At least one large pane of glass from Fox Plaza came crashing down to the street near Civic Center Wednesday morning in what appears to be the first wind-related hazard on San Francisco streets due to the current storm.
The San Francisco Fire Department tweeted at 11:14 a.m. Wednesday that "large pieces of glass" were falling off the Fox Plaza tower. A photo subsequently posted by the department shows a missing window on one of the top-most stories, somewhere around the 26th or 27th floor.
The upper portion of the building is residential, with mostly sliding-glass doors that open on to small terraces, but other plate-glass windows line the narrow edge of the tower as well. The lower half of the building is office space with plate-glass windows — a good bit of which is currently vacant.
The SFFD couldn't confirm whether the falling glass was weather-related, but given that there have already been some heavy wind gusts so far in the storm, this seems likely — and the SFFD calls it "highly possible."
UPDATE: THIS INCIDENT HAS BEEN RESOLVED WITH NO INJURIES IT IS UNKNOWN AT THIS TIME IF THIS IS WIND-RELATED- HIGHLY POSSIBLE THOUGH @SFPD @SF_emergency https://t.co/yEq9XYPyyZ pic.twitter.com/Tg3m4IIfiv
— SAN FRANCISCO FIRE DEPARTMENT MEDIA (@SFFDPIO) January 4, 2023
Luckily there were no injuries linked to this incident, but be aware if you need to be downtown today that this type of thing can happen in high winds!
Back in February 2020, high winds took out a big pane of glass from the 41st story of Millennium Tower, which went crashing down at Mission and Fremont. That luckily also did not cause any injuries.
A big piece of glass came off of The Avery at First and Folsom later that year, at the height of the pandemic, but that happened while the window was under repair.
Photo: dead.rabbit/Wikimedia
