The thing that was so miraculous about it was the Series was between the SF Giants and the Oakland A’s, and the quake hit a few minutes after most people would have gotten off work. Because so many people in the area wanted to see the Series many had left work early. Many of us thought that if it hadn’t been for that there would been more people on the roads and freeways and bridges and more injuries or deaths. We were grateful for any small favors we saw.
@@berkeleygirllaserbeam I've always thought that the game saved a lot of lives. Where normally there would a lot of cars on the roads because of the games people had left work early and were either home, at friends' or bars, or at the game.
I was living and working in SF when this happened. My family has lived in these parts for about 200 years now. I had family living in SF during the 1906 quake, too. After the 1989 quake our house was yellow-tagged, meaning they weren’t sure yet whether it would be safe permanently and needed further inspection, and the building I worked in was red-tagged, meaning too damaged to work in until repairs could be made, assuming it could be repaired. Amazingly I had something that belonged to the survivors of the 1906 quake in each room of the house, and those were the only items that seemed to be undisturbed. I have to add, at the time I don’t recall anyone being worried about the money. We were worried about the people on the Cypress freeway. I remember them every year on October 17th and drink a toast to their memories at exactly 5:04 pm. I always add my thanks that I survived and the people,e I love survived, including someone who was on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.
We lived through the 1989 earthquake and it was terrifying! My younger brother who worked for my older brother as a tow truck driver, helped crawl into the cypress structure where the upper deck completely collapsed down onto the lower level. He crawled in where two children were trapped in a vehicle and the childrens mother and aunt were deceased in the front seat. He used special bags they inflate to upright big trucks, but they used them to stabilize the upper deck which had come down on top of the car killing the two adults and trapping the two children in the back seat. He kept the bags inflated while a pediatric surgeon amputated the little boys leg, unfortunately it was trapped under the front seat and that was the only way to get the boy out! His sister was removed with only minor injuries. My brother risked his own life going in, inflating the bags before the doctor came in to operate on the boy. He is our family hero! Love him! His name is Rodger Berry, he is a great man! ♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️
Thanks for the insights! The San Francisco Chronicle’s “Not Your Century” did a great three-part series on Loma Prieta, and brought this story up. I was in 1st grade at the time, down at Hellyer Park in San Jose when it hit. It was a lot easier for us closer to the epicenter, because we were on solid rock and not silt or landfill.
Kabir- remember-1989-- no smartphones, no internet to speak of. Radio and TV and landline phones were all we had. The "Cypress Structure" they speak of was a double deck freeway- the top deck collapsed onto the bottom deck - sandwiching the cars in between layers. I changed jobs and moved 3 months before the quake, before the change I lived in the Marina district and commuted to Oakland via the Cypress Structure -
I’m from the East Bay, so I definitely experienced this quake. I was 8 years old and I can vividly remember every second of it. Early evening, before dinner when all hell broke loose. No major damage for my house, except I vividly remember a large fish tank we had sloshing water all over the place as I hid under the dinning room table with my brother. My mom was in the doorway between the kitchen and dinning room trying to hold back a large China hutch we had from tipping over. My dad was coming home from work, and at first thought his tires went out. (He didn’t think earthquake at first). The World series being played by 2 Bay Area teams SAVED a lot of lives. Lots of people had gone home early so they could watch the game. If it wasn’t for the World Series, the Bay Bridge, and Cypress freeway would have been waaay more congested. As sad as the death toll was, it could have been worse. California is HUGE we have earthquakes every day. Nearly all of them are micro-quakes that you can’t feel. Those measuring around 5 maybe around the Bay Area happen like under 5 times a year. Larger ones are rare. Like once in a lifetime rare. The 89 quake is now considered a moderate quake. But, we learn so much from them. Building regulations, highway/bridge building, has become a lot safer. High rise buildings are required to be able to withstand moderate to large quakes. The reason the cypress collapsed was because it was an old structure that didn’t take quakes into consideration when it was built. (Too rigid) The Maria district in San Francisco burned and collapsed because the whole area was built on landfill. Not solid ground. Of course, the “big one” is coming, and we are over due. 😧 Hopefully, we are prepared as much as we can be. 🤞
I was 9, also in the East Bay. Your dad with the tires made me laugh, because I was in the car with my mom, and our car was a piece of crap, always breaking down so of course the first thing we thought was, “great, now what’s wrong with the car?!” Then we looked around and realized every car in the parking lot was bouncing up and down. It was a really long earthquake - around 30 seconds I think. Normally by the time you notice them, they’re over. That one, you had time to think, “what’s that? Is that an earthquake? Yep, and it’s a big one. Oh shit, it’s still going…” That and the Oakland hills fire are the biggest disasters I remember from growing up in the Bay Area.
In case you couldn't tell, the Cypress bridge is the one where most of the top-level collapsed onto the bottom level, and the Bay Bridge is the one where a part broke down towards the bottom level. The Cypress bridge was never replaced after this. The Golden Gate didn't collapse thankfully.
ESPN films did a short video about the World Series that that was going on in when this happened… ironically, it was TWO San Francisco area teams playing (SF and Oakland) and the game probably saved lots of lives as so many were gathered there instead of in traffic. The series was postponed for weeks, and the players give really good insight from that time.
I lived in L.A. for 7 years and small earthquakes happen all the time. Large quakes like this one are rare, so that's why people take their chances living there.
Yeah, they're rare, I spent the majority of my summers as a child in Southern California [Mira Mesa, Top Gun U.S A.] and felt 3-4quakes (not including temors/aftershocks). I'M 46.5 yro
No they are not rare. You haven't lived there long enough. Calif is long due for more, been decades, just wait. You will eat your words. From a survivor of multiple large ones.
I've lived in L.A. for 31 years now, and yes, we get a lot of quakes out here. Most of them are very small, so small that you don't even notice them. If you're out driving, your vehicle's shock absorbers will absorb the small quakes so that you don't even know one was happening. Once in a while, a slightly larger one will occur that you do feel, and most of the time, they're of short duration, or low intensity. The usual response to those is along the lines of, "Oh, wait...yep, there's one of them." Not especially frightening or jarring. The ones that start doing real damage are very rare. In 31 years, I've experienced two of those, and one of them (the 1994 Northridge Earthquake) really did a number at its epicenter. Even so, that one wasn't close to what happened in San Fran in '89. So yes, there are risks involved in living out here, but compared with the hurricanes that regularly churn up the East Coast and the South, or the tornadoes that go through the Midwest, on balance the risks are pretty low by comparison. Ironically, the first earthquake I ever experienced was when I was a kid, in my old home state of Massachusetts. Now THAT was unusual. Massachusetts isn't known for its temblors
as a person who lives in tornado prone area.. shelter under ground is helpful. with quakes, not so much. and of course advance warnings are very helpful too.
As a Native Californian, I would choose earthquake over tornado anyday. As long as something doesn't fall or fly at you, depending on the type, you are good. I softly experienced the San Fran and the Northridge earthquakes, ... I moved a way for a bit and my home town got hit hard and one person died. I moved back 5 years ago, and have only experienced very mild earthquakes. Sounds like a ghost truck crashed into the side of the house.
The odds of a tornado hitting your house are actually incredibly low (I've seen 1 in 10 million as the odds). Structures have to be in the path of the tornado and the tornado has to be close enough to the ground and strong enough to cause damage. This rules out the vast majority from causing damage of any significance. So I would say the risk of being impacted by a tornado is also pretty low. I live in an area that gets tornadoes for what it's worth.
As a native San Franciscan who was in downtown SF when it hit, I totally agree. One of my weather apps also reads earthquakes and we're getting tiny ones almost every day but they're too small to be felt.
This traumatized me as a pre-teen... the Bridge collapse stories hit me the hardest. We couldn't get through to our Grandparents up in Monterey, but they were ok, just a crack in their fireplace. We were farther south, on the Central Coast, and it had everything swinging even 4 hours south.
Tragic thing was they had done a study and found that sections of the Cypress freeway were susceptible to collapse during a major earthquake. The design of sections were inadequate to withstand forces in a quake. It was known but the cost to retro fit and strengthen the structure was deemed to high and so it was put on the shelf.
This is common unfortunately. The same with the Oroville Dam Spillway in 2016. They knew about the poor structural integrity in like 1987 or something and it had been repeatedly shelved until then. Then the massive flooding in the area finally caused the spillway to crumble. They need to stop doing shit like that. It always costs more to fix after a disaster than to repair before one.
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 the problem is the powers that be would ask you wanna pay for it? Let's worry about it in a few years. Its been fine for the last X number of years so it'll be fine for the next few years.
1989- I was in the SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS where it started. Running wind sprints at high school for soccer. Mayhem trying to get home on those mountain roads after.
I was born and raised in Oakland,CA that's right across the bay from S.F. I was a 17 year old high school senior who had cut school that day and was on my way home riding on the BART train (Bay Area Rapid Transit) that's our local train system. I was on in between stations on the raised tracks and felt the train starting to shake then it starting shaking more and more aggressively to where I though we were going to fall off the tracks and drop down about 60 plus feet. The devastation of destruction in less than 1 minute. The Cypress freeway was about 1 mile from my grandmothers house. That shook me to the core. Earthquakes are unpredictable. You don't know when, where or for how long they will last.
I was 26 and working in Emeryville on a swing shift. I was going to go downtown Oakland to pick up my dinner & watch the World Series back at the office. We had a couple of sick calls and my boss ordered food to be delivered so I wouldn't need to leave. She saved my life, because my return route would've been the Cypress freeway structure at that time. My fiance worked the local ambulance company. He and others were helping people from the collapsed structure. He spoke about listening to people cry for help then go silent because they couldn't be reached.
In a previous reaction to crazy sports moments you were wondering what happened during a baseball game- this was the earthquake that affected the World Series and caused that issue
The San Francisco earthquake was in 1906. This, despite what the video says, was the Loma Prieta earthquake. The epicenter was in the Santa Cruz mountains, 69 miles to the south of San Francisco. Santa Cruz became a tent city for quite a while after.
It happened during the World Series, which was between San Francisco and Oakland that year. A fairnumber of people took off work early, so the traffic on the Bay Bridge and the Cypress structure was unusually light. I was in the South Bay, even with Loma Prieta in the valley.. I watched light standards doing a several foot wave back and forth. My landlady had a collection of Depression Glass that I helped the clean up with a scoop shovel.
It depends on the size. If you mean 1.5 or higher it's usually over 10,000 per year statewide. If you are talking about 5.5 or higher usually 2-3 a year on average.The one in this video was a 6.9.
The 1989 was a 6.9. I think of quakes like thunderstorms. I count, the longer the count, the stronger and closer to the epicenter. The Northridge quake was about an 8.5. Landers (1992?) was about a 6. At this point I'd rather be in an earthquake than a tornado. I currently live on the far edge of Tornado Alley and get the heavy rains from hurricanes.
I STILL have nightmares about that Quake. We lived not far away from the epicenter. Didn't see my parents for a few weeks because were they worked there wasn't any access back for that long. Santa Cruz had an entire street of older shops just turned to rubble. There's a picture of President Bush standing on the rubble. Me and my brother were watching that game in the video on TV, it was The World Series between both Bay Area Teams!!! The San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. It took years to get the damage cleared etc.
My grandparents lived in the Marina District, one of the worst affected areas. You can see how buildings in the Marina pancaked down from three floors to just one @2.57 and @6.11. Luckily their building survived more or less intact, but being in their 90s, they were pretty helpless. My mother eventually managed to reach them the next morning, and bring them to her place in Redwood City. I flew out from the East coast to help, and because we had family in the Marina, we were able to get past the tight security cordon and I was able to see the devastation first hand. It was truly incredible. When you see the video of the Cypress structure @ 3.37, you have to envisage that this was a dual deck highway, with one roadway over the other. The top roadway totally collapsed, and fell onto the lower level, crushing everything beneath it. This is where 2/3rds of the deaths occurred. It was never rebuilt.
