There should have been tons more fatalities, especially when the Cyprus/Nimitz freeway collapsed. It was rush hour when the quake hit. The only saving grace was the fact that both of the Bay Area baseball teams were playing each other in a 'derby' series in the World Series and everyone had gone home early to watch the game.
I’m a California gal, and lived in the Bay Area when this happened. I just had knee surgery, and was in a wheelchair in my apartment. All the people ran out of their apartments, but I stayed inside. All my stuff fell down around me. I really thought I was going to die. Luckily I didn’t.. we have at least 12 earthquakes a day here in California.. we even have “ earthquake warnings “ apps for our iPhones.. Love Grandma Debbie
My husband is an SF native but we live in my home state of FL, where nothing ever happens, except when a hurricane comes. So I’ve been to SF many many multitudes of times. Never once was there an earthquake. I've always wanted to feel an earthquake but it’s like, when I set foot in CA, earthquakes are not allowed to happen.
I was in the 1989 Loma Prieta/World Series earthquake. There is a lot more to the Bay Area than San Francisco. I was in San Jose, watching light poles doing a four foot arc, with the arm out of phase. I helped my landlady clean up her former collection of Depression Glass with a scoop shovel. The Bay Bridge had all the expansion joints in the deck get shoved to one side, and one section dropped, destroying two cars, I remember.
One thing most people don't realize is San Francisco a good portion of it is built on landfill into the bay when you have a big earthquake that landfill liquefies
The other parts that make the hills in San Francisco, are the buildings that crumbled in the big earthquake that they had in the early 1900s. Learned this when my class went up there on a field trip. Where else where they were going to put all of the piles that were once buildings. Another thing to know is, a worker on the Golden Gate bridge fell to their death, while helping to build it, and is rumored to be in the concrete base of that bridge.
That's what happened in the Marina District. Beautiful 3 story wooden buildings built on landfill, which collapsed so they looked like one story. Sturdy furniture alone keeping residents from being smashed.
I was at work in Santa Cruz when it struck. It was definitely the strongest quake I had ever been through. That night a bunch of us slept outside because the aftershocks were so frequent. I will never forget the feeling of the earth shaking while lying on the ground. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep much.
The top level of the double story freeway collapsed on top of the lower one and crushed multiple people in their cars. Some of the most horrific body recovery stories came from that destruction. Seems like yesterday. Then I see that old footage and the fact that I was 24. Unbelievable. Time really flies.
There's a show called Make it Out Alive on Paramount and the episode on this Earthquake was extremely powerful. They explored the devastation but also some amazing rescue stories. I highly recommend checking it out (not necessarily as a reaction because it's pretty intense).
I lived in Long Beach for a few years. On my 12th bday I was gifted a 6.0 on the rector scale. As we drove around after that, I was always terrified on the freeways. They looked like a big bowl of spaghetti to me. I hate them and still freak out on them today. Even here in my home state of Texas I’d just rather not go over any bridges and travel freeways. It was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. So, when we left in 88 I was over the moon!
I wish they had included a scene of the man who was rescued after the second day on freeway 880 in Oakland. He was in a car that was smashed down to about 18 inches tall (about 45 cm), but when they pryed the door open he wiggled out with very minor cuts and scratches. He was just trapped. There were lots of good stories... and bad, too.
I was at work in Emeryville, CA, across the bay from San Francisco. I was getting ready to go home to watch the World Series when the earthquake hit. I left the building after the shaking stopped and went out to my car. The first thing I noticed was smoke rising from a fire in nearby Berkeley. That scared me, because most of the damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was from fires, not the quake itself. Fortunately, the Berkeley fire department put out the blaze pretty quickly. I turned on my car radio to get some news. All of the stations were knocked off the air. I couldn't find any broadcast, AM or FM. I lived about seven miles from my job. I decided to stay off the freeways on my way home, because the overpasses could have been damaged. None of the stop lights were working. Lots of people, ordinary citizens, were out in the intersections directing traffic. People will pull together and do the right thing in an emergency. It was the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland that was damaged. The eastern span of the bridge was a double-decker cantilever construction. One section of the upper road bed had come loose and fallen onto the lower deck. The Bay Bridge is one of the most heavily traveled in the world, so the damage did terrible things to the transportation in the Bay Area. The bridge was closed for a month, and has since been replaced with a single-deck suspension bridge that should be more earthquake-safe. The freeway that collapsed was the old Cypress structure, so-called because it followed the path of Cypress Street in Oakland (since renamed to Mandela Parkway). It was the first double-decker elevated freeway built in California, in 1957. They didn't know much about building elevated roads in those days, and you could tell something was wrong with it even before the earthquake destroyed it. The roadbed sagged between the pillars, so going over it at freeway speed felt like a carnival ride, with the car going up and down. That section of freeway has been replaced with one that goes through a different neighborhood. The new location was a good thing for residents of west Oakland, because the old freeway had cut off their part of the city from the rest of the area. When the Cypress structure collapsed, people from the neighborhood came out and went into the wreckage to rescue people. They did this at great peril to themselves, which I'm sure they knew. I've always thought this was underreported. It seems likely that the World Series saved a lot of lives that day. Both teams, the Giants and the A's, were from the Bay Area. A lot of people were already home, or at sports bars or other venues, when the quake hit. The Cypress Structure was normally wall-to-wall cars at that time of day, but the traffic was relatively light due to the game. BTW, the epicenter of the earthquake was at Loma Prieta, a mountain about 50 miles south of San Francisco.
