it's not a total left turn for Uoichiba. The spot already runs four Wagyu hand rolls on its regular menu (cheeseburger, tartare, shabu shabu, steak), so this slots into an existing format rather than a one-off gimmick.
So... to my verdict on trying it. Despite its unusual format, the elements hit my taste buds, and I was immediately struck by how familiar it all felt —transported straight back to the outdoor patio of Father’s Office at the Helms Bakery building, touching upon all the same notes.
That’s not a surprise, since Liao uses Yoon’s exact Office Burger recipe. “We’re literally using his cheese, his onions, his blend,” he says.
Watching the roll get assembled, it's easy to see the level of precision involved — the dry-aged beef gets a slight char from a hand-held blowtorch, then it's layered with the onion and cheese mixture and fresh arugula, the whole thing coming together like one of Vincent van Gogh's still-life vase paintings.
It's not a one-off, either — Liao said Uoichiba plans to keep doing chef collaborations like this on the hand roll bar about once a month.