This happened during the World Series, which happened to be between the two teams in that area and they were playing right there. If it was a regular day, many more should have been on those highways and many more would have died.
@@kabirconsiders Ultimately that game may have saved lives because people were gathered around TV sets in their homes or at bars instead of out on the streets and bridges. The death toll could have been far worse on the Bay Bridge on any other day.
I live in the East Bay, and lived through this earthquake. I was at work at the library, and saw the building sail up and down. My husband was in our backyard, and saw the house shake like matchsticks. He reinforced the foundation within a year after that! Looking at this video brings tears to my eyes and brings me back to the extreme chaos and devastation that occurred. I have two family members who, separately, drove through the Cypress structure just minutes before the collapse. This level of earthquake, 6.9 on the Richter scale, hasn't happened in the SF Bay Area in the more than 30 years since then, so we are overdue for another one ... but we don't know if it will be soon, or years from now. Most of them are smaller, and I feel smaller ones regularly, about once a month. Microquakes, which are mostly not felt by many, occur daily.
As a long time Bay Area resident, I was talking to someone in the City when the quake hit. She told me that she had to go because the earthquake had started. We hung up and the shaking really took hold. I wasn't able to contact her for over a week - had no idea if she made it through the event or not. I was in Marin County (which is over the GG Bridge) in the North Bay and sits on bedrock so not much damage happened there despite it being a large quake. We could look across the bay and see SF fully engulfed. It was surreal. As for how often and why it doesn't seem to effect the populace living there - you have to understand that earthquakes are not seasonal -- like fire season, etc. The last real major quake (prior to this one in 1989) in the SF Bay Area happened in 1906 (equal to what happened in 1989). So, the chances of living through multiple large quakes in a given lifetime is rarer than you might think. The span of the highway in the City where the entire upper deck collapsed on the lower, was completely removed. They never rebuilt it. To be honest it was an eyesore on the Marina district in the city and the city was better off for its removal. The worst damage in the city (where you saw the most destruction and fire) was the Marina district. That was all man-made landfill - which moved like quicksand and several buildings collapsed or slipped into the ground (sink holes). The Marina district is the most expensive property in SF - along with Nob Hill and Pacific Heights - it is the bastion of "old" SF money. Yet, that very "bay front property" that is so prized, is also the most vulnerable. You also have to realize that quakes are generally short in nature. Not like a tornado or hurricane which can last for long periods of time and hurl your butt into another county if caught unaware and not hunkered down in a storm cellar or basement. Funny side story - when a smaller quake happened a friend of mine's roommate (who wasn't born in CA) came running in yelling, "Quake! C'mon, we have to go!" My friend (who is a Californian through and through) just laughed at his traumatic expression and replied, "Go?! Where are we going to go? You can't outrun this thing. Just take cover and wait it out." 🤣😂
You can definitely tell a native Californian from a visitor or a person who just moved here during an earthquake. Native Californians are used to small to midsize earthquakes. They take it in stride and sometimes they even sleep through them if they occur in the middle of the night. Understandably people who are not used to earthquakes can tend to freak out. I wouldn’t blame them it’s kind of unsettling when the ground starts moving. It’s no different than if I moved into tornado country, I’d freak out while the natives would just grab my hand and pull me into the storm cellar in the basement.
My grandfather worked for the news station most of this footage came from as a producer. Making it very likely that my grandfather actually helped produce this documentary you are watching (at least a small part of it)
I was 18 when this happened, I live in central California. We felt the shaking but didn’t have much in the way of damage. We were far enough from the epicenter that it was next to nothing compared to SF. They only scratched the surface on this. There are so many personal stories that are scary, sad and uplifting.... all at the same time. There was a man trapped in his car for days under the collapsed bridge, the news covered that right up til they brought him out, alive, barely.... but alive. I’ve actually been lucky to live far enough from any of the large ones to have any real damage. 🤞
That was in Northridge, my hometown. Luckily I was a few miles from the epicenter, but it was still really bad. I was almost 4. It was a 6.7 I think. There’s also good news coverage videos on it.
@@TDHSFV Tons of coverage! Also because there was a multi level overpass that collapsed, and the focus was trying to rescue those ppl. I was glued to the tv hoping those ppl were still alive.
I was 19 when this quake occurred, before cellphones and the Internet. In terms of technology, it seems like far more than 32 years ago. The casualties were 63 dead and 3757 injured. 42 of the deaths were due to the collapse of the elevated highway shown at 3:40. If I remember correctly, one of the survivors was able to escape only because a surgeon crawled under the collapsed roadway and performed an amputation inside their car.
In the 68 quake I was under my car in the driveway. It was on jackstands. I looked out the driveway and it was rolling like waves at the beach. I shot out from under the car on my creeper. A freind had a shop in Santa Rosa he could only watch the cars bouncing around on their stands. He was doing conversions Volvo engines and trans in MGTDs one fell didn't hurt much.
I was living and working in Oakland at the time of the Quake. Thank God for the World Series or the loss of life would have been even higher than it was. Many commuters left work early to watch the game otherwise there'd have been much more traffic on the bridges and freeways. I was on my way out of my office on the 16th floor of my building when a subordinate stopped me to discuss a case. The quake hit whilst we were at my desk and I immediately ducked under my desk for cover. She joined me. A coworker was at the copy machine and our building was on a rolling rocking system so it tilted in the north to south position. She ended up going back and forth with the tethered copy machine following her every step. Another coworker was panicking, screaming and pulling at her hair as she tried to run out of the office. Once things settled down we couldn't use the elevators. We had to run down 16 flights of stairs while the aftershocks continued. The bracing on the staircases had come loose from the walls and even with all of the debris on the stairs, those of us wearing heels took them off to try and be more stable running down the rocking and rolling stairs. We all made it out, but those of us who'd parked our cars in the building (me included) couldn't get them out. They were parked on upper floors that could only be accessed by elevator and the power was out. Thankfully there was one taxi left at the taxi stand and three of us (strangers all) got to it and agreed to share. Two of them lived on the other side of the Cypress Freeway (unbeknownst to us it had collapsed) and the driver was going to drop them off first. Just as we got there a citizen was directing traffic and we had to stop. From our perspective the Cypress looked intact. He was directing traffic off of the upper deck and we were getting restless because he was taking so long. The two other passengers decided not to wait any longer and got out. Finally the guy allowed us to go and as we moved forward, I saw that the part of the freeway I could see from the cab was the only part still intact. The rest was collapsed on both sides and the guy was directing traffic from the upper deck from the on ramp and therefore helping the drivers to get off of the collapsed upper deck. To get me to my daughter's school the driver had to pass the BART station (commuter train into and out of San Francisco) and there were crowds of stranded commuters, some running towards my cab. He didn't stop. Finally get to my daughter's school and she was hysterical. She was 7 at the time and thought I'd been killed when the Bay Bridge collapsed, even though she knew I worked in Oakland. We lived in the lower hills of Oakland and were extremely fortunate. We never lost electricity or gas and only 2 small items were broken when they fell off of a shelf. Looking out of our window all of the flat lands of Oakland and across the Bay and San Francisco were in total darkness. Very eerie! My mom had a pool and she said she saw all of the water come up and out of the pool and then drop straight back in. Those working the collapsed Cypress were risking their lives to get survivors out. They had a child trapped inside a vehicle and surgeons came to the car and amputated his leg. It's a time in my life I will never forget 😢
I was 14 years old, in our junior high school pavilion watching a basketball game in Santa Cruz County. Our seats were made of concrete slabs. When it hit, the slabs felt like water. We lost power for over a week and the downtown was hit hard. The aftershocks lasted over a year later. The house with the large crack was about ten miles away from my house. I still flinch when I hear the sound of a heavy truck driving by my office. Although it was bad, I also did see the best of humankind in the aftermath. Believe it or not, there would have been more deaths if the World Series wasn't going on. Those bridges would have been filled up with cars, but instead, most people were either at Candlestick park or already home getting ready for it to start on the television.
I forget if it is on UA-cam or the Prelinger Archives, but there are films taken from a cable car both before and after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It's fascinating to see the cable car go down the same street and see the beautiful buildings in the first film and the destruction in the second film.
My sister worked in Oakland and took the Cypress Freeway (I-880) to and from work every day. She noticed the coffee maker hadn’t been cleaned as she was leaving work and stopped to clean it…that saved her life. She would have been on the Cypress when the upper level pancaked down onto the lower level. It took her awhile to find a working phone but she was able to call our parents and let them know she was okay. They called me and our other sister who were pretty frantic with worry because we knew she took that route home.
I was working on the 19th floor of a high rise across from the bay bridge at the corner of Market & Embarcadero. The quake began and as it escalated, I went under my cubicle desk as metal file cabinets shook and fell over, by tube computer monitor fell on me and the alarms sounded, and the lights went out. It felt as if the building was going to fall over - it shook so much. There were a few people screaming and crying on my floor - so we checked to be sure no one was seriously injured and then carefully walked down the emergency stairs in the dark as the emergency stairwell lights went out. By the time we reached the ground level - our legs were like rubber. I could see the Ferry Building Clock Tower was frozen at 5:05 pm. There were cars stuck on the bridge and people were milling about out of their cars - something I had never seen before. I waited for my husband to pick me up, but he was stuck in his 7-story office building’s underground garage as the gates wouldn’t open. He and a few others had to unscrew the gates and drive over them to get out. The devastation was everywhere, people wandering about, broken windows and building facades had fallen onto sidewalks. We drove my terrified coworker home to her panicked husband and child since she relied on public transportation which had stopped running. We then drove home to our SF apartment and waited for the telephone lines to clear to let family know we were safe and to confirm that my husband’s family that lived not far from the Marina were safe as well. I had PTS for weeks after. This was something I would never want to experience again.
Earthquake preparedness is drummed into us from a very early age. Schools and even some workplaces participate in an annual event called the Great CA Shakeout, where people practice dealing with the fallout from a major seismic event, including people assigned to roles to play the injured and rescue teams. The idea that “The Big One is overdue” is always repeated. (The Big One refers to a major event of around 8 on the Richter Scale that will happen on the San Andres Fault - it still hasn’t happened but seriously could any time. In LA the San Andreas is about 50 miles inland so we would see Northridge-style damage but over a wider area). So when you see how people react to the quake, the first calm reactions are because we’ve all experienced small quakes and are waiting to see how strong it is (that’s why so many people pause a second before making for cover/exits). There are things about the way our structures are built and even the way we decorate that reflect that preparedness - stuff you’d never even imagine to think about. For example, not hanging anything heavy on the wall over our beds, or using museum putty to secure any valuable tchotchkes, also smart people keep a supply of drinking water and shelf-stable food available. I went through Northridge in ‘94 and it was about 3 days before you could buy gas anywhere and the first doughnut shop to reopen had a huge line. But again, plans. So the Anheuser-Busch plant immediately converted its line to can fresh (filtered) drinking water instead of beer, etc (we had a lot of fun with that at school, because they still used their company logo on the water cans, lol) What you see in media coverage is always the worst of the worst, they don’t show blocks and blocks of homes that came through okay in between the dramatic events, so it looks like the whole city is crushed or on fire and it may only be a few isolated spots. (To be fair, my experience is from Northridge, I didn’t go through Loma Prieta, and I understand it was pretty bad in spots because of unstable ground and older structures.) But regardless large areas lose power and the water supply has to be considered undrinkable and gets over-treated (ooh the rashes from showering in that), and of course transportation becomes an absolute mess for a good while. Side note: the collapse was on the Bay Bridge, not the Golden Gate. The Bay Bridge runs from Oakland (the East Bay) to San Francisco, whereas the Golden Gate runs from San Francisco up to the upper peninsula (Marin). There are a few major bridges in the area. The Bay Bridge is the double decker one. The one authority everybody turns to when a quake happens, who all the tv stations immediately start calling is @drlucyjones (that’s her Twitter handle) from CalTech. To learn more about quakes, here are some terms to Google: 1. Great California Shakeout 2. CalTech
They say the World Series actually saved lives. Because it was two Bay Area teams playing around what would be rush hour, most people were at bars, restaurants, and houses watching the game so many lives were likely saved since less were on the road
I was working on a highrise in oakland a couple blocks from the cypress collapse, and they pulled heavy equipment from the job to help find people. A steel beam on around the 22nd floor fell off the top and into the street, and then into the parking lot under the road. You could see the road where i was at in redwood city just rolling like a wave of the ocean. The amazing thing is how everything moves that much without actually not falling apart.
