Pictured: The right image shows the 50-foot collapse of the Bay Bridge, and the left picture shows the 1.6-mile collapse of the Cypress Freeway in Oakland.
I wasn’t yet born when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco on October 17th, 1989 (34 years ago tomorrow!), but my mom has shared her account many times throughout my growing up. At the time, she was 24 years old, working as a canvasser for an environmental organization. She would go door-to-door and spread awareness concerning environmental issues.
Ironically, as she was approaching a door to discuss the risk of certain environmental hazards– another kind of environmental hazard struck. She was canvassing in the hills of Marin County, a particularly steep sloped, and precarious architectural area in the Bay Area. Most houses are partly on stilts to root them to the edge of the hills. Large telephone poles and rocky slopes tower over one-way windy streets.
My mom remembers raising her hand to knock on a door and feeling a sudden rumbling below her feet. Her initial thought was that these residents must own a large dog warning her not to bother them. When the house began to shake with much more intensity, she thought: “Wow! This must be a really large dog!” However, a man’s shout from the street quickly alerted her attention to the rolling concrete. She remembers the stranger yelling for her to move down the rickety wooden staircase onto the road, yet after looking at the swaying telephone poles and mapping their path to fall into the street, she opted to stay on the porch to wait out the quake. (A potentially risky decision, yet there was no suitable cover to take in her circumstances).
After the shaking stopped, my mom continued her canvassing route. She and her canvassing group had a designated meet-up time for a few hours later, and since there weren’t yet cell phones to communicate, the only option was to continue on. However, instead of giving her regular spiel when she knocked on doors, she asked the residents to watch the news alongside them to find out what she could concerning the safety of her friends and home.
The Loma Prieta Earthquake lasted 15-20 seconds and was a magnitude 6.9 earthquake, with an epicenter on the San Andreas Fault in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The epicenter was approximately nine miles northeast of Santa Cruz and 60 miles southeast of San Francisco. There were 63 fatalities and 3,757 injuries. These were due in part to the 50-foot section of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge collapsing onto the lower deck, and the collapse of a 1.6-mile section of the upper deck of the Cypress Freeway in Oakland.
San Francisco’s property damage was extreme with 963 houses destroyed and 8,300 damaged. In the Marina District, built on a landfill from the 1906 earthquake and the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, seven residential buildings collapsed due to fire. This porous ground was prone to liquefaction – soil boiled out from the ground covering the streets the following day.
I vividly remember my babysitter warning me of the tactics to use if an earthquake were to occur and I happened to be driving on the Bay Bridge. She warned me that if I were trapped in a car underwater I should roll down the window and swim out, rather than trying to open the door. Advice such as this stayed with me and every time I’d drive over the bridge growing up I’d close my eyes and remember my training, anticipating a major earthquake. Though I wasn’t alive at the time, Loma Prieta shaped my and many others' consciousness of earthquake safety measures.
References
Loma Prieta earthquake. Loma Prieta Earthquake. https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/loma-prieta-earthquake/
Remembering the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, 33 years later. (2022, October 18). https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/loma-prieta-earthquake-33-years-later/3032484/
Voices of Loma Prieta: Hear stories from the 1989 earthquake. (2019, October 17). The San Francisco Chronicle. https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2019/loma-prieta-voices/
That's a crazy story! I always think about what I would do if I was at a random location during a natural disaster, and my conclusion has always been that I'd handle it poorly. I'm glad that the houses she was canvassing were kind enough to let her watch the news with them; it shows a nice moment of solidarity during times of turmoil.
ReplyDeleteIt's so interesting to hear that there is a warning associated with this earthquake! I read that for the Loma Prieta earthquake there were foreshocks of magnitude 5.3 and 5.4 about 3 miles away from the epicenter of the 6.9 earthquake. Even though they occurred on separate faults and months before the main shocks, apparently seismologists consider them foreshocks due to their proximity to the main shock! Did your mum ever mention feeling these foreshocks? What ended up being the damage to her home?
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to think about the changes that happened to infrastructure as a result of this earthquake. Obviously, the bridge that was destroyed or the houses that crumbled would be replaced by more earthquake prepared structures, and future infrastructure would be better prepared as well, but what about the existing structures that survived? Would people be concerned enough about an earthquake to make changes to their houses? Would it even be affordable? And do houses that aren't up to current standards become difficult to sell as a result, because they could be deemed dangerous?
ReplyDeleteReading about a hazard in times when communication was not as efficient really encapsulates how dire these situations were. It's really interesting to read an actual account of an earthquake along the San Andreas fault after watching such a dramatized hypothetical in the movie. The specific statistics regarding the damages and the fatalities really put into perspective how overwhelming the quake was. I am happy your mom is okay and could watch the news to understand what was going on. This was a really insightful post!
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