When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, we lived in San Jose and my grandparents lived in Richmond. We would go up to visit them every month or two I used to LOVE it when we would drive on the Cypress structure (aka I-880, aka the Nimitz freeway) (the one that pancaked in the earthquake) because -- as you said -- it felt a bit like a carnival roller coaster. As I recall, it was more "wavy" going in one direction (heading home, I think) than the other direction. Little did we know what it signified.
I felt it. I was in Sacramento and a row 17 of 5 drawer metal file cabinets knocked together like dominos. In SF the Nimitz freeway which was a double decker collapsed in downtown. Killed everyone in cars in the lower deck. My father was a federal inspector and was called to inspect the federal installations throughout the bay area. The Bay Bridge was repaired within the year and has since been replaced. It is called the Loma Prieta quake.
I went to San Fran a year after the earthquske to run a 10 mile race. A part of the course ran by a still collapsed entrance ramp to a freeway. So sad.
The collapsed freeways is one of things I remember most about this tragedy. Stopping under an overpass or a bridge still makes me slightly nervous because of that.
Where one of the bridges top deck fell flat onto the bottom deck and flattened the car’s below. They assumed that everyone was dead. Seven days later they found a poor man still alive. Unfortunately a few days later he died. They have suspension bridges. I drove over one once. As your driving it moves side to side because of the high winds. I can’t imagine what it would be like in an earthquake.
Yeah, I remember that. It was so eerie to see the top deck resting on top of vehicles on the lower deck. I was surprised that they were able to get to him.
This quake happened in the middle of a World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's and was seen on national TV. The game broadcast suddenly became a breaking news report with play by play man Al Michaels continuing to led the broadcast for a time. Interesting that the now iconic sounds and imagery from that broadcast at the moment the quake hit was barely touched upon in the video you're reacting to, but then again, the human devastation was minimal at the game compared to the rest of the San Francisco Bay region.
It was a miracle more people were not killed. The World Series saved tons of lives. People left work early to be home by 5 o’clock to start watching the World Series that was held in San Francisco versus the Oakland A’s. Imagine that bridge when it it broke if that bridge was full of cars what would’ve happened. I still call it. A miracle people were in their houses instead of on the road. I was home early too to watch the World Series. I survived this. Luckily the house I lived in was built on bedrock so we didn’t have much damage a couple of cracks in the plaster, but no major problems no major injuries.
I was in Emeryville next to Oakland. I was working swing shift for a catalog company. I would've grabbed my lunch in Downtown Oakland but my boss wanted me to stay and take a later lunch. That decision saved my life because I would've been on the lower deck of the Cypress freeway returning to work.
