Earthquake-proofing a San Francisco apartment or house, room by room

Stand in the bedroom doorway and look at the wall behind the pillow. A framed mirror, a shelf of books, a window you sleep under: that is where the work starts. In San Francisco flats the list barely changes from one building to the next. A flat-pack bookcase against the party wall, a microwave perched on the fridge, a heavy mirror leaning on a Victorian mantel, a water heater in the back-porch closet. Most of it takes an afternoon, a strong magnet or a stud finder, and a few straps. This guide walks the rooms in the order the risk runs, bedroom first.

#What actually gets people hurt

What hurts people in an earthquake is mostly their own furniture. After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, a UCLA study found that 55 percent of injuries came from falling furniture or objects and only 1 percent from damage to the building, as the Earthquake Country Alliance reports. Several people died in that quake because of unsecured things such as toppling bookcases. The hazards you can deal with this month are the dresser, the bookcase and the TV.

The next big one is a matter of when. In its 2016 outlook for the Bay Area, the U.S. Geological Survey put the chance of at least one magnitude 6.7 or larger earthquake in the region before 2043 at 72 percent. The Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults were the likeliest single source, at 33 percent.

Before buying anything, do the Alliance's exercise: picture each room picked up and shaken sideways. Anything that could land on a bed or a sofa, or fall across the way out, goes to the top of the list. Everything else can wait for a free weekend.

#The bedroom: keep the wall above the pillow empty

You spend more hours in bed than anywhere else, and you're slowest to react there. Ready.gov tells anyone in bed when the shaking starts to turn face down and cover the head and neck with a pillow. That advice assumes nothing heavy is about to land on the pillow.

• The wall above the headboard

  Take down framed glass, mirrors and shelves. A textile or a light frame on a closed hook can stay. If the bed sits under a window, turn it so the headboard meets a solid wall: San Francisco's earthquake advice is to keep away from glass while the ground shakes.

• The dresser

  Strap or bracket it into a stud. Under the federal standard that followed the STURDY Act, dressers 27 inches or taller made after September 1, 2023 must ship with an anti-tip device in the box, so look for it before buying a kit. An older dresser needs one.

• Wardrobes and tall bookcases

  Anything taller than you should stand where it can't fall across the bed or the door, and then get strapped. If it goes over, it should hit the floor, not you.

• The nightstand

  A dab of museum putty under the lamp and the clock. Shoes and a flashlight in the drawer: cut feet from broken frame glass and mirrors are among the most common earthquake injuries, the Alliance notes. Turn on the MyShake app on the phone you charge there.

Old plaster makes finding studs slower, not impossible. A strong magnet slid across the wall stops on the nails that fix the lath to each stud, and a small test hole hidden behind the furniture settles any doubt. The guide to plaster walls covers both tricks, and which screws to use.

A strap screwed only into plaster is a decoration. The screw has to reach wood.

#The living room: TV, bookcases and the mirror on the mantel

The living room holds the heaviest things that tip: a flat-screen, a run of bookcases, a glass-front cabinet, often a big mirror propped on the mantel of a Victorian fireplace. They tip on ordinary days too. The Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates that emergency rooms treated an average of 17,800 tip-over injuries a year from 2020 to 2022, and its advice is to anchor TVs, bookcases and dressers to the wall.

• The TV

  Mount a flat-screen on the wall into two studs, or strap it to its stand and the stand to the wall. If you truly can't anchor it, the CPSC says to keep it on a sturdy, low base, pushed back as far as it will go.

• Bookcases

  Two flexible straps, each screwed into a stud near one side of the case. For a case taller than 6 feet, the Alliance puts the straps on the sides at about two-thirds of its height. Heavy books go on the bottom shelves. New wall shelves should be fixed to studs from the start.

• Open shelves and the mantel

  Earthquake putty, clear gel or microcrystalline wax under vases and pottery; the Alliance counts all three as non-damaging. A slim lip or a taut cord along the front edge keeps rows of objects from walking off. A mirror leaning on the mantel belongs on the wall, hung into wood, or flat on the floor.

• Glass-front cabinets

  Latch the doors (the kitchen table below compares latch types) and strap the cabinet if it's tall. Heaviest pieces on the lowest shelf.

• Art over the sofa

  Treat it like the bed wall. Closed hooks so the wire can't jump off, a stud for anything heavy, and putty or felt bumpers at the bottom corners so the frame can't swing off the wall.

#The kitchen: latch the uppers, strap the fridge

San Francisco kitchens are small and stacked, so most of what can fall is above head height: glasses in the upper cabinets, plates on open shelving, that microwave on top of the fridge. The city's earthquake page recommends cabinet latches to keep glass from falling out and breaking, and anyone who has swept a cabinet's worth of glass off a tile floor will agree.

