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by argumentum 4681 days ago
The "City" of San Francisco (though it does contain a big chunk of the tech industry and houses many of it's employees) is not the whole "Silicon Valley".

Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Y-Combinator, Stanford, Yahoo, etc are all located in the South Bay and (may or may not be, the article doesn't specify) affected by the fires.
2 comments
jcl 4681 days ago
Don't know about the power grid, but about half the water supply in Mountain View comes from local wells, so it would not be as affected as SF, but part of the rest comes from Hetch Hetchy, so there could still be problems. Not sure if local resources get reallocated in emergencies.

http://www.valleywater.org/Services/CleanReliableWater.aspx

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davidw 4680 days ago
Most people think hackers don't have good personal hygiene skills anyway, so I think those companies could skate for a little bit if push came to shove...
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flomo 4681 days ago
Most of the 'Silicon Valley' cities get at least some of their water from the Hetch Hetchy system.

This report is an economic scenario analysis, and estimates the probable effects on the Bay Area economy of a major failure of the San Francisco Public Utility Commission’s Hetch Hetchy water system,

http://www.bayeconfor.org/pdf/hetchhetchyfinal2.pdf (map on pg 4)

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