I was there. I was still at work in a single-story office building in Sunnyvale (about 40 miles south of SF, and about 30 miles (by car) from the epicenter. Here are some of my random memories and observations, just to give you an idea of what it was like for an average person who wasn’t affected by any of the related tragedies: I was born and raised in the SF Bay area of CA, so pretty blasé about earthquakes, but this was the first time I ever crawled under a piece of furniture. At first, I went to stand in the door frame, but after several seconds I got under my desk. It seemed to last for an extraordinarily long time - felt like minutes. Not sure how long it actually lasted though. (The quake itself lasted 10-20 seconds, but the residual movement varies depending on the underlying structure of any given place; rock will move less, and less-consolidated soil (like the Marina District in SF) will move more and for longer.) Initially, it hit like one sudden, BIG jolt (including a loud bang), then a few seconds of violent rapid shaking, and eventually ended in a rolling or swaying sensation. When it began to subside, I went outside to the asphalt parking lot, and for several minutes I could feel the earth gently rolling under my feet. That is the first time I was ever outdoors during an earthquake event, so I’d never felt that before. It was indescribably freaky. The mind can understand the shaking of a manmade thing like a building, but to feel the actual earth moving was bizarre. It normally took me about 15 minutes to get home from my office. But because all the traffic signals were out, and EVERYONE flooded onto the roads all at the same time, it took over 2 hrs to get home. The power was out, and by the time I got home it was nearly dark, but I could see that the fridge had opened (nothing fell out, fortunately), but didn’t close all the way. Also, some things had fallen out of the pantry. And an open shelving unit had tipped over. Some lamps had tipped over, too. It took about an hour to find my cat. I called and called, but he wouldn’t come or answer. Finally found him hiding behind the drapes, facing the corner of the wall. It took him several minutes after I picked him up to look at me with any kind of recognition, and begin to relax. Every aftershock we got that night and in the next days sent him into a panic. I wanted to call my mom to let her know I was okay. Of course, this was way before cell phones, so I had to wait until I got home to try calling. All the circuits were busy for hours, because everyone else was also trying to do the same thing. I think it was around 11pm before I was finally able to get a call through. My sister lived in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains -- only about 20 miles from the earthquake's epicenter. She was outside when it hit, and it literally threw her to ground. The shaking was so violent that she couldn’t regain her feet, and basically had to crawl back to the house to get to her 3-yr old daughter, who was on the toilet. The quake knocked her off the toilet and onto the floor, which of course terrified her. After that, she was afraid to use the toilet again, and my sister wanted to reassure her that it wouldn’t happen again, but unfortunately she couldn’t really say that because there were so many strong aftershocks that the same thing could well have happened again. The whole thing set back my niece’s bathroom habits significantly for a while. For many months after the earthquake, if I sensed even the tiniest bit of movement, I would go on red alert... heavy, fully-loaded semi-trucks passing by on the road seemed to be the worst and most frequent culprit. Sitting in my car on an overpass or bridge was also particularly triggering. I guess it was kinda like a teeny-tiny version of PTSD.
I'm from Oakland and when this happened I was teenager about to clock in to my McDonalds job. I lost my manager and her son that day. Her car was crushed. That was a wild day.
I was in sixth grade when this happened. Thankfully, I was far enough east of San Francisco that we got a lot of shaking, but we had no actual structural damage. I had finished my homework and we were about to watch the World Series game, and it all went crazy.
I remember that, I live in Stockton, Ca. We’re about 80 miles away from SF. I was on a bus and the bus started shaking hard, there was a group of teens at the back of the bus. The driver thought they were playing around so he yelled at them to stop. At the next stop, a teen with a skateboard got in the bus, he shouted “Did you guys feel the quake “? We were all shocked, and I loved the driver because he apologized to the teens. Fortunately, we’re far enough away it didn’t do major damage.
I was coming to say the same thing. I lived in Bakersfield with id between an hour and two hours north. It shook the water out of our pool snd fish tank. Also, danced my chair around the living room with me sitting in it.
I remember the Northridge earthquake and all the different shopping centers in the San Fernando Valley and nearby areas that had parts of the buildings collapsed. Although a number of people did die in the Northridge earthquake there are two major factors that kept it from being worse than it might have been. The first factor was that it occurred early in the morning I don’t remember the exact time so I will just say sometime between midnight and 6:00 in the morning local time. The second factor why it was not so bad was because it happened in January. If we had the same earthquake but in the afternoon and a month earlier in December when dozens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of people could have been in those shopping malls that had partially collapsed then the death toll could have been much higher. If I remember correctly I believe that most of the people who died in the Northridge earthquake had lived in one of those apartment buildings or homes that had collapsed during the earthquake and were believed to have been crushed to death in their sleep.
My stepmom was in that quake, she was on a BART train that stopped on the tracks somewhere outside of Oakland. She literally watched a bunch of cows tumble down a hill. Ironically her father and uncles were in the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She used to have a picture from the San Francisco newspaper of them standing amid the rubble of downtown.
Yea, the double-decker highway was one of the worst parts of this earthquake and why we don't really build them anymore, at least as long of a stretch, it had to be terrifying seeing the top section come down on you knowing you have no wheres to go and end up becoming pancaked under the highway above.
Another thing people don't realize is that freeway was a DOUBLE DECKER freeway. When the top crashed down, it crushed the cars below. Look at it and you'll see the bumps below the asphalt.... Those are cars, crushed. Take a good look at it, it's horrific. Tragic was light because of the game. Who builds a double decker freeway on a major fault??!!
