5-alarm fire burning at high-rise building on 4th Street near China Basin in San Francisco

abclocal.go.com ^ | 3/11/14

[vette6387]

“If you think a 5 to 10 story building is a high rise, then I can’t help your ignorance.”

I didn’t say that, the author of the article did!!! I guess your inattention ( or ignorance) is showing, or your reading skills need attention.

[vette6387]

“Who hires millions of low wage illegal construction workers, which drove the wages down in the entire industry?”

Well, I’m going to jump in here, because like it or not, SF is a serious union town particularly when it comes to construction trades. You won’t find illegals working construction in SF unless the’ve been here for a generation or more. As for wages, in construction, they are sky-high.

[dragnet2]

wages, in construction, they are sky-high.

BS.

[dragnet2]

You won’t find illegals working construction in SF

Double BS.

[dragnet2]

I see you have been around since 1998, so you belong here

That's mighty nice of you after suggesting I'm pro biggov and I should be zotted....Gezzz. BTW, It doesnt' matter a whit how long I've been here.

You have to be one of the most ignorant posters here and that was clearly established in #83, 88, 85, 89, 91, and 92.

Enough!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Here's a good map of the original shoreline along the Embarcadero. Montgomery used to be waterfront!

The accompanying story is about

[roadcat]

Thanks, but the link doesn't work. Doesn't matter, I'm a native-born San Franciscan, well versed in the history. I had an office for maybe 5 years on the waterfront, in a high-rise at Steuart and Mission overlooking the bay, about 100 feet from Embarcadero. I miss sitting at my desk looking out the window at Treasure Island and the bridge. That was built on bay fill. Right across the street on Mission is an SF historical museum display, with artifacts and narratives about items dug up during building of skyscrapers in the area. Every time they built a new building, they found artifacts from ships and 49'ers from the gold rush era. One building I watched being built was about five blocks inland on Market; they found practically an entire ship underground. There used to be numerous creeks and lakes all over SF, most are gone.

My last year at that office at the waterfront, the City sold off a bus storage lot between my office and the wharf, and a seven or eight story hotel was built on that lot. They took forever pile driving numerous piles trying to reach bedrock. They sunk a bunch of piles close together at angles, like a pyramid and joined them together, at many spots for a foundation. So instead of individual piles, you saw numerous clusters of piles. Have not seen anything like that at other building sites.

There exists a documentary about a socialite woman who lived in the Oakland hills in the 1950s and 1960s, who in spare time used a telescope to look at the bay shoreline from her home. She was alarmed at all the bay fill going on, seeing lots of dumping activity into the bay to expand real estate. The bay had shrunken to about one-third it's original size, and she estimated that within maybe 75 years the entire bay would be gone. She used her connections to get municipalities to ban bay filling. She's largely responsible for the movement to restore wetlands around the bay, including converting salt ponds to marshland. Not all environmentalists are whack jobs; she did a good thing otherwise there would be no more bay, just a few small rivers. One of my daughters works at a biotech firm on the bay shore, that shore originally had been a dump site. That was all cleaned up, and they created a landscaped walking trail and pedestrian bridges over creeks formerly polluted with concrete and demolition debris. Absolutely gorgeous walking trail to walk and picnic at.