We have minor quakes all the time but I can only remember about 4 major ones in the 35 years I have lived in LA. The Whittier quake and the Northridge quake are the two that come to mind.
I was living in Modesto, CA (a bit East from San Francisco) and in high school when this occurred. My dad was working graveyard shifts, and was napping after work. He was thrown off the bed. Under our oak dining table was our earthquake hide spot (we had earthquake drills at school growing up, and a Family earthquake plan). I remember watching the shadow of the chandelier swinging wildly and hitting the ceiling, hearing glass break.
I was in the back seat of the family car. My 76yo Grandmother was stopped at a stoplight and asked my then 17yo body if I was dancing in the backseat. I said no and asked if she was moving the car. We then looked outside and saw all the trees shaking back & forth, the streetlights bobbing & weaving like boxers in the ring, and the ground moving like waves in the ocean. The car surfed over the waves like it was a normal thing. We had been on the way to get my mother from work as we were to go out for dinner that night. Mom came out saying she never wants to be in that building again during an earthquake. (It was a new, safer suspension constructed building. My mother swore that it made the quake twice as bad to ride through.) Anyway, we went home to see if there was any damage, but it was minimal as we lived in Santa Rosa (a good 1 to 1.5 hour drive from SF). We ended up watching the reports of the damage on tv. The next day I started volunteering at The Salvation Army loading trucks with supplies to help the people who had so much loss. I did that for about a week or so. Never will forget that. One of my good friends that grew up here in Oakland told me that there was a lot of people living in tents here after the quake, as much of Oakland was out of power, gas, and had no running water for over a week post quake. And for some reason my Brooklyn, NY born other half doesn't think it's important to have an emergency kit. It's drummed into us that are raised here to have a kit with enough food, water, and other supplies for everyone in the house for 72 hours, minimum.
We lived through this when I was a kid. Luckily, the worst thing we had to deal with was loss of power. One of the reasons the fires were so bad was some of the fire stations had been damaged in the quake, so they couldn't raise the doors to get the fire engines out.
To this day I’m terrified of falling into a broken portion of bridge or being trapped under a slab of overpass. Seeing this on the news as and after it happened was horrifying. I couldn’t imagine seeing it live in person.
Whats sad is Alaska has far bigger fires and earthquakes every year along with many other insane weather/mother nature events and you never hear about them. on average we have 2-3 volcanoes that erupt every year as well. Our winter storms alone dwarf hurricanes in size. You should look up the Alaska earthquake 1964 Magnitude 9.2 131 deaths. lasted 4.5 minutes and is the 2nd largest ever recorded. The San Francisco earthquake was only 6.4 and did this much damage imagine 9.2. To feel what is like stand on a waterbed the have 3-4 people push the water and you around.
I was there in 1964 when that quake hit. It was unbelievable. I remember being pitched around like a rag doll. And I remember the tremors that followed. Those were 7+. I remember it like it was yesterday.
Being from Cali, I guess we have just been waiting for "The Big One" to hit, but we have had many through out the years of between 4 - 6 on the Richter's, hardly does it really go up to 7. Just a few years there where a pair of earthquakes that where felt to Vegas during 4th July weekend. During an earthquake, logic saids to get out of the house or where ever you might be in, but you are safer if you stay where you are at and find something to protect your head. If you were to run outside, you might trip and fall down because of the motion of the earthquake causing serious bodily damage, you might get hit with falling glass or concrete or other objects that are on buildings, not to mention fire and fallen down power lines. If you really want to see want an earthquake can do, look up the 1985 Mexico City's, it is 10x times worse than San Fran; it measured at 8.1 on the Ricther's scale, killing between 5 - 40k.
I remember waiting with my mum, at the airport for my pregnant sister and her 11 month old to land in Victoria BC. We were watching the World Series on the Café TV. The entire situation ended being so awful, that watching this is making me weepy.
I lived in Long Beach and we could feel tremors from that quake. There is a distance of 407 miles but it happened on the infamous San Andreas fault line which also goes through Los Ángeles. It is said that the main focal depth of this quake was 11 miles down where most are 4 to 6. The ferocity of that quake was unbelievable.
I don't get up and move unless it's a 4.0 or higher. that's, like, jars of spaghetti sauce falling off shelves at the supermarket level. those are twice a year. California has earthquakes and fires, and I know how to prepare and react for those. Other places have hurricanes and Tornados. The building safety rules we have are written in blood. 1906 taught us we needed backup fire systems, because earthquakes brake pipes. The 1989 quake taught us that buildings need to be able to flex to not break. The bigger the structure, the longer the single straight line, the more it needs to be able to flex. And that if you're going to take out structural walls to make a garages on the ground level, you need sheer wall reinforcement (diagonal), not just horizontal and vertical.
This was truly terrible. That wasn't the Golden Gate, it was a Bay Bridge. If it hadn't been for that World Series game, many more cars would have been on the Highway. It was rush hour. San Francisco is a very beautiful city. Cost of housing is very high. I love SF but would never live there because of the earthquakes , traffic and cost of living. Great place to visit, with fingers crossed.
Californian born and raised. Big quakes like this are pretty rare and I would absolutely choose quakes over Tornadoes, Hurricanes, blizzards and floods. Quakes last maybe a minute, Katrina, the Texas feeze, the tornado storm that just ripped through the Midwest go on for hours or days. Every state has natural disasters even with fires, those are almost always in forests.
I was in Burlingame just south of SF when the quake hit. It was very scary and I saw several weird things happen during, like how structures and freeway signs and windows were moving. It then took several hours to get through SF to the Golden Gate bridge because all the street lights were out. By the time I got through it was dark and where you can usually see the city from the north side there was nothing but black and a gigantic fire in the Marina. It was all surreal and scary.
My cousin worked at San Francisco International Airport and should have been on the Bay Bridge going home to Walnut Creek when the quake hit. She forgot her coat at work, went back to get it and by the time her car was approaching the bridge the traffic was already backed up on the San Francisco side. She said that driving around through San Jose to get home with all the road and bridge closures took her six hours to drive what should have been less than an hour home.
I was in the Midwest visiting my aunt when this occurred. I grew up in alameda which is next to Oakland. My mom was an RN working in Oakland. She worked for hours at the cypress trying to free anyone who may be alive and recovering those who were not. I remember not be able to get ahold of her for days. Seeing this made me cry all over again seeing this and wondering if my mom was ok.
I remember back in '82 or '83, I was driving a large box van from Hayward to Walnut Creek in the morning and back again at the end of the day, with one direction we were on the top layer and the other direction we were inside between the two layers. I told my work partner in the truck with me "I hope we're not under here when an earthquake hits because this road will collapse". He would always ask me if I was serious. That Cyprus Structure made me so damn nervous driving through there. That road was like driving on a spring board. I told him that as much as this road bounces up and down all day everyday, the only thing holding it up anymore is the steel. The concrete must be nothing but stones by now, with the steel trapping it. As soon as this road moves the wrong way the steel will bend and the concrete will pour out and then it's lights out for anyone in here between these two layers. If you go back to that video and look at the support structures, you will see the steel bars sticking out with almost no concrete sticking to it. That disconnect did not happen during the quake. The quake just gave it the kick it needed to fall. Great content again Kabir! Thank you once again for an honest reaction.
There are little ones that happen all the time. I lived in Glendale, California age 6 during the Sylmar, California earthquake in 1971. I was a scared little girl. I still remember some of it.
This is the earthquake that occurred during that baseball game in which you were asking "Please someone tell me what exactly happened" when the screen went green and the commentators were trying to explain what happened.
You got a lot of really good responses from people that were here in the SF Bay Area! Then as now, I live in SF and my work is just across the Bay Bridge (then I worked not far from the Cypress structure that collapsed.) Most minor earthquakes may only last a few seconds and shimmy or shake a little. Slightly larger ones may feel like someone crashed into the wall of your building. The main Loma Prieta quake was bigger and it lasted 15 seconds (felt like it lasted longer). If you're comparing earthquakes, it makes a huge difference how deep underground they are, how far away they originated, how long the shaking continues, what the geography is like (especially the ground directly beneath you) and how well constructed your building is. Houses here have to be bolted to the foundation, so they don't simply slide off the foundation, concrete and brick has to be reinforced, and larger structures are supposed to drive steel piling down to bedrock, and have to be built to roll and sway. These regulations are meant to save lives and keep the building standing. It's devastating to see the huge death tolls in places that didn't follow these standards; where the buildings just collapsed on top of people. Wherever you are, be alert and plan a little, to survive a disaster.
Part of the reason homes and apartment collapse in a quake is that the first floor is often open spaces for parking, with pillars instead of more load-bearing walls. Another cause is where in town you may be. The Marina district where the major fires were is built on landfill, which can liquify when shaken, basically turning the ground under your house to jello. My (then) neighborhood is on bedrock, solid, but even then we were without power for three days. Yay for having a big backyard and a barbecue grill!
I was here in Vallejo then on my way to San Francisco, it was insane. Would have been 10s of thousands dead if it wasn't for the Oakland A's playing the San Francisco Giants in the world series. Which never happened before or since. The cypress freeway that had the upper deck pancake on the lower deck would have been bumper to bumper if almost everyone wasn't home already to watch the game. The earthquake was at 5:04 pm, the heart of rush hour. Had we not been late waiting for a friend we would have been on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.
Growing up in the East Bay for most my life since '86, you live with the fear of the "big one" that they say will hit, and you just hope that the infrastructure they've prepared for it can withstand it. They've re-done quite a bit of the Bay Bridge recently and I was told previously the Golden Gate. I know there are still homes in Oakland at risk. In my old house, we had to put in tons of piping on the hills for rainwater dispersal to let out so even if minor ~4.0 quakes not causing landslides. It's a lively seismic zone as any SF Bay Area person will tell you. And things like the 89 quake are very rare.
Most natural disasters involve bad weather, even our forrest fires often involve lighting strikes. Something eery about a natural disaster that happens during beautiful sunny days... 1989 was just that; a gorgeous picture perfect day!
My dad had a work conference in San Francisco the day before this happened, but he flew out the night before. He always says how grateful he felt to have gotten out right on time because watching all of this unfold, he could see some of the places he'd just been, really messed up.
I had been in the San Francisco area just before this happened and had moved to Paso Robles for work. The day it happened I was in Los Angeles on the 9th floor of a building. People started yelling, crawling under tables and saying it was a big one. To me who didn't know better all I saw was doors rattling in their frames and ceiling lights swaying. I just stood still until it was over wondering what was so bad. Later I saw the interstate I had driven daily in San Francisco completely collapsed along with all if the destruction. Guess I was one of the lucky ones.
I lived in CA for 4 years in the 1980s and only had 1 quake to that I could really feel. Years later I'm at work at home in coastal NC and all of a sudden I feel the sensation of the earth rolling. A fairly major earthquake happened in Virginia. It damaged the Washington monument and the National Cathedral among other things. It took years to repair both .
Alaska-- like California-- is part of the ring of fire and it gets earthquake tremors daily, but they are extremely light and no one can feels them. The center which studies earthquakes, however, notices these tremors on their machines and equipment.
I was a nanny across the bay. I was 18 and watching a baby due to the parents working. The mom was a resident general surgeon and the dad was out of town. I felt it but not much damage in my area. Before that I went into San Francisco all the time. It was a couple weeks before I went back and the places I went I didn't see much of the damage. It was an experience. My first earthquake since I came from a small town in Iowa.
A majority of the damage, as you may remember, was in the Marina district. There were homes that didn't collapse but red (the foundation and bearing walls heavily damaged) making the home unlivable and teardowns. There were a lot of homes that were yellow tagged - structural, reparable damage. If you go to SF ... and see homes with metal poles attached to brick walls, it's one-way older buildings can meet to code.