Behind the fridge, flexible appliance straps screw into studs, either at the top or on the sides at about two-thirds of the height, per the Alliance's instructions. The adhesive pad on the fridge side needs 72 hours undisturbed to bond. A fridge boxed in by cabinets is unlikely to tip, the Alliance adds. The microwave riding on top of it is another story: give it a place on the counter or a low shelf.

Pots, cast iron and the stand mixer go in the lowest cabinets. Glass goes behind a latched door, not on open shelving, however good it looks there. Fitting a run of latches is a quick hardware job if you'd rather hand it off.

#The bathroom and the hall

Bathrooms are small rooms full of glass and hard tile: a mirrored medicine cabinet, glass shelves, bottles lined up along the sink. The hall matters for a different reason. In a long Edwardian flat it's often the only route from the bedrooms to the stairs, and the Alliance's rule is to keep heavy or unstable things away from doors and escape routes.

#The garage, the laundry and the water heater

In a Sunset or Richmond row house the garage sits at sidewalk level under the living floor, and it holds much of what can break loose: the water heater, the gas shutoff, metal shelving full of paint and tools, the washer and dryer. In a flat it's often a closet on the back porch. Two of the rules down here are about gas and water, not furniture.

• The water heater

  California requires every residential water heater, existing ones included, to be braced, anchored or strapped against earthquake motion, at a minimum to the California Plumbing Code (Health and Safety Code 19211). The straps and their heights are in the shutoffs guide. Renting? If the tank has no straps, tell the owner in writing.

• Shelving racks

  The Alliance suggests flexible nylon straps or bungee cords to keep storage racks from sliding or going over; the wall end screws into studs near the top of the rack. Paint, tile and full bins belong on the bottom shelf, where they can't fall far.

• Gas lines to appliances

  The Alliance recommends flexible connections where gas lines meet the water heater, the dryer and the stove, so an appliance can shift without snapping its line. Checking or replacing one is work for a plumber, not a weekend project.

• The gas shutoff

  Find it now and keep a wrench next to it, as the city advises. Renters can ask the landlord where the building's shutoff is. Then leave it alone unless the rule in the box below applies.

#Renting? What you can do today, and what to ask for

Most of this works in a rental, and a good part of it needs no holes at all. For the rest, a short email to the owner beats any no-drill gadget.

Put the request in writing. List each piece and the number of screws, and offer to fill and touch up the holes when you leave. California's deposit law, Civil Code 1950.5, lets a landlord deduct for damage beyond ordinary wear and tear but doesn't say whether anchor holes count, so a written yes is the safer path. That's general information, not legal advice; the move-out guide covers deposits, holes and photos.

#The furniture is done. What about the building?

Straps protect you from your belongings. The structure is a separate question, and in San Francisco the usual weak spot is downstairs: a wood house resting on its foundation without being fastened to it, or an apartment building whose ground floor is mostly garage doors.

The city's Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit Program covers wood-frame buildings with five or more units and two or more stories over a soft or weak story, permitted for construction before January 1, 1978. DataSF publishes a searchable list of the buildings in the program, so a renter can look up the address and ask the owner where the retrofit stands.

A single-family house on a raised foundation is a different job: tying the frame to the concrete and stiffening the short crawlspace walls, under a permit, by a licensed contractor. The seismic retrofit page explains how that work is scoped. If the last quake left new diagonal cracks at door and window corners, the guide to wall cracks sorts the cosmetic from the serious.

#ShakeOut and Loma Prieta week: a ten-day plan

1. This weekend

   Walk every room, then do the free fixes

   Move the bed and the tall pieces, lower the heavy things, putty the shelf objects. The Alliance's pace is a good one: secure at least one item every weekend until the list is done.

2. Before Thursday

   Get the parts and the permission

   Straps for each tall piece, kitchen latches, putty, a strong magnet for the studs. Renters: send the email to the owner now.

3. Thursday, October 15, 10:15 a.m.

   The Great California ShakeOut

   Practice Drop, Cover and Hold On where you are, then once from bed: face down, pillow over head and neck. Households can register a drill too.

4. Saturday, October 17, 5:04 p.m.

   Loma Prieta, 37 years on

   At that hour in 1989 a magnitude 6.9 earthquake killed 63 people and injured 3,757, and liquefaction badly damaged buildings in the Marina. Spend the hour in the garage: water heater straps, the gas wrench, the shelving.

5. Any day

   Turn on the warnings

   Install MyShake, or check that earthquake alerts are on in your Android settings, as Cal OES explains. In San Francisco, text your ZIP code to 888-777 for AlertSF.