When is Water NOT Water?
When it happens to be in San Francisco.
This is the kind of thing that sends architects and engineers who do things right in San Francisco over the proverbial edge.
In or about 1994, a developer cut a steep hill at about a 70% slope. At the OK of a famous Soils Engineer.
His nephew, a contractor and all of them part of the"Irish Mafia" in San Francisco, was building about 5 homes at the bottom of the hill - one of them for the San Francisco Police Chief.
One day, the hill fell into the homes, some being lived in Including the Police Chief's....he was living there at the time!
That's right.
That nephew was the husband of a coworker, he had no work, and I got him a house job on existing foundations on a hill in Corte Madera, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge...no way to have that happen to him again.....
Fast Forward to 1994. A Developer ramrodded his development of three huge homes into the same hill, one quarter the way around the hill, cutting deep into the hillside with a retaining wall.
See the photo above for that development.
Trouble is, he didn't waterproof it. The video below is the result.
It was shown in public meetings in the late 1990's and the local newspapers carried photos of some of the video...
See the water coming out???? In numerous places????
You can actually hear it pouring out!!!!
The Building Inspectors, when confronted by angry neighbors across the street....said that "that wasn't water."
Oh, yes.......
And so did the Planning Commission....
So what was it, pray tell????
Juice? Gas? Hot Springs - but that would be water too!
Come on guys, water is water!
It's amazing to watch this!