I was living in SF and was a claims adjuster working in our west side office. Relatively quiet day, then when I left the office in my company car, is when all hell broke loose. Driving down the street, the car felt like a boat going through heavy waves. Houses slid into the street, the Cypress Structure in the East Bay collapsed, fires as you saw. To see the damage up close is humbling to know that no matter what man builds, nature can take it in a moment.
I was only 2 when this happened so I don't remember it, but it was one of the reasons we left California. My dad and I were picking my brother up from school and all of the sudden the fence around the school started shaking. Our dad scooped us up and jumped down the steps to get us as far away from the building as quickly as possible. Our mom was still at work and they all had to barricade under their desks. And then she couldn't get home and had no way to communicate with my dad. And my dad didn't speak a ton of English yet, so he could barely communicate with anyone else. It was a disaster. And then when we all finally did get home, there was a huge crack from floor to ceiling in our apartment that you could see daylight through.
I remember this quite well. I was a kid and it wasn't long after we had an even stronger quake near me. (Big Bear quake) Luckily there wasn't near as much density and high rise buildings near us. This quake was bad but could have been so much worse. It happened at a very good time. If there is such a thing. If it had been much later in the day it would have been during "rush hour" when the roads would have been packed with commuters and baseball fans. (It happened during the world series, that happened to be in Frisco that year). There was only a small fraction of the people out on the roads as normal. P.S. The Bay Bridge isn't the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bay Bridge runs east/west form Frisco towards Oakland and Berkeley. A much heavier traveled Bridge for local people and commuters. You could also look up Lima Prietta
Big Bear was the last quake I was in CA for (Whittier was my first). I was in OC... and I think Big Bear was the worst I ever had. A 7.1, if I recall correctly (I might not... I was a dumb 23 year old)... it was a hard shaker and seemed to go on forever... first time I had all the stuff on my walls and shelves fall to the ground. I tell myself I'm glad I don't live in earthquake country, but I moved to Seattle 5 years ago and only recently found out this is also quake country.
@@EricaGamet Yep. I don't remember the exact magnitude either. But rest assured they haven't stopped here. There was a 7. something just a couple years ago. But it was out in the middle of the desert by Ridgecrest. There was even one yesterday. Around Anaheim. Only a 3.3 though.
I am 64 and a big baseball fan..I was watching live..a staggering event.i am glad it was not as bad as the 1907 quake..love your reactions Kabir..Kent in ohio
My hometown is Santa Cruz, CA. I was 16 years old in '89 and happened to be in a grocery store when it hit (the Lucky's on Soquel Ave). I would NOT recommend being in a store during a major earthquake
I was stationed at Lackland AFB when this occurred. I was attending the NCO (Non Commissioned Officer's i.e. Sergeants) Academy, where they teach you to be better Sergeants. The problem was, the school was 0.6 miles from my on-base house and I HAD to stay in school facilities. So, the wife took the kids back home for the 7 weeks of the course. For my study group/room group, whatever, this course was easy-peasy... I mean, "Why study?" simple. So, we gathered in one guy's room to watch the World Series and drink beer (Hey we're Sergeants, we drink). And then, the earthquake happened. I remember seeing a flame geyser, (helicopter footage) from a broken gas main and one of my classmates exclaimed, "Holy shit! My parent's house is literally 1 block away". He immediately left to find a phone, '89 no cells. Chilling. As far of living there, California experiences very minor earthquakes frequently, and they are taken in stride. There IS an exodus from California, but it doesn't have anything to do with earthquakes. MOST, as in, 99% of the people that work in San Francisco can't afford to live there. Think. People making 6 figures a year, LIVING LIKE PEASANTS, can't afford to live there. Six figures!!! Something wrong on that whole picture.
I was in the Navy and stationed at Mare Island when this happened. I was at home running laps in my apt complex when I noticed all the parked cars start rocking back and forth. My ex and I had just driven across the bay bridge a week before this.
I was watching the World Series when it happened. Since then Washington has change some building codes to be more earthquake proof. A lot of the tall buildings and new bridges are built on dampers , large plates with hugh springs so it can sway with it instead of being ridged . Now the old bridges concrete pillars are being encased in thick metal tubes so they don't crack and crumble. Thanks goodness Seattle got rid of the double deck along the waterfront and made a tunnel. You would be surprised at how many we have here in Washington on our Volcanos each day you never feel cause they are weak. Now for a Big Quake !!! Look at 1964 ( I was 12 ) ALASKA'S 9.2. Earthquake.
To reply to your comment on moving to somewhere safer; No matter where in the US you live, you’ll be subject to natural disaster. West coast has Quakes, Landslides, Wildfires. Midwest has Tornados and Snowstorms (Southern Texas see frequent hurricanes). East coast has snow storms, hurricanes, and some tornados. You kind of have to assess what natural disasters you could come to terms with a live alongside.
I was 11 years old during this quake. We lived on Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato since my dad was in the Navy stationed in Alameda. We had gone to the mall, and I was standing at a kiosk playing video games when the quake started. When we got home the floor speakers had moved about two feet away from the wall they were against. My dad, luckily, got held up at work and was not on his way home at the time. He usually took the freeway that collapsed home. One good thing about this quake was how people stepped up to help others. I remember when I was stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA feeling an earthquake. It woke me up. I shrugged, said oh earthquake, rolled over and went back to sleep while it was rumbling!! It may sound odd, but you get used to the small ones and just go on about your business!
Being in a relatively large earthquake is very surreal. I was in a 6.8 quake in Washington (2001) centered about six miles from my location. Thankfully there was maybe two fatalities at most. There's an initial jolt and then whole world just moves out from under your feet; much like vertigo if you've ever had it. Time slows down. I was waking up while waiting for morning university classes to start. Since childhood they teach you to crouch under your desk or a doorway during an earthquake. However, fire drills are much more common, thus my most poignant observation was that everyone in the building rushed outside. Being around a waterway there is much fill land around the shoreline, especially cities abutting the water. Most all of this land liquified, to some extent, and left large rolling ripples in many places. There were quite a few bridge rebuids. My dog was home alone and ended up huddled in the farthest corner of the house from where some cookbooks fell from the refrigerator, I assume onto her. All of the books on my bookshelves were on the floor. The house shifted quite substantially and the chimney separated about a foot from the side of the house. All of the north/south facing doors were either jammed shut or would not close. Now I'm just waiting for the giant volcano about 50 miles from here to finally take us out.
I was three going on four at the time and this was one of my first memories. I actually slept through the quake, since that day, it's been a long inside joke within the family that i'll sleep through anything. "Chris can sleep through an earthquake." My parents worked in the financial district in San Francisco and I was in daycare in Oakland. I remember since my parent's couldn't get across the bridge, I was stuck at daycare for 3 days. That night we lit candles and played a games by candlelight. And as to your question about how often do they occur? California gets around 10,000 earthquakes a year (99.9% you can't feel and are only detected by seismographs) A particular region will usually experience a devastating one like in the video on average once every 150 years.
How often do we get earthquakes? Depends on where you live and if you live near a fault line. Where i live i get quakes of varying degrees once a month. Others outside of California would probably freak out by any quake. But most of the quakes here are so minor it wouldn't wake me from a daydream lol.
I was in the 3rd grade, and I remember it so vividly. My dad went over that bridge 10 min prior to it collapsing. My mom was commuting home and in the tunnels underground on the BART train. I didn't know if i would ever see her again. It took her like 12 hours to get back home b/c it was so hard to get out of the city.
Kabir, you should look up the Northridge earthquake from 1994, epicentered down near Los Angeles in the SF valley. This Loma Linda quake dealt $5 to $6 Billion estimated damage. Northridge's estimates ranged from $13 to $50 Billion.
I'm born and raised in Reno, NV. and I remember as a kid our school had regular earthquake drills along with fire drills even though Reno isn't known for large earthquakes.
I was in SF when the quake hit, in a bookstore on Castro (which becomes Divisadero just before Haight St.). I grew up in CA so wasn't too alarmed because it wasn't too crazy until until the last couple of shakes. Then I was like, okay THAT was big. Looked around for a safe spot but all the tourists were huddled in the doorways, etc. Luckily it stopped about then. (I've been a bit edgy during quakes since, unless I'm in an open area.) I was living in the Santa Cruz mountains at the time, about a mile from the epicenter. All the highways going through the mountains were closed so I wasn't able to get home for a couple of days. The phone lines were all screwed up and depending on where you were, could make local calls but not long distance calls and my landlords were in that situation. I was able to call their relatives in Boston to let them know everyone was safe, but the long distance had been knocked out. Quakes of that magnitude are fairly rare. Other areas have tornadoes and major hurricanes much more often. I'll take my chances with quakes.
My sister and I were in the Block Buster video store near Church Street station when it hit. Avoiding falling videos and shelving in the store and bricks falling from the building next door, my sister and I walked from Church Street back to 23rd Avenue in the Outer Sunset to get back home. It was terrifying!!!!
On October 17, 1989, the Bay Area was buzzing about baseball. The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, both local teams, had reached the World Series. The third game of the series was scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. Just prior to the game, at 5:04 p.m., with live cameras on the field, a magnitude 6.9 quake rocked the San Francisco Bay region. Though the stadium withstood the shaking, other parts of the Bay Area were not as fortunate. Sixty-seven people perished as a result of the quake, which lasted around 15 seconds, while more than 3,000 others were injured. The quake costs more than 5 billion dollars in damages.
I was 8yrs old doing homework and listening to the World Series when we had to run out of the house. It felt like I was getting pulled back in and when outside the entire neighborhood was in the street and neighbors helping each other to turn off the gas to prevent fires and explosions
Lifelong SFer here. I lived this. People were terrific. Everyone helping each other. People were particularly caring of their elderly neighbors even if they didn’t know them. Civilians helping rescue and law enforcement. I don’t recall looting or lawlessness. Despite the many horrors, there was so much good.
I was watching the baseball game when it hit and everything stopped and then the tv was reporting about the bridge there was people in cars under all the concrete that was still alive
I was 4 when it happened. I was at pre school in San Francisco and the building shook for a good 20 seconds. Every moment from that day is etched into my memory.
This was also known as the World Series Earthquake, as it occurred during the pregame broadcast with much of the nation watching live on TV.
The thing that was so miraculous about it was the Series was between the SF Giants and the Oakland A’s, and the quake hit a few minutes after most people would have gotten off work. Because so many people in the area wanted to see the Series many had left work early. Many of us thought that if it hadn’t been for that there would been more people on the roads and freeways and bridges and more injuries or deaths. We were grateful for any small favors we saw.
@@berkeleygirllaserbeam I've always thought that the game saved a lot of lives. Where normally there would a lot of cars on the roads because of the games people had left work early and were either home, at friends' or bars, or at the game.
My mom was at the game.
Living in NJ, that’s how I remember this earthquake.
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I was living and working in SF when this happened. My family has lived in these parts for about 200 years now. I had family living in SF during the 1906 quake, too. After the 1989 quake our house was yellow-tagged, meaning they weren’t sure yet whether it would be safe permanently and needed further inspection, and the building I worked in was red-tagged, meaning too damaged to work in until repairs could be made, assuming it could be repaired. Amazingly I had something that belonged to the survivors of the 1906 quake in each room of the house, and those were the only items that seemed to be undisturbed.
I have to add, at the time I don’t recall anyone being worried about the money. We were worried about the people on the Cypress freeway. I remember them every year on October 17th and drink a toast to their memories at exactly 5:04 pm. I always add my thanks that I survived and the people,e I love survived, including someone who was on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.
We lived through the 1989 earthquake and it was terrifying! My younger brother who worked for my older brother as a tow truck driver, helped crawl into the cypress structure where the upper deck completely collapsed down onto the lower level. He crawled in where two children were trapped in a vehicle and the childrens mother and aunt were deceased in the front seat. He used special bags they inflate to upright big trucks, but they used them to stabilize the upper deck which had come down on top of the car killing the two adults and trapping the two children in the back seat. He kept the bags inflated while a pediatric surgeon amputated the little boys leg, unfortunately it was trapped under the front seat and that was the only way to get the boy out! His sister was removed with only minor injuries. My brother risked his own life going in, inflating the bags before the doctor came in to operate on the boy. He is our family hero! Love him! His name is Rodger Berry, he is a great man! ♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️
Thank you for sharing and posting this, and thank you Rodger Berry!🙂👍
God bless you, Rodger Berry. Thank you.
Thanks for the insights! The San Francisco Chronicle’s “Not Your Century” did a great three-part series on Loma Prieta, and brought this story up.
I was in 1st grade at the time, down at Hellyer Park in San Jose when it hit. It was a lot easier for us closer to the epicenter, because we were on solid rock and not silt or landfill.
I was a Candlestick Park that day. I'd litterly just sat down. My friend, without missing a beat, said "Did you have to sit so hard?"
Kabir- remember-1989-- no smartphones, no internet to speak of. Radio and TV and landline phones were all we had. The "Cypress Structure" they speak of was a double deck freeway- the top deck collapsed onto the bottom deck - sandwiching the cars in between layers. I changed jobs and moved 3 months before the quake, before the change I lived in the Marina district and commuted to Oakland via the Cypress Structure -
I’m from the East Bay, so I definitely experienced this quake. I was 8 years old and I can vividly remember every second of it. Early evening, before dinner when all hell broke loose. No major damage for my house, except I vividly remember a large fish tank we had sloshing water all over the place as I hid under the dinning room table with my brother. My mom was in the doorway between the kitchen and dinning room trying to hold back a large China hutch we had from tipping over. My dad was coming home from work, and at first thought his tires went out. (He didn’t think earthquake at first).
The World series being played by 2 Bay Area teams SAVED a lot of lives. Lots of people had gone home early so they could watch the game. If it wasn’t for the World Series, the Bay Bridge, and Cypress freeway would have been waaay more congested. As sad as the death toll was, it could have been worse.
California is HUGE we have earthquakes every day. Nearly all of them are micro-quakes that you can’t feel. Those measuring around 5 maybe around the Bay Area happen like under 5 times a year. Larger ones are rare. Like once in a lifetime rare. The 89 quake is now considered a moderate quake.
But, we learn so much from them. Building regulations, highway/bridge building, has become a lot safer. High rise buildings are required to be able to withstand moderate to large quakes. The reason the cypress collapsed was because it was an old structure that didn’t take quakes into consideration when it was built. (Too rigid) The Maria district in San Francisco burned and collapsed because the whole area was built on landfill. Not solid ground.
Of course, the “big one” is coming, and we are over due. 😧 Hopefully, we are prepared as much as we can be. 🤞
I was 13 when it happened. San Jose.
My friend was at the World Series game. He said you could see the field ripple.
Me too I was outside on campus San Jose City community college and everyone came running outdoors.
Wow, that's good to know that the World Series saved some lives.
Glad that your family survived.
I was 9, also in the East Bay. Your dad with the tires made me laugh, because I was in the car with my mom, and our car was a piece of crap, always breaking down so of course the first thing we thought was, “great, now what’s wrong with the car?!” Then we looked around and realized every car in the parking lot was bouncing up and down.
It was a really long earthquake - around 30 seconds I think. Normally by the time you notice them, they’re over. That one, you had time to think, “what’s that? Is that an earthquake? Yep, and it’s a big one. Oh shit, it’s still going…”
That and the Oakland hills fire are the biggest disasters I remember from growing up in the Bay Area.
In case you couldn't tell, the Cypress bridge is the one where most of the top-level collapsed onto the bottom level, and the Bay Bridge is the one where a part broke down towards the bottom level. The Cypress bridge was never replaced after this. The Golden Gate didn't collapse thankfully.
I used to ride BART past it daily. For weeks it was still a WOW and chills up my spine.
ESPN films did a short video about the World Series that that was going on in when this happened… ironically, it was TWO San Francisco area teams playing (SF and Oakland) and the game probably saved lots of lives as so many were gathered there instead of in traffic. The series was postponed for weeks, and the players give really good insight from that time.
An excellent film!
I lived in L.A. for 7 years and small earthquakes happen all the time. Large quakes like this one are rare, so that's why people take their chances living there.
Yeah, they're rare, I spent the majority of my summers as a child in Southern California [Mira Mesa, Top Gun U.S A.] and felt 3-4quakes (not including temors/aftershocks). I'M 46.5 yro
No they are not rare. You haven't lived there long enough. Calif is long due for more, been decades, just wait. You will eat your words. From a survivor of multiple large ones.
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I've lived in L.A. for 31 years now, and yes, we get a lot of quakes out here. Most of them are very small, so small that you don't even notice them. If you're out driving, your vehicle's shock absorbers will absorb the small quakes so that you don't even know one was happening. Once in a while, a slightly larger one will occur that you do feel, and most of the time, they're of short duration, or low intensity. The usual response to those is along the lines of, "Oh, wait...yep, there's one of them." Not especially frightening or jarring. The ones that start doing real damage are very rare. In 31 years, I've experienced two of those, and one of them (the 1994 Northridge Earthquake) really did a number at its epicenter. Even so, that one wasn't close to what happened in San Fran in '89. So yes, there are risks involved in living out here, but compared with the hurricanes that regularly churn up the East Coast and the South, or the tornadoes that go through the Midwest, on balance the risks are pretty low by comparison.
Ironically, the first earthquake I ever experienced was when I was a kid, in my old home state of Massachusetts. Now THAT was unusual. Massachusetts isn't known for its temblors
as a person who lives in tornado prone area.. shelter under ground is helpful. with quakes, not so much. and of course advance warnings are very helpful too.
As a Native Californian, I would choose earthquake over tornado anyday. As long as something doesn't fall or fly at you, depending on the type, you are good.
I softly experienced the San Fran and the Northridge earthquakes, ... I moved a way for a bit and my home town got hit hard and one person died.
I moved back 5 years ago, and have only experienced very mild earthquakes. Sounds like a ghost truck crashed into the side of the house.
The odds of a tornado hitting your house are actually incredibly low (I've seen 1 in 10 million as the odds). Structures have to be in the path of the tornado and the tornado has to be close enough to the ground and strong enough to cause damage. This rules out the vast majority from causing damage of any significance. So I would say the risk of being impacted by a tornado is also pretty low. I live in an area that gets tornadoes for what it's worth.
As a native San Franciscan who was in downtown SF when it hit, I totally agree. One of my weather apps also reads earthquakes and we're getting tiny ones almost every day but they're too small to be felt.
This traumatized me as a pre-teen... the Bridge collapse stories hit me the hardest. We couldn't get through to our Grandparents up in Monterey, but they were ok, just a crack in their fireplace.
We were farther south, on the Central Coast, and it had everything swinging even 4 hours south.
Tragic thing was they had done a study and found that sections of the Cypress freeway were susceptible to collapse during a major earthquake. The design of sections were inadequate to withstand forces in a quake. It was known but the cost to retro fit and strengthen the structure was deemed to high and so it was put on the shelf.
This is common unfortunately. The same with the Oroville Dam Spillway in 2016. They knew about the poor structural integrity in like 1987 or something and it had been repeatedly shelved until then. Then the massive flooding in the area finally caused the spillway to crumble. They need to stop doing shit like that. It always costs more to fix after a disaster than to repair before one.
@@rosameryrojas-delcerro1059 the problem is the powers that be would ask you wanna pay for it? Let's worry about it in a few years. Its been fine for the last X number of years so it'll be fine for the next few years.
1989- I was in the SANTA CRUZ MOUNTAINS where it started. Running wind sprints at high school for soccer. Mayhem trying to get home on those mountain roads after.
I was born and raised in Oakland,CA that's right across the bay from S.F. I was a 17 year old high school senior who had cut school that day and was on my way home riding on the BART train (Bay Area Rapid Transit) that's our local train system. I was on in between stations on the raised tracks and felt the train starting to shake then it starting shaking more and more aggressively to where I though we were going to fall off the tracks and drop down about 60 plus feet. The devastation of destruction in less than 1 minute. The Cypress freeway was about 1 mile from my grandmothers house. That shook me to the core. Earthquakes are unpredictable. You don't know when, where or for how long they will last.
I was 26 and working in Emeryville on a swing shift. I was going to go downtown Oakland to pick up my dinner & watch the World Series back at the office. We had a couple of sick calls and my boss ordered food to be delivered so I wouldn't need to leave. She saved my life, because my return route would've been the Cypress freeway structure at that time. My fiance worked the local ambulance company. He and others were helping people from the collapsed structure. He spoke about listening to people cry for help then go silent because they couldn't be reached.
In a previous reaction to crazy sports moments you were wondering what happened during a baseball game- this was the earthquake that affected the World Series and caused that issue
I was stationed at Nellis Air Force base near Las Vegas when this happened and it could felt all the way out there. Area 51 went on lockdown.
The San Francisco earthquake was in 1906. This, despite what the video says, was the Loma Prieta earthquake. The epicenter was in the Santa Cruz mountains, 69 miles to the south of San Francisco. Santa Cruz became a tent city for quite a while after.
All the pavilions downtown after the quake. I forgot about them.
Lived in the area when it happened. Was on high school at the time. You could see what looked like waves rolling through the ground.
I lived through this and was on the bay bridge with my mim. I was 11. So scary.
It happened during the World Series, which was between San Francisco and Oakland that year. A fairnumber of people took off work early, so the traffic on the Bay Bridge and the Cypress structure was unusually light.
I was in the South Bay, even with Loma Prieta in the valley.. I watched light standards doing a several foot wave back and forth. My landlady had a collection of Depression Glass that I helped the clean up with a scoop shovel.
Fun fact! The first scene is my high school. I was at the game and running past the camera. I had just moved to California less than a month before.
It depends on the size. If you mean 1.5 or higher it's usually over 10,000 per year statewide. If you are talking about 5.5 or higher usually 2-3 a year on average.The one in this video was a 6.9.
The 1989 was a 6.9. I think of quakes like thunderstorms. I count, the longer the count, the stronger and closer to the epicenter.
The Northridge quake was about an 8.5.
Landers (1992?) was about a 6.
At this point I'd rather be in an earthquake than a tornado. I currently live on the far edge of Tornado Alley and get the heavy rains from hurricanes.
@@CJ-im2uu Being an old geezer I have experienced hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, blizzards and tsunamis. I don't much care for any of them...👴
I STILL have nightmares about that Quake. We lived not far away from the epicenter. Didn't see my parents for a few weeks because were they worked there wasn't any access back for that long.
Santa Cruz had an entire street of older shops just turned to rubble. There's a picture of President Bush standing on the rubble.
Me and my brother were watching that game in the video on TV, it was The World Series between both Bay Area Teams!!! The San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics.
It took years to get the damage cleared etc.
My grandparents lived in the Marina District, one of the worst affected areas. You can see how buildings in the Marina pancaked down from three floors to just one @2.57 and @6.11. Luckily their building survived more or less intact, but being in their 90s, they were pretty helpless. My mother eventually managed to reach them the next morning, and bring them to her place in Redwood City. I flew out from the East coast to help, and because we had family in the Marina, we were able to get past the tight security cordon and I was able to see the devastation first hand. It was truly incredible.
When you see the video of the Cypress structure @ 3.37, you have to envisage that this was a dual deck highway, with one roadway over the other. The top roadway totally collapsed, and fell onto the lower level, crushing everything beneath it. This is where 2/3rds of the deaths occurred. It was never rebuilt.
This happened during the World Series, which happened to be between the two teams in that area and they were playing right there. If it was a regular day, many more should have been on those highways and many more would have died.
There was a World Series game going on at the time Giants vs Athletics.
Being in that stadium while this was going on would have been surreal
@@kabirconsiders there’s footage of it if you are interested it was during game three 10/27/89
@@kabirconsiders Ultimately that game may have saved lives because people were gathered around TV sets in their homes or at bars instead of out on the streets and bridges.
The death toll could have been far worse on the Bay Bridge on any other day.
I live in the East Bay, and lived through this earthquake. I was at work at the library, and saw the building sail up and down. My husband was in our backyard, and saw the house shake like matchsticks. He reinforced the foundation within a year after that! Looking at this video brings tears to my eyes and brings me back to the extreme chaos and devastation that occurred. I have two family members who, separately, drove through the Cypress structure just minutes before the collapse. This level of earthquake, 6.9 on the Richter scale, hasn't happened in the SF Bay Area in the more than 30 years since then, so we are overdue for another one ... but we don't know if it will be soon, or years from now. Most of them are smaller, and I feel smaller ones regularly, about once a month. Microquakes, which are mostly not felt by many, occur daily.
As a long time Bay Area resident, I was talking to someone in the City when the quake hit. She told me that she had to go because the earthquake had started. We hung up and the shaking really took hold. I wasn't able to contact her for over a week - had no idea if she made it through the event or not. I was in Marin County (which is over the GG Bridge) in the North Bay and sits on bedrock so not much damage happened there despite it being a large quake. We could look across the bay and see SF fully engulfed. It was surreal.
As for how often and why it doesn't seem to effect the populace living there - you have to understand that earthquakes are not seasonal -- like fire season, etc. The last real major quake (prior to this one in 1989) in the SF Bay Area happened in 1906 (equal to what happened in 1989). So, the chances of living through multiple large quakes in a given lifetime is rarer than you might think. The span of the highway in the City where the entire upper deck collapsed on the lower, was completely removed. They never rebuilt it. To be honest it was an eyesore on the Marina district in the city and the city was better off for its removal. The worst damage in the city (where you saw the most destruction and fire) was the Marina district. That was all man-made landfill - which moved like quicksand and several buildings collapsed or slipped into the ground (sink holes). The Marina district is the most expensive property in SF - along with Nob Hill and Pacific Heights - it is the bastion of "old" SF money. Yet, that very "bay front property" that is so prized, is also the most vulnerable. You also have to realize that quakes are generally short in nature. Not like a tornado or hurricane which can last for long periods of time and hurl your butt into another county if caught unaware and not hunkered down in a storm cellar or basement.
Funny side story - when a smaller quake happened a friend of mine's roommate (who wasn't born in CA) came running in yelling, "Quake! C'mon, we have to go!" My friend (who is a Californian through and through) just laughed at his traumatic expression and replied, "Go?! Where are we going to go? You can't outrun this thing. Just take cover and wait it out." 🤣😂
You can definitely tell a native Californian from a visitor or a person who just moved here during an earthquake. Native Californians are used to small to midsize earthquakes. They take it in stride and sometimes they even sleep through them if they occur in the middle of the night. Understandably people who are not used to earthquakes can tend to freak out. I wouldn’t blame them it’s kind of unsettling when the ground starts moving. It’s no different than if I moved into tornado country, I’d freak out while the natives would just grab my hand and pull me into the storm cellar in the basement.
My grandfather worked for the news station most of this footage came from as a producer. Making it very likely that my grandfather actually helped produce this documentary you are watching (at least a small part of it)
Check out the Alaska Earthquake and Tsunami of 1964.
I’ll put it on my list!
I was 9 when that quake hit. I remember every second of it.
I was 18 when this happened, I live in central California. We felt the shaking but didn’t have much in the way of damage. We were far enough from the epicenter that it was next to nothing compared to SF. They only scratched the surface on this. There are so many personal stories that are scary, sad and uplifting.... all at the same time. There was a man trapped in his car for days under the collapsed bridge, the news covered that right up til they brought him out, alive, barely.... but alive. I’ve actually been lucky to live far enough from any of the large ones to have any real damage. 🤞
Earthquakes happen a lot in California but the vast majority are not bad at all. The last one to cause major damage was in 1994
They are overdue. The San Andreas is a sleeping giant.
@@lesliehermanns615 they’ve been saying that for 30 years
That was in Northridge, my hometown. Luckily I was a few miles from the epicenter, but it was still really bad. I was almost 4. It was a 6.7 I think. There’s also good news coverage videos on it.
@@TDHSFV Tons of coverage! Also because there was a multi level overpass that collapsed, and the focus was trying to rescue those ppl. I was glued to the tv hoping those ppl were still alive.
They also get mudslide too. Is horrific.
I was 19 when this quake occurred, before cellphones and the Internet. In terms of technology, it seems like far more than 32 years ago. The casualties were 63 dead and 3757 injured. 42 of the deaths were due to the collapse of the elevated highway shown at 3:40. If I remember correctly, one of the survivors was able to escape only because a surgeon crawled under the collapsed roadway and performed an amputation inside their car.
I was 13, and now that you mention it, I do vaguely recall that one miracle amputation rescue.
In the 68 quake I was under my car in the driveway. It was on jackstands. I looked out the driveway and it was rolling like waves at the beach. I shot out from under the car on my creeper. A freind had a shop in Santa Rosa he could only watch the cars bouncing around on their stands. He was doing conversions Volvo engines and trans in MGTDs one fell didn't hurt much.
I was living and working in Oakland at the time of the Quake. Thank God for the World Series or the loss of life would have been even higher than it was. Many commuters left work early to watch the game otherwise there'd have been much more traffic on the bridges and freeways. I was on my way out of my office on the 16th floor of my building when a subordinate stopped me to discuss a case. The quake hit whilst we were at my desk and I immediately ducked under my desk for cover. She joined me. A coworker was at the copy machine and our building was on a rolling rocking system so it tilted in the north to south position. She ended up going back and forth with the tethered copy machine following her every step. Another coworker was panicking, screaming and pulling at her hair as she tried to run out of the office.
Once things settled down we couldn't use the elevators. We had to run down 16 flights of stairs while the aftershocks continued. The bracing on the staircases had come loose from the walls and even with all of the debris on the stairs, those of us wearing heels took them off to try and be more stable running down the rocking and rolling stairs. We all made it out, but those of us who'd parked our cars in the building (me included) couldn't get them out. They were parked on upper floors that could only be accessed by elevator and the power was out.
Thankfully there was one taxi left at the taxi stand and three of us (strangers all) got to it and agreed to share. Two of them lived on the other side of the Cypress Freeway (unbeknownst to us it had collapsed) and the driver was going to drop them off first. Just as we got there a citizen was directing traffic and we had to stop. From our perspective the Cypress looked intact. He was directing traffic off of the upper deck and we were getting restless because he was taking so long. The two other passengers decided not to wait any longer and got out.
Finally the guy allowed us to go and as we moved forward, I saw that the part of the freeway I could see from the cab was the only part still intact. The rest was collapsed on both sides and the guy was directing traffic from the upper deck from the on ramp and therefore helping the drivers to get off of the collapsed upper deck.
To get me to my daughter's school the driver had to pass the BART station (commuter train into and out of San Francisco) and there were crowds of stranded commuters, some running towards my cab. He didn't stop. Finally get to my daughter's school and she was hysterical. She was 7 at the time and thought I'd been killed when the Bay Bridge collapsed, even though she knew I worked in Oakland.
We lived in the lower hills of Oakland and were extremely fortunate. We never lost electricity or gas and only 2 small items were broken when they fell off of a shelf. Looking out of our window all of the flat lands of Oakland and across the Bay and San Francisco were in total darkness. Very eerie!
My mom had a pool and she said she saw all of the water come up and out of the pool and then drop straight back in.
Those working the collapsed Cypress were risking their lives to get survivors out. They had a child trapped inside a vehicle and surgeons came to the car and amputated his leg. It's a time in my life I will never forget 😢
I was 14 years old, in our junior high school pavilion watching a basketball game in Santa Cruz County. Our seats were made of concrete slabs. When it hit, the slabs felt like water. We lost power for over a week and the downtown was hit hard. The aftershocks lasted over a year later. The house with the large crack was about ten miles away from my house. I still flinch when I hear the sound of a heavy truck driving by my office. Although it was bad, I also did see the best of humankind in the aftermath. Believe it or not, there would have been more deaths if the World Series wasn't going on. Those bridges would have been filled up with cars, but instead, most people were either at Candlestick park or already home getting ready for it to start on the television.
I still mourn the loss of beautiful downtown Pacific Avenue and the old County Courthouse- my college days hangout!
I was watching the game when this happened and we saw it live on TV as it happened.
I forget if it is on UA-cam or the Prelinger Archives, but there are films taken from a cable car both before and after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. It's fascinating to see the cable car go down the same street and see the beautiful buildings in the first film and the destruction in the second film.
My sister worked in Oakland and took the Cypress Freeway (I-880) to and from work every day. She noticed the coffee maker hadn’t been cleaned as she was leaving work and stopped to clean it…that saved her life. She would have been on the Cypress when the upper level pancaked down onto the lower level. It took her awhile to find a working phone but she was able to call our parents and let them know she was okay. They called me and our other sister who were pretty frantic with worry because we knew she took that route home.
I was working on the 19th floor of a high rise across from the bay bridge at the corner of Market & Embarcadero. The quake began and as it escalated, I went under my cubicle desk as metal file cabinets shook and fell over, by tube computer monitor fell on me and the alarms sounded, and the lights went out. It felt as if the building was going to fall over - it shook so much. There were a few people screaming and crying on my floor - so we checked to be sure no one was seriously injured and then carefully walked down the emergency stairs in the dark as the emergency stairwell lights went out. By the time we reached the ground level - our legs were like rubber. I could see the Ferry Building Clock Tower was frozen at 5:05 pm. There were cars stuck on the bridge and people were milling about out of their cars - something I had never seen before. I waited for my husband to pick me up, but he was stuck in his 7-story office building’s underground garage as the gates wouldn’t open. He and a few others had to unscrew the gates and drive over them to get out. The devastation was everywhere, people wandering about, broken windows and building facades had fallen onto sidewalks. We drove my terrified coworker home to her panicked husband and child since she relied on public transportation which had stopped running. We then drove home to our SF apartment and waited for the telephone lines to clear to let family know we were safe and to confirm that my husband’s family that lived not far from the Marina were safe as well. I had PTS for weeks after. This was something I would never want to experience again.
Earthquake preparedness is drummed into us from a very early age. Schools and even some workplaces participate in an annual event called the Great CA Shakeout, where people practice dealing with the fallout from a major seismic event, including people assigned to roles to play the injured and rescue teams. The idea that “The Big One is overdue” is always repeated. (The Big One refers to a major event of around 8 on the Richter Scale that will happen on the San Andres Fault - it still hasn’t happened but seriously could any time. In LA the San Andreas is about 50 miles inland so we would see Northridge-style damage but over a wider area).
So when you see how people react to the quake, the first calm reactions are because we’ve all experienced small quakes and are waiting to see how strong it is (that’s why so many people pause a second before making for cover/exits). There are things about the way our structures are built and even the way we decorate that reflect that preparedness - stuff you’d never even imagine to think about. For example, not hanging anything heavy on the wall over our beds, or using museum putty to secure any valuable tchotchkes, also smart people keep a supply of drinking water and shelf-stable food available. I went through Northridge in ‘94 and it was about 3 days before you could buy gas anywhere and the first doughnut shop to reopen had a huge line. But again, plans. So the Anheuser-Busch plant immediately converted its line to can fresh (filtered) drinking water instead of beer, etc (we had a lot of fun with that at school, because they still used their company logo on the water cans, lol)
What you see in media coverage is always the worst of the worst, they don’t show blocks and blocks of homes that came through okay in between the dramatic events, so it looks like the whole city is crushed or on fire and it may only be a few isolated spots. (To be fair, my experience is from Northridge, I didn’t go through Loma Prieta, and I understand it was pretty bad in spots because of unstable ground and older structures.) But regardless large areas lose power and the water supply has to be considered undrinkable and gets over-treated (ooh the rashes from showering in that), and of course transportation becomes an absolute mess for a good while.
