If a major earthquake struck San Francisco today and cast thousands of residents out onto the streets, would City Hall create endless task forces to study the problem? Call for hearings and reports? Create new positions to come up with plans — eventually?

Let’s hope not.

So why does that comprise so much of the city’s response to its dire homeless crisis, its devastating mental health emergency and its horrifying drug situation?

What if we treated homelessness like any other major disaster — a temblor or a fire or a hurricane? There would be a massive crisis center where people would be triaged for physical health care, mental health care and housing needs. There would be shelter beds, showers, toilets and food. In short, there’d be somewhere to go.

It’s the stuff of Kara Zordel’s dreams. And, hey, it’s better than our current nightmare.

Regular readers may remember Zordel. I wrote about her nearly two years ago when she was experiencing a crisis of her own.

She’d been struck down by a mysterious neurological condition that caused seizures, tremors and falls, and she had to quit her job as CEO of Project Homeless Connect, the bi-monthly one-stop shop for homeless people to receive services.

She and her husband had separated due to the strain her illness caused on their marriage. Without her job or health insurance, she couldn’t afford the pricey medical care she needed or the rent on her Bernal Heights home.

Devastated, she left San Francisco for a beach town in Spain to decompress and access cheaper health care.

“I’m going to ‘Eat Pray Love’ the s— out of this,” Zordel said back then.

But her story turned out very differently than Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 bestselling memoir. While Gilbert found an entirely new life, Zordel’s is remarkably similar to where she began. While she still has no diagnosis, her symptoms have eased due to an FDA-approved ultrasound device that destroys brain tissue in a tiny area responsible for causing tremors.

Now, she’s back in San Francisco, back with her husband and back as a CEO of a homeless nonprofit — Community Forward SF.

With about $10 million annually in city funding, the nonprofit — until recently known as Community Assessment and Treatment Services — runs services for homeless people including supportive housing, a drop-in center and a shelter.

I spent time with Zordel the other day at the nonprofit’s medical respite and sobering facility on Mission Street, which is run jointly with the San Francisco Department of Public Health. The medical respite part of the facility can accommodate 78 people suffering physical distress; diabetes, dementia, cancer and kidney disease are common among the street population. Doctors and nurses are on hand at the center, and vans can take patients to hospitals for major treatment like chemotherapy.

Next door, 14 people who are high or drunk can rest under supervision at the sobering center. The facilities have washing machines, toilets, showers and food.

They’re not the ultimate solution for homeless people — that’s permanent supportive housing or a reunification with family elsewhere or residential mental health care or drug treatment. But it’s clear that they’re better than wasting away on the streets, waiting for a brighter future that often never comes.

Zordel firmly believes that in a city struggling to build new shelters and supportive housing, there needs to be a much larger crisis center open 24/7 where people can be triaged for help.

She says that if she was “queen for a day” there would be a massive crisis center capable of sheltering thousands of people on separate floors depending on their needs. There would be medical staff, drug treatment experts and social workers on hand. People could stay as long as they need to figure out their next step.

“If this happened from a natural disaster, we would be looking at this from another way and say, ‘Let’s build this center tomorrow,’” she said. “It makes me wonder if this is a class thing.”

It’s clear thousands of people in San Francisco need immediate help. The city’s new homeless count found 5,180 people sleeping on the streets, in parks or in their cars. And the longer they’re outside, the worse their health becomes.

“Every day they’re unsheltered, we add more cost to get them back to health and reintegrate them back into the community,” Zordel said. “We can’t just wait for housing. People are getting more and more ill, and they won’t be ready for housing unless we start treating them with services now.”

The trickiest part, of course, is finding a location for such a crisis center. Considering the massive pushback from neighbors over any proposed facility, even just a temporary shelter for 200 people, it’s hard to fathom any neighborhood welcoming a crisis center.

Zordel imagines leasing a downtown office building. Laguna Honda Hospital has unused space — and there will be even more if the adjacent juvenile hall shuts down as planned. More than one reader has suggested the Cow Palace, golf courses or a decommissioned cruise ship.

Former Mayor Art Agnos has suggested a mothballed Navy ship. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, newly homeless people were temporarily housed at the Moscone Convention Center and then on an aircraft carrier called the USS Peleliu.

Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said he thinks the Glen Park BART station parking lot could be developed and used for housing, including for the homeless. He also raised the question of using parts of Golden Gate or McLaren parks.

He’s not wild about one major crisis center, pointing to the notorious chaos at the Superdome following Hurricane Katrina. Still, he said, there could be a middle ground between Zordel’s idea and the snail’s pace of opening small facilities now.

“It’s absolutely true we don’t act like it’s a crisis,” he said.

Asked about a big crisis center on a ship or elsewhere, Tanya Ellis, spokeswoman for the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, said over email that she couldn’t comment.

Bevan Dufty, the former homelessness czar, is a big fan of Zordel and her “unbelievable energy, drive and insight.” But he doesn’t sound like a big fan of her idea. He said smaller sites work better for neighborhoods and homeless people themselves.

“The more people you have, the more issues and challenges you have in close quarters,” Dufty said.

He did agree, though, that there need to be more places for people in crisis to go for immediate help and basic services. Former Mayor Gavin Newsom shuttered several drop-in centers during the recession, and now there are few places for homeless people to be during the day other than libraries, some churches and sidewalks. The city has focused its money and energy on opening supportive housing units and navigation centers, which are open all day, rather than re-opening facilities used just during the day.

On a sidewalk outside Zordel’s medical respite center on a recent afternoon, a 70-year-old Vietnam vet named Tom sat in his wheelchair just passing time. Asked what brought him to the center several months ago, he said, “desperation.”

“I went about 20 years without asking anybody for anything — that was my fault,” he said, adding he appreciates the medical staff reminding him when to take his many pills. “And they feed us and they give us a roof over our head.”

Zordel kneeled down and put her hand on his arm.

“If you see me, you just say, ‘Hey, I need something!’” she told him. “I’m here to help you.”

Zordel, always incredibly compassionate, said she has an even deeper understanding of homeless people after falling into such a deep hole herself. She is managing to slowly pull herself out — and she thinks San Francisco can more quickly pull more people out, too.

“I’ve been given a second chance to come back and, hopefully, be that advocate for change,” she continued. “If I get that opportunity, this is going to be the greatest blessing I could ever be given in life.”

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf