Bay Area residents know that the peninsula is located in prime earthquake territory. A Business Insider report states that there’s a 76 percent chance that the region will be hit with an earthquake more severe than the destructive Loma Prieta quake in 1989.

It’s not a matter of if, but when, according to Mary Comerio, an architect who conducts earthquake engineering research and a professor of disaster recovery and reconstruction at the University of California, Berkeley.  

Comerio says that the potential impact of a deadly earthquake in San Francisco would be severe, as much of the city’s soil is soft and marshy. Underneath dense apartments and garages, the soil would buckle like a liquid. Seismologists call this phenomenon liquefaction, and this issue poses a threat to most neighborhoods along San Francisco’s eastern shoreline, as well as a strip of land on the western coast. For this reason, Comerio will never move to a home near the waterfront.

Some of the neighborhoods on Comerio’s no-no list include the Embarcadero, Mission Bay, Dogpatch, and Hunter’s Point.