Side note: the collapse was on the Bay Bridge, not the Golden Gate. The Bay Bridge runs from Oakland (the East Bay) to San Francisco, whereas the Golden Gate runs from San Francisco up to the upper peninsula (Marin). There are a few major bridges in the area. The Bay Bridge is the double decker one.
The one authority everybody turns to when a quake happens, who all the tv stations immediately start calling is @drlucyjones (that’s her Twitter handle) from CalTech.
To learn more about quakes, here are some terms to Google:
1. Great California Shakeout
2. CalTech
They say the World Series actually saved lives. Because it was two Bay Area teams playing around what would be rush hour, most people were at bars, restaurants, and houses watching the game so many lives were likely saved since less were on the road
I was working on a highrise in oakland a couple blocks from the cypress collapse, and they pulled heavy equipment from the job to help find people. A steel beam on around the 22nd floor fell off the top and into the street, and then into the parking lot under the road. You could see the road where i was at in redwood city just rolling like a wave of the ocean. The amazing thing is how everything moves that much without actually not falling apart.
We have minor quakes all the time but I can only remember about 4 major ones in the 35 years I have lived in LA. The Whittier quake and the Northridge quake are the two that come to mind.
I was living in Modesto, CA (a bit East from San Francisco) and in high school when this occurred. My dad was working graveyard shifts, and was napping after work. He was thrown off the bed. Under our oak dining table was our earthquake hide spot (we had earthquake drills at school growing up, and a Family earthquake plan). I remember watching the shadow of the chandelier swinging wildly and hitting the ceiling, hearing glass break.
I was in the back seat of the family car. My 76yo Grandmother was stopped at a stoplight and asked my then 17yo body if I was dancing in the backseat. I said no and asked if she was moving the car. We then looked outside and saw all the trees shaking back & forth, the streetlights bobbing & weaving like boxers in the ring, and the ground moving like waves in the ocean. The car surfed over the waves like it was a normal thing. We had been on the way to get my mother from work as we were to go out for dinner that night. Mom came out saying she never wants to be in that building again during an earthquake. (It was a new, safer suspension constructed building. My mother swore that it made the quake twice as bad to ride through.)
Anyway, we went home to see if there was any damage, but it was minimal as we lived in Santa Rosa (a good 1 to 1.5 hour drive from SF). We ended up watching the reports of the damage on tv. The next day I started volunteering at The Salvation Army loading trucks with supplies to help the people who had so much loss. I did that for about a week or so.
Never will forget that. One of my good friends that grew up here in Oakland told me that there was a lot of people living in tents here after the quake, as much of Oakland was out of power, gas, and had no running water for over a week post quake. And for some reason my Brooklyn, NY born other half doesn't think it's important to have an emergency kit. It's drummed into us that are raised here to have a kit with enough food, water, and other supplies for everyone in the house for 72 hours, minimum.
We lived through this when I was a kid. Luckily, the worst thing we had to deal with was loss of power. One of the reasons the fires were so bad was some of the fire stations had been damaged in the quake, so they couldn't raise the doors to get the fire engines out.
To this day I’m terrified of falling into a broken portion of bridge or being trapped under a slab of overpass. Seeing this on the news as and after it happened was horrifying. I couldn’t imagine seeing it live in person.
Same. I lived in the Bay Area for a while and hated being stuck on bridges during rush hour because of my worry of an earthquake.
I still get nervous if I get stuck in traffic under an overpass. I try to avoid stopping under structures like that if possible.
Whats sad is Alaska has far bigger fires and earthquakes every year along with many other insane weather/mother nature events and you never hear about them. on average we have 2-3 volcanoes that erupt every year as well. Our winter storms alone dwarf hurricanes in size. You should look up the Alaska earthquake 1964 Magnitude 9.2 131 deaths. lasted 4.5 minutes and is the 2nd largest ever recorded. The San Francisco earthquake was only 6.4 and did this much damage imagine 9.2. To feel what is like stand on a waterbed the have 3-4 people push the water and you around.
I was there in 1964 when that quake hit. It was unbelievable. I remember being pitched around like a rag doll. And I remember the tremors that followed. Those were 7+. I remember it like it was yesterday.
I know a lady who experienced Alaska AND Northridge
Being from Cali, I guess we have just been waiting for "The Big One" to hit, but we have had many through out the years of between 4 - 6 on the Richter's, hardly does it really go up to 7. Just a few years there where a pair of earthquakes that where felt to Vegas during 4th July weekend.
During an earthquake, logic saids to get out of the house or where ever you might be in, but you are safer if you stay where you are at and find something to protect your head. If you were to run outside, you might trip and fall down because of the motion of the earthquake causing serious bodily damage, you might get hit with falling glass or concrete or other objects that are on buildings, not to mention fire and fallen down power lines.
If you really want to see want an earthquake can do, look up the 1985 Mexico City's, it is 10x times worse than San Fran; it measured at 8.1 on the Ricther's scale, killing between 5 - 40k.
I remember waiting with my mum, at the airport for my pregnant sister and her 11 month old to land in Victoria BC. We were watching the World Series on the Café TV. The entire situation ended being so awful, that watching this is making me weepy.
Yes, it makes me weepy, too! So much devastation!
I lived in Long Beach and we could feel tremors from that quake. There is a distance of 407 miles but it happened on the infamous San Andreas fault line which also goes through Los Ángeles. It is said that the main focal depth of this quake was 11 miles down where most are 4 to 6. The ferocity of that quake was unbelievable.
I don't get up and move unless it's a 4.0 or higher. that's, like, jars of spaghetti sauce falling off shelves at the supermarket level. those are twice a year. California has earthquakes and fires, and I know how to prepare and react for those. Other places have hurricanes and Tornados.
The building safety rules we have are written in blood. 1906 taught us we needed backup fire systems, because earthquakes brake pipes. The 1989 quake taught us that buildings need to be able to flex to not break. The bigger the structure, the longer the single straight line, the more it needs to be able to flex. And that if you're going to take out structural walls to make a garages on the ground level, you need sheer wall reinforcement (diagonal), not just horizontal and vertical.
This was truly terrible. That wasn't the Golden Gate, it was a Bay Bridge. If it hadn't been for that World Series game, many more cars would have been on the Highway. It was rush hour.
San Francisco is a very beautiful city. Cost of housing is very high. I love SF but would never live there because of the earthquakes , traffic and cost of living. Great place to visit, with fingers crossed.
Californian born and raised. Big quakes like this are pretty rare and I would absolutely choose quakes over Tornadoes, Hurricanes, blizzards and floods. Quakes last maybe a minute, Katrina, the Texas feeze, the tornado storm that just ripped through the Midwest go on for hours or days. Every state has natural disasters even with fires, those are almost always in forests.
Same here. Every state has one thing or another. Building codes are pretty stringent here.
I was in Burlingame just south of SF when the quake hit. It was very scary and I saw several weird things happen during, like how structures and freeway signs and windows were moving. It then took several hours to get through SF to the Golden Gate bridge because all the street lights were out. By the time I got through it was dark and where you can usually see the city from the north side there was nothing but black and a gigantic fire in the Marina. It was all surreal and scary.
My cousin worked at San Francisco International Airport and should have been on the Bay Bridge going home to Walnut Creek when the quake hit. She forgot her coat at work, went back to get it and by the time her car was approaching the bridge the traffic was already backed up on the San Francisco side. She said that driving around through San Jose to get home with all the road and bridge closures took her six hours to drive what should have been less than an hour home.
I was in the Midwest visiting my aunt when this occurred. I grew up in alameda which is next to Oakland. My mom was an RN working in Oakland. She worked for hours at the cypress trying to free anyone who may be alive and recovering those who were not. I remember not be able to get ahold of her for days. Seeing this made me cry all over again seeing this and wondering if my mom was ok.
I remember back in '82 or '83, I was driving a large box van from Hayward to Walnut Creek in the morning and back again at the end of the day, with one direction we were on the top layer and the other direction we were inside between the two layers. I told my work partner in the truck with me "I hope we're not under here when an earthquake hits because this road will collapse". He would always ask me if I was serious. That Cyprus Structure made me so damn nervous driving through there.
That road was like driving on a spring board. I told him that as much as this road bounces up and down all day everyday, the only thing holding it up anymore is the steel. The concrete must be nothing but stones by now, with the steel trapping it. As soon as this road moves the wrong way the steel will bend and the concrete will pour out and then it's lights out for anyone in here between these two layers.
If you go back to that video and look at the support structures, you will see the steel bars sticking out with almost no concrete sticking to it. That disconnect did not happen during the quake. The quake just gave it the kick it needed to fall.
Great content again Kabir!
Thank you once again for an honest reaction.
There are little ones that happen all the time. I lived in Glendale, California age 6 during the Sylmar, California earthquake in 1971. I was a scared little girl. I still remember some of it.
This is the earthquake that occurred during that baseball game in which you were asking "Please someone tell me what exactly happened" when the screen went green and the commentators were trying to explain what happened.
You got a lot of really good responses from people that were here in the SF Bay Area! Then as now, I live in SF and my work is just across the Bay Bridge (then I worked not far from the Cypress structure that collapsed.) Most minor earthquakes may only last a few seconds and shimmy or shake a little. Slightly larger ones may feel like someone crashed into the wall of your building. The main Loma Prieta quake was bigger and it lasted 15 seconds (felt like it lasted longer). If you're comparing earthquakes, it makes a huge difference how deep underground they are, how far away they originated, how long the shaking continues, what the geography is like (especially the ground directly beneath you) and how well constructed your building is. Houses here have to be bolted to the foundation, so they don't simply slide off the foundation, concrete and brick has to be reinforced, and larger structures are supposed to drive steel piling down to bedrock, and have to be built to roll and sway. These regulations are meant to save lives and keep the building standing. It's devastating to see the huge death tolls in places that didn't follow these standards; where the buildings just collapsed on top of people. Wherever you are, be alert and plan a little, to survive a disaster.
Part of the reason homes and apartment collapse in a quake is that the first floor is often open spaces for parking, with pillars instead of more load-bearing walls. Another cause is where in town you may be. The Marina district where the major fires were is built on landfill, which can liquify when shaken, basically turning the ground under your house to jello. My (then) neighborhood is on bedrock, solid, but even then we were without power for three days. Yay for having a big backyard and a barbecue grill!
I was here in Vallejo then on my way to San Francisco, it was insane. Would have been 10s of thousands dead if it wasn't for the Oakland A's playing the San Francisco Giants in the world series. Which never happened before or since. The cypress freeway that had the upper deck pancake on the lower deck would have been bumper to bumper if almost everyone wasn't home already to watch the game. The earthquake was at 5:04 pm, the heart of rush hour. Had we not been late waiting for a friend we would have been on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed.
Growing up in the East Bay for most my life since '86, you live with the fear of the "big one" that they say will hit, and you just hope that the infrastructure they've prepared for it can withstand it. They've re-done quite a bit of the Bay Bridge recently and I was told previously the Golden Gate. I know there are still homes in Oakland at risk. In my old house, we had to put in tons of piping on the hills for rainwater dispersal to let out so even if minor ~4.0 quakes not causing landslides.
It's a lively seismic zone as any SF Bay Area person will tell you. And things like the 89 quake are very rare.
Most natural disasters involve bad weather, even our forrest fires often involve lighting strikes.
Something eery about a natural disaster that happens during beautiful sunny days... 1989 was just that; a gorgeous picture perfect day!
My boy!! Always coming in the clutch when I need some content 👌🏽
Always brother!
My dad had a work conference in San Francisco the day before this happened, but he flew out the night before. He always says how grateful he felt to have gotten out right on time because watching all of this unfold, he could see some of the places he'd just been, really messed up.
I had been in the San Francisco area just before this happened and had moved to Paso Robles for work. The day it happened I was in Los Angeles on the 9th floor of a building. People started yelling, crawling under tables and saying it was a big one. To me who didn't know better all I saw was doors rattling in their frames and ceiling lights swaying. I just stood still until it was over wondering what was so bad. Later I saw the interstate I had driven daily in San Francisco completely collapsed along with all if the destruction. Guess I was one of the lucky ones.
