San Francisco General Hospital will become the first hospital in the city to have a base-isolated foundation — the most earthquake-resistant design known today — when construction of its new trauma center opens in 2015, according to an article on the San Francisco Examiner website.
"We expect it to be able to withstand a major event," Terry Saltz, director of the SFGH Rebuild program, said of the new hospital. "It's built to be as flexible and dynamic [as possible] with the ability to absorb the energy of the earthquake."
Instead of being placed directly into the ground, the hospital will sit in a bathtub-type foundation that is 40 feet deep on one end and 25 feet deep on the other. Rolling disks between the building and foundation will allow it to glide 30 inches in any direction during an earthquake, the article said.
The building is designed to center itself, rather than buckle or drift out of alignment, in an earthquake up to magnitude-8.0. Hospital officials noted other seismically advanced features in the new hospital as well.
For instance, the glass in the building is designed to slide in its tracks, minimizing the amount that could break in an earthquake, according to the article. Glass that sits in a rigid frame, on the other hand, cannot be twisted and turned and therefore breaks more easily.
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