Introduction
The Microsoft Crowdstrike outage was enough to momentarily cripple the world. But what would happen if tech giants like Meta, Google, and Apple faced disaster? Can Silicon Valley survive an earthquake along the San Andreas Fault Line?
Today, Silicon Valley serves as the Olympus for the world’s greatest tech giants, housing companies like Google, Apple, Meta, and more. These companies have become indispensable in maintaining the invisible systems that keep society running. But what happens if Silicon Valley encounters a disaster it has no control over?
Underneath Silicon Valley is the San Andreas Fault Line, one of the most infamous zones for seismic activity on planet Earth. The fault line is known to build up to a devastating earthquake every 100 to 150 years. Experts agree that we are due for another Big One to hit the area.
Of course, the residents haven’t been complacent in preparing for the earthquake. Features of engineering like the United States Geological Survey Earthquake Early Warning System keep us up to date on the seismic movements along the fault line. Buildings are slowly being updated with Base Isolators, which act as shock absorbers and reduce the amount of seismic force transferred to the building during an earthquake.
However, even these extensive measures may not be enough. Buildings may be up to modern regulations, but with an earthquake as big as the one expected, it’s still likely they will suffer extensive damage.
If the Microsoft Crowdstrike outage was enough to cripple airlines, healthcare, and other vital IT systems all over the world, what would happen if Silicon Valley is struck by a large-scale disaster? Can Silicon Valley survive an earthquake along the San Andreas Fault Line?
Any masonry left in houses would crack. A few houses near the baylands and in filled-in areas would settle a bit. If you’re including SF as well then maybe a few more old Victorians would suffer. However, we’ve learned so much from both the 1906 quake and 1989 quake that the damage would likely be limited.
The worst thing that might happen is a gas line leak and potentially a fire. However, we learned from a leak a few years back and have been retrofitting pipes ever since.
In short, people would be freaked out, maybe power might go out for a few days, some chimneys would crack, and our towners would be freaked out. Basically about the same as what happens when another part of the country gets hit with a big storm, just not seasonal.
As a Supply Chain Professional, I have traveled around the world and have found that earthquakes, floods, coups, and volcano eruptions happen while you are on the road. I was also born in Chile, which gave me a chance to experience a couple of “the Big Ones!”
Even though as Californians we are proud to live in Earthquake Country, we have no clue of what a big one is. First, a magnitude 6 or 7 is not a big one. Not for most newer cities.
The San Andreas Fault is long overdue for the big one and in my humble opinion, we are not prepared.
Keep in mind that the big one (magnitude 7.8 to 8.2+) is not just one quake. Typically, hundreds of aftershocks follow for months, and things don’t go back to normal until after one year. If we were to have an 8.2, we should expect that large aftershocks will most likely follow.
If you look back at the last few big ones in the world over the last few years, they all have been marked by a loss of life and short-term economic paralysis followed by years of recovery (Japan 9.3, Indonesia 9.0, Chile 8.8, to mention a few).
One of the “positive” things about the San Andreas fault is that is mostly under land, inland. So contrary to what the movie San Andreas dramatically showed, the chances of tsunami are close to zero for California, which is what has caused the most deaths in previous quakes.
The negative aspect of the San Andreas is that runs under or close to major markets such as Silicon Valley and LA among other very important cities/markets.
The largest earthquake I experienced was in 2010, an 8.8 in Chile, while on the 12th floor of a building. I also experienced the 6.7 Northridge, California where I lived less than 10 miles from the epicenter (my College and office were in Northridge) back in 1994. The difference between a 6.7 and 8.8 are exponentially higher but also one lasted less than 30 seconds and the other more than 4 minutes.
So what should a company in Silicon Valley should do?
Disaster Dry Run
Custom-system builders this year got a taste of what might happen if an earthquake in Southern California were to damage either the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports or the infrastructure that surrounds them.
A work slowdown and eventual stoppage between November and February, which impacted the 29 ports on the West Coast, meant that components used for building systems were stuck on ships in the harbors of Los Angeles and Long Beach instead of getting to the warehouses.
Todd Swank, senior director of product marketing at Equus Computer Systems, a Minneapolis-based custom-system builder that has its main production facilities in the Los Angeles suburb of the City of Industry, said the company was scrambling for components during that time.
“In the City of Industry, you have warehouse after warehouse of suppliers, which makes our supply chain efficient,” Swank told CRN. “Just-in-time manufacturing becomes easy when so many manufacturers are located together. But take away that supply, and think about the logistics mess. Wipe out that supply, and the industry would take years to recover.”
The impact of the short-term closure of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports was felt in the Silicon Valley area as well.
Andrew Kretzer, director of sales and marketing at Bold Data Technology, a Fremont, Calif.-based custom-system builder, told CRN via email that the port closures had a huge impact because of inventory delays experienced by key suppliers.
Smaller components could be shipped via air freight to bypass the port strike, but larger, heavier items that needed to be sent via sea cargo were in severe shortage,” Kretzer wrote.
Losses for Bold Data included potential new business as the company had to focus on servicing existing customers, Kretzer wrote.
“Additionally, we needed to pay out a tremendous amount of overtime,” he wrote. “We had to meet customer deadlines and as our suppliers delivered components many weeks after they were scheduled, we had to stuff six weeks of orders into one week. It wasn’t pretty, but we did it by working around the clock, weekends and holidays.”