Earthquakes

When completed, the new east span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge will be not only the most complex engineering feat in California history, but also the most expensive, with a cost never subjected to public scrutiny. Although today’s price tag stands at $6.3 billion, the figure accounts for only salaries and hard materials—things like concrete and steel and cranes. When all is said and done, the new Bay Bridge will wind up costing tax- and toll-payers more than $12 billion—a figure that leaves even the officials in charge “staggered.”

When all the pieces are finally welded together and tethered by the main suspension cable, the Bay Bridge east span will be not just a new American icon, but also a truly global monument. From the enormous solid steel castings of cable saddles, brackets and bands being forged in Japan and England to the gigantic bearings and hinges being manufactured in South Korea and Pennsylvania, fabrication of the bridge is under way in seven foreign countries and in more than two dozen American cities, including 12 in California.

As San Francisco marks the 103rd anniversary of the 1906 earthquake Saturday, the city's only free, hands-on emergency training program could be stalled by the budget cuts threatening every municipal agency.

The Neighborhood Emergency Response Team program — NERT — surpassed its annual goal of training 2,000 volunteers in four of the past five years and aims to increase participation by 25 percent this year. In addition to financial concerns, NERT’s biggest challenges are its dependence on word-of-mouth promotion and the language barriers that isolate people throughout the city. And yet, the program, which is run by the San Francisco Fire Department, is making strides in training volunteers and recruiting team leaders in underserved districts.