A building collapses and burns in the Marina District of San Francisco on Oct. 17, 1989, after the Loma Prieta earthquake. Measure A would fund earthquake preparedness infrastructure in the city.

Seismologists have long been clear: A major earthquake hitting San Francisco is not a distant possibility but a likely event. Within the next 30 years, the probability of an earthquake measuring magnitude 6.7 hitting the Bay Area is 72%. There’s a 51% likelihood that it reaches a magnitude of 7.5. 

The question is not whether a Big One will happen, but how prepared we will be when it does. 

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The difference between resilience and catastrophe often comes down to infrastructure: whether fire stations stand, whether communication systems function, whether water flows when it’s needed most. Unfortunately, much of our city’s emergency infrastructure is aging and, in some cases,  vulnerable. And not just from the shaking but the fires that come after.

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On June 2, San Francisco voters will decide whether to approve Measure A, a $535 million earthquake safety bond that is supported by Mayor Daniel Lurie and all 11members of the Board of Supervisors. It is the fourth such bond effort since 2010, designed to allow the city to respond appropriately to disaster — meaning it is not a new burden on taxpayers but rather a continuation of an ongoing commitment to resilience.

The Chronicle Editorial Board has begun rolling out its endorsements for California’s June primary election. In the weeks to come, we will publish our assessments of all the state races, including the governor’s race, plus local races and ballot measures. To read more about how the Editorial Board makes its election endorsements, go here.Plus: Look out for the Chronicle’s Voter Guide to publish in early May, as ballots get mailed out across the Bay Area.

Of Measure A’s pot, more than $200 million would be used to fund seismic upgrades to fire and police stations and public safety facilities.

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Nothing controversial about that.

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It’s the other Measure A funding pools that have raised an eyebrow or two.

The measure allots $200 million to replace the obsolete, seismically unsafe, century-old Potrero bus yard with a sustainable, efficient bus maintenance and storage facility. Critics allege a bait and switch, arguing that this is a transportation project, not a seismic one, and should have been included in the fall Muni funding measure instead.

Ultimately, however, no one disputes the desperate need for an upgrade at the Potrero Yard. And while there is some truth to the criticism that a transportation bond would have been a more appropriate vehicle to fund this upgrade, the yard will play a critical role in disaster relief in the event of an earthquake — primarily on transportation logistics, emergency medical transport and infrastructure restoration. 

“This is emergency response infrastructure and transportation infrastructure,” San Francisco City Administrator Carmen Chu told us in an endorsement interview. “As a city, our residents want us to be thinking about emergency response as a whole.”

The other bit of controversy surrounding the measure is its plan for a $130 million emergency firefighting water system.

Currently, large swaths of the city, including much of the Sunset and the Richmond districts, are not protected by a dedicated high-pressure water system for firefighting. Most eastern neighborhoods are protected by the Auxiliary Water Supply System, which can pump pressurized water from the bay to put out fires in the event the city’s municipal potable water supply system fails.

Measure A would not fund the expansion of this system. Instead, it would expand a separate high-pressure system that relies heavily on the municipal potable water supply as well as cisterns in the western part of town that were funded by earlier bond measures.

Critics, including some firefighting experts and former Supervisor Quentin Kopp, argue that this plan does not provide the same level of protection as the Auxiliary Water Supply System — because the municipal system is prone to failure in the event of an earthquake. Kopp penned an op ed arguing that the city’s “readily available supply of salt water was the only viable solution to fighting post-earthquake conflagrations.” He went on to describe the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s potable-water alternative proposals as “ludicrous and prone to failure.”

But San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen, a backer of Measure A, argued in our endorsement interview that the city has done enough work to strengthen the lifeline of water coming into the city. Moreover, “If the potable system runs out, we have a failsafe,” he said.

Money from the 2026 bond would be used “to connect to Lake Merced in case we want to tap into it as a last resort.”

City officials say Lake Merced contains 1.7 billion gallons of water available for firefighting.

“The city has been intentional about creating contingencies and alternate water sources,” Chu told the editorial board. “In an emergency — it’s not always predictable what will break, and we need to have various options.”

The work funded by Measure A would expand these options.

Fiscal watchdogs are right to ask hard questions about cost in these difficult economic times. But preparedness is one of the clearest examples of spending that saves money in the long run. The economic damage from a major earthquake — lost businesses, destroyed homes, disrupted services — would dwarf the cost of this bond many times over. 

Furthermore, the city structures new bonds to align with the repayment of earlier ones, aiming to keep property tax rates relatively stable rather than sharply increasing them.

“We update the plan every two years to make sure we’re keeping up,” said Chu. 

The editorial positions of The Chronicle, including election recommendations, represent the consensus of the editorial board, consisting of the publisher, the editorial page editor and staff members of the opinion pages. Its judgments are made independent of the news operation, which covers the news without consideration of our editorial positions.

The city cannot prevent earthquakes. But it can decide how ready it will be when one arrives.

Measure A deserves your support.

Reach the Chronicle editorial board with a letter to the editor: www.sfchronicle.com/submit-your-opinion.

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