I lived in CA for 4 years in the 1980s and only had 1 quake to that I could really feel.
Years later I'm at work at home in coastal NC and all of a sudden I feel the sensation of the earth rolling. A fairly major earthquake happened in Virginia. It damaged the Washington monument and the National Cathedral among other things. It took years to repair both .
Alaska-- like California-- is part of the ring of fire and it gets earthquake tremors daily, but they are extremely light and no one can feels them. The center which studies earthquakes, however, notices these tremors on their machines and equipment.
I was a nanny across the bay. I was 18 and watching a baby due to the parents working. The mom was a resident general surgeon and the dad was out of town. I felt it but not much damage in my area. Before that I went into San Francisco all the time. It was a couple weeks before I went back and the places I went I didn't see much of the damage. It was an experience. My first earthquake since I came from a small town in Iowa.
A majority of the damage, as you may remember, was in the Marina district. There were homes that didn't collapse but red (the foundation and bearing walls heavily damaged) making the home unlivable and teardowns. There were a lot of homes that were yellow tagged - structural, reparable damage.
If you go to SF ... and see homes with metal poles attached to brick walls, it's one-way older buildings can meet to code.
I was in fifth grade. I remember watching the baseball game as the quake rolled through.
I was living in SF and was a claims adjuster working in our west side office. Relatively quiet day, then when I left the office in my company car,
is when all hell broke loose.
Driving down the street, the car felt like a boat going through heavy waves. Houses slid into the street, the Cypress Structure in the East Bay collapsed, fires as you saw.
To see the damage up close is humbling to know that no matter what man builds, nature can take it in a moment.
Now when there's a traffic stop, many people didn't want to stop underneath an overpass.
I was only 2 when this happened so I don't remember it, but it was one of the reasons we left California. My dad and I were picking my brother up from school and all of the sudden the fence around the school started shaking. Our dad scooped us up and jumped down the steps to get us as far away from the building as quickly as possible. Our mom was still at work and they all had to barricade under their desks. And then she couldn't get home and had no way to communicate with my dad. And my dad didn't speak a ton of English yet, so he could barely communicate with anyone else. It was a disaster. And then when we all finally did get home, there was a huge crack from floor to ceiling in our apartment that you could see daylight through.
I remember this quite well. I was a kid and it wasn't long after we had an even stronger quake near me. (Big Bear quake) Luckily there wasn't near as much density and high rise buildings near us. This quake was bad but could have been so much worse.
It happened at a very good time. If there is such a thing. If it had been much later in the day it would have been during "rush hour" when the roads would have been packed with commuters and baseball fans. (It happened during the world series, that happened to be in Frisco that year). There was only a small fraction of the people out on the roads as normal.
P.S. The Bay Bridge isn't the Golden Gate Bridge. The Bay Bridge runs east/west form Frisco towards Oakland and Berkeley. A much heavier traveled Bridge for local people and commuters.
You could also look up Lima Prietta
Big Bear was the last quake I was in CA for (Whittier was my first). I was in OC... and I think Big Bear was the worst I ever had. A 7.1, if I recall correctly (I might not... I was a dumb 23 year old)... it was a hard shaker and seemed to go on forever... first time I had all the stuff on my walls and shelves fall to the ground. I tell myself I'm glad I don't live in earthquake country, but I moved to Seattle 5 years ago and only recently found out this is also quake country.
@@EricaGamet Yep. I don't remember the exact magnitude either. But rest assured they haven't stopped here. There was a 7. something just a couple years ago. But it was out in the middle of the desert by Ridgecrest. There was even one yesterday. Around Anaheim. Only a 3.3 though.
I am 64 and a big baseball fan..I was watching live..a staggering event.i am glad it was not as bad as the 1907 quake..love your reactions Kabir..Kent in ohio
My hometown is Santa Cruz, CA. I was 16 years old in '89 and happened to be in a grocery store when it hit (the Lucky's on Soquel Ave). I would NOT recommend being in a store during a major earthquake
My dad was in a grocery store in San Jose at the time, he said it was pretty scary.
I was stationed at Lackland AFB when this occurred.
I was attending the NCO (Non Commissioned Officer's i.e. Sergeants) Academy, where they teach you to be better Sergeants. The problem was, the school was 0.6 miles from my on-base house and I HAD to stay in school facilities. So, the wife took the kids back home for the 7 weeks of the course.
For my study group/room group, whatever, this course was easy-peasy... I mean, "Why study?" simple.
So, we gathered in one guy's room to watch the World Series and drink beer (Hey we're Sergeants, we drink).
And then, the earthquake happened.
I remember seeing a flame geyser, (helicopter footage) from a broken gas main and one of my classmates exclaimed, "Holy shit! My parent's house is literally 1 block away".
He immediately left to find a phone, '89 no cells.
Chilling.
As far of living there, California experiences very minor earthquakes frequently, and they are taken in stride.
There IS an exodus from California, but it doesn't have anything to do with earthquakes.
MOST, as in, 99% of the people that work in San Francisco can't afford to live there.
Think.
People making 6 figures a year, LIVING LIKE PEASANTS, can't afford to live there.
Six figures!!!
Something wrong on that whole picture.
I was in the Navy and stationed at Mare Island when this happened. I was at home running laps in my apt complex when I noticed all the parked cars start rocking back and forth. My ex and I had just driven across the bay bridge a week before this.
I was watching the World Series when it happened. Since then Washington has change some building codes to be more earthquake proof. A lot of the tall buildings and new bridges are built on dampers , large plates with hugh springs so it can sway with it instead of being ridged . Now the old bridges concrete pillars are being encased in thick metal tubes so they don't crack and crumble. Thanks goodness Seattle got rid of the double deck along the waterfront and made a tunnel.
You would be surprised at how many we have here in Washington on our Volcanos each day you never feel cause they are weak.
Now for a Big Quake !!!
Look at 1964 ( I was 12 ) ALASKA'S 9.2. Earthquake.
Yes, I remember being so scared of the Viaduct after this earthquake.
To reply to your comment on moving to somewhere safer; No matter where in the US you live, you’ll be subject to natural disaster. West coast has Quakes, Landslides, Wildfires. Midwest has Tornados and Snowstorms (Southern Texas see frequent hurricanes). East coast has snow storms, hurricanes, and some tornados.
You kind of have to assess what natural disasters you could come to terms with a live alongside.
I was 11 years old during this quake. We lived on Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato since my dad was in the Navy stationed in Alameda. We had gone to the mall, and I was standing at a kiosk playing video games when the quake started. When we got home the floor speakers had moved about two feet away from the wall they were against. My dad, luckily, got held up at work and was not on his way home at the time. He usually took the freeway that collapsed home. One good thing about this quake was how people stepped up to help others. I remember when I was stationed at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, CA feeling an earthquake. It woke me up. I shrugged, said oh earthquake, rolled over and went back to sleep while it was rumbling!! It may sound odd, but you get used to the small ones and just go on about your business!
Being in a relatively large earthquake is very surreal. I was in a 6.8 quake in Washington (2001) centered about six miles from my location. Thankfully there was maybe two fatalities at most. There's an initial jolt and then whole world just moves out from under your feet; much like vertigo if you've ever had it. Time slows down.
I was waking up while waiting for morning university classes to start. Since childhood they teach you to crouch under your desk or a doorway during an earthquake. However, fire drills are much more common, thus my most poignant observation was that everyone in the building rushed outside.
Being around a waterway there is much fill land around the shoreline, especially cities abutting the water. Most all of this land liquified, to some extent, and left large rolling ripples in many places. There were quite a few bridge rebuids. My dog was home alone and ended up huddled in the farthest corner of the house from where some cookbooks fell from the refrigerator, I assume onto her. All of the books on my bookshelves were on the floor. The house shifted quite substantially and the chimney separated about a foot from the side of the house. All of the north/south facing doors were either jammed shut or would not close.
Now I'm just waiting for the giant volcano about 50 miles from here to finally take us out.
I was living on Lakewood when the Nisqually Earthquake hit just south of me.
I was three going on four at the time and this was one of my first memories. I actually slept through the quake, since that day, it's been a long inside joke within the family that i'll sleep through anything. "Chris can sleep through an earthquake." My parents worked in the financial district in San Francisco and I was in daycare in Oakland. I remember since my parent's couldn't get across the bridge, I was stuck at daycare for 3 days. That night we lit candles and played a games by candlelight. And as to your question about how often do they occur? California gets around 10,000 earthquakes a year (99.9% you can't feel and are only detected by seismographs) A particular region will usually experience a devastating one like in the video on average once every 150 years.
How often do we get earthquakes? Depends on where you live and if you live near a fault line. Where i live i get quakes of varying degrees once a month. Others outside of California would probably freak out by any quake. But most of the quakes here are so minor it wouldn't wake me from a daydream lol.
I was in the 3rd grade, and I remember it so vividly. My dad went over that bridge 10 min prior to it collapsing. My mom was commuting home and in the tunnels underground on the BART train. I didn't know if i would ever see her again. It took her like 12 hours to get back home b/c it was so hard to get out of the city.
Kabir, you should look up the Northridge earthquake from 1994, epicentered down near Los Angeles in the SF valley. This Loma Linda quake dealt $5 to $6 Billion estimated damage. Northridge's estimates ranged from $13 to $50 Billion.
I'm born and raised in Reno, NV. and I remember as a kid our school had regular earthquake drills along with fire drills even though Reno isn't known for large earthquakes.
I was in SF when the quake hit, in a bookstore on Castro (which becomes Divisadero just before Haight St.). I grew up in CA so wasn't too alarmed because it wasn't too crazy until until the last couple of shakes. Then I was like, okay THAT was big. Looked around for a safe spot but all the tourists were huddled in the doorways, etc. Luckily it stopped about then. (I've been a bit edgy during quakes since, unless I'm in an open area.) I was living in the Santa Cruz mountains at the time, about a mile from the epicenter. All the highways going through the mountains were closed so I wasn't able to get home for a couple of days. The phone lines were all screwed up and depending on where you were, could make local calls but not long distance calls and my landlords were in that situation. I was able to call their relatives in Boston to let them know everyone was safe, but the long distance had been knocked out. Quakes of that magnitude are fairly rare. Other areas have tornadoes and major hurricanes much more often. I'll take my chances with quakes.
My sister and I were in the Block Buster video store near Church Street station when it hit. Avoiding falling videos and shelving in the store and bricks falling from the building next door, my sister and I walked from Church Street back to 23rd Avenue in the Outer Sunset to get back home. It was terrifying!!!!
On October 17, 1989, the Bay Area was buzzing about baseball. The Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants, both local teams, had reached the World Series. The third game of the series was scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. Just prior to the game, at 5:04 p.m., with live cameras on the field, a magnitude 6.9 quake rocked the San Francisco Bay region. Though the stadium withstood the shaking, other parts of the Bay Area were not as fortunate. Sixty-seven people perished as a result of the quake, which lasted around 15 seconds, while more than 3,000 others were injured.
The quake costs more than 5 billion dollars in damages.
I was 8yrs old doing homework and listening to the World Series when we had to run out of the house. It felt like I was getting pulled back in and when outside the entire neighborhood was in the street and neighbors helping each other to turn off the gas to prevent fires and explosions
Lifelong SFer here. I lived this. People were terrific. Everyone helping each other. People were particularly caring of their elderly neighbors even if they didn’t know them. Civilians helping rescue and law enforcement. I don’t recall looting or lawlessness. Despite the many horrors, there was so much good.
I’m 50 and live here in SF. I vividly remember this quake. We all do.
I was watching the baseball game when it hit and everything stopped and then the tv was reporting about the bridge there was people in cars under all the concrete that was still alive
I was 4 when it happened. I was at pre school in San Francisco and the building shook for a good 20 seconds. Every moment from that day is etched into my memory.
Remember, both the Richter and other magnitude scales are logarithmic. Each whole unit higher is 10x the energy.