Two earthquakes rattled the ocean floor near the San Francisco Zoo on Saturday, with a magnitude 3.0 hitting first around 4:40 p.m. followed by a 2.7, according to SFist, which tracked reports of weak shaking in the area. No damage or injuries were reported.
The quakes came on a weekend already packed with Bay Area news, starting with a story that has gripped the region since a gunman opened fire at the White House Press Dinner.
Cole Tomas Allen, a 31-year-old teacher from Southern California, told investigators that security at the event was virtually non-existent. Nobody stopped him. He walked in carrying multiple weapons and said no one questioned him at any point. A photo circulating online shows Allen handcuffed in his boxers and socks, which has led some observers to speculate he used the old Hollywood waiter trick to blend in with event staff before the shooting.
Closer to home, San Francisco residents should brace for a significant hit to their monthly water and sewage bills. The city plans to raise rates by nearly 25% over the next two years, with increases continuing through the next decade. For a typical single-family household, that means the monthly bill climbs from $171 now to $189 this summer, then jumps again to $212 by next summer. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission manages the city’s water system and has been warning for years that aging infrastructure upgrades would eventually force rate hikes of this scale.
Meanwhile, a political play in the East Bay didn’t go as planned. The effort to persuade all Democratic candidates in the special election for the congressional seat left vacant by former Representative Eric Swalwell to step aside in favor of a single caretaker candidate has collapsed. The seat remains contested, and the race now heads forward with the full Democratic field intact.
BART riders planning to travel Sunday hit a snag. The Red Line and Green Line are both out of service all day for lighting work, with service set to resume Monday. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system has posted service alerts directing passengers to bus bridges, but weekend riders know those can stretch a 20-minute train ride into something much longer. Plan ahead.
In Mountain View, around 75 addresses have been without water since Friday after a construction crew contaminated the main water line. Residents are still waiting. Comprehensive drinking water safety testing won’t wrap up until at least Monday, leaving dozens of households scrambling for bottled water through the weekend. The Santa Clara Valley Water District oversees regional water quality standards and coordinates with local utilities on contamination responses, though the Mountain View outage falls under the city’s own water service.
Up in Marin County, Novato Police are searching for an older woman suspected of hitting an eight-year-old riding a bike and then driving away from the scene Friday afternoon. The child’s condition wasn’t immediately available. Anyone with information can contact Novato Police directly.
It was, in short, a Saturday that reminded Bay Area residents how many different things can go wrong at once: a double earthquake off Ocean Beach, a political deal that fell apart, a shooting suspect who apparently walked past security with guns in his hands, and a neighborhood in Mountain View that still can’t turn on the tap. The region’s water systems, transit lines, and political races don’t rest on weekends, and neither do the people who depend on all three to function properly every single day.