The 1989 Bay Area Earthquake: The Story of San Francisco’s Second Deadliest Earthquake

*Includes pictures
*Includes accounts of the earthquake and aftermath by people across the Bay Area, including policemen, firefighters, and people at the World Series
*Includes a bibliography for further reading

"I'll tell you what—we're having an earth—“ - Al Michaels broadcasting the World Series on ABC as the earthquake struck and before the feed went out
“Well folks, that's the greatest open in the history of television, bar none!" – Al Michaels after the ABC feed was restored
On October 17, 1989, millions of Americans tuning in to watch the Oakland Athletics face the San Francisco Giants in the World Series watched the cameras suddenly start to shake violently for several seconds. The national broadcast had just caught an earthquake registering a 6.9 on the Richter scale striking the Bay Area, and by the time the earthquake and the resulting fires were over and dealt with, over 60 people were dead, making it San Francisco’s deadliest earthquake since the 1906 earthquake and fire.
The damage and devastation across the Bay Area was widespread, despite the precautions and changes that the region had made in the wake of the 1906 calamity. After that disaster, San Francisco began the process of reinforcing new buildings and seismic retrofitting of old ones to help structures brace for earthquakes, but even in the 1980s they were still more concerned about potential fires resulting from an earthquake. Furthermore, after the earthquake in 1906, San Francisco created an Auxiliary Water Supply System that could distribute water to any section of the city, and the city built it with stringent codes in the event of an earthquake. In fact, just a few years before 1989, San Francisco created a Portable Water Supply System and upgraded the fire departments.
San Francisco’s water supply systems worked perfectly, quickly allowing firefighters to put out a fire in the Marina District before it spread, but this time the biggest problem was “liquefaction,” in which saturated soil literally melted away as it was unable to hold any more liquid. The shaking of the earthquake then created cracks in the liquefied soil, and attempts to protect buildings from the violent movements could not safeguard them from the land melting away from under it. The most noteworthy damage occurred to several sections of highways in the Bay Area that did not hold up during the earthquake, despite the fact the earthquake in 1906 was much more powerful. A section of the Bay Bridge collapsed, and the double-decker I-880 collapsed at the Cypress Street Viaduct, killing more than 40 people in Oakland.
As with the earthquake in 1906, the 1989 earthquake brought about changes in an effort to make the region safer. One immediate reaction by Bay Area leaders was to do away with double-decker highways; while highways like the Bay Bridge were seismically reinforced and retrofitted, I-880 was demolished, as was I-280 and the Central Freeway. Over the next several years, the Bay Area rebuilt and rerouted these highways, which cost billions of dollars. The unfinished double-decker Embarcadero Freeway, which had been approved over 30 years before the earthquake despite stiff resistance, was also demolished.
The 1989 Bay Area Earthquake: The Story of San Francisco’s Second Deadliest Earthquake chronicles one of the most notorious natural disasters in California’s history and one of the most important seismic events on record. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the 1989 Bay Area earthquake like never before, in no time at all.