I was in college in Santa Cruz that day. I remember thinking "this one's different" because of the motion and how long it lasted. It heaved and rolled under our feet and just kept going.
Was in San Jose for this. Just packing up to go home from work. Had to dive under my desk as books flew off the shelves, and the cheap materials of the small building I was in began to deconstruct. Phone service was out in the entire region. A woman from a classroom next door came into the office begging to use the phone, as she had tried the pay phones and wasn't getting anywhere. She was in so much shock that she couldn't understand my explanation that no phones anywhere would work - I wasn't just being mean to her. She kept offering to pay more and more money to use the phones, and I finally had to tell her loudly, slowly and carefully that NONE OF THE PHONES ANYWHERE ARE WORKING. I hope she was all right once she got home (hope she had a home left to get to). Phones didn't work for several days after; I was able to get a call on day one from my brother who lived in SF at the time, and we had just enough time to let the other know we were alive and OK before service was lost again, not to return for at least 3 more days.
Before this earthquake, the powers that be were arguing that San Francisco didn't need a fireboat and that the expense of having one was unjustified - and then, when all the fire mains failed in the Marina district, they were reminded of why they needed a fire boat.
I love your channel. So...I was going to school at Stanford University at the time. The epicenter was just east of Santa Cruz near the coast, and Stanford, which is northeast of Santa Cruz, near San Jose, was 30 miles from the epicenter, and San Francisco twice that distance. Look at the damage at that distance. My story is an odd one but still a little scary, especially since I was barely out of my teens. I was living in one of the older buildings on campus and most of my housemates were away from what I recall. The house was probably 100 years old. I lived on the second of three floors. The house shook like a cardboard box. I never had earthquake preparedness since I wasn't from California. I shared a room, so there were two beds, as well as two dressers and two desks. A lot of furniture sliding back and forth as I tried to extricate myself from the room. I got out without incident. I had opened the window next to my desk, and when the shaking had stopped I looked up toward my window and noticed my small lamp hanging out of the window, still plugged in apparently. The end to the story for me was it took some time to contact my family in Arizona, and by then I had decided I was taking a leave of absence because the house had foundational damage, and I would have to find a place and had no more guaranteed housing. When a couple of my siblings came and picked me up we also had to deal with the thickest inland fog I had ever seen in my life. I can't say that I was extremely terrified at the time, but that was probably because I managed to keep a cool head and the house avoided collapse. If we had cell phones back then I probably would have posted that lamp dangling from my window.
I remember when this happened. I lived across the country from there but I remember being glued to the television. Just awful, awful devastation and loss of life.
I lived about 20 miles from the epicenter. I was driving when it hit, but saw people running out of the buildings. We were very fortunate and didn't have much damage to our house other than broken dishes. But my friend that lived a few blocks away had everything come off of her walls and cabinets tipped over. It was a mess. The after shocks were hell. They were pretty strong and lasted for months. But I'll still take earthquakes over tornadoes any day!
Most quakes come & go. 1 minute is an eternity during a quake! Quakes can act like tornadoes in that they can wreck one house & the one next door is fine. They are super dynamic so one person's experience might be totally different and distance from the epicenter of the quake obviously makes a tremendous difference.
You should check out the Ice Storm of 98. I live in Upstate New York about 45 minutes away from the Canadian border. We had no power for a week,thunder,lightning and so much ice. Over 10,000 power poles had to be replaced in New York State,alone.
We were the same in Pittsburgh. I had trees snapping all around my yard. Had a tree on my roof, just the corner. Came back on just in time for the Steelers in the super Bowl
The Loma Prieta quake left fires in San Francisco near Golden Gate Park. Multistoried older building pancaked, the upper section of westbound Bay Bridge fell into the lower east bound lanes and the Cupress Structure, double decked freeway, collapse trappingand killing people in their cars. Santa Cruz, closer to the epicenter, saw their fowntown historic masonry building crumble into the streets. The World Series between the SF Giants and cross bay Oakland Athletics was just starting. The mobile broadcasting when the principal tv and radio stations were stll off-line. And we are still waiting for "The Big One".
Dude! I remember that day. I have a VCS tape I set on record that evening because my best friend lived in San Francisco and I was the person who supplied their news that day. . It was strange that I (living in Florida) knew more about what was going on in SF than they did. I had no trouble calling from FL to SF, but they had no access to local news. My brother-in-law in Sunnyvale was outside the house when the earthquake hit and he was knocked on his ass and he said, I've fallen and I can't get up. TMI, but my husband’s family are long time SF natives, there before even the 1906 earthquake. But this quake was the most significant one in the Bay Area in a long time.
I don't remember where I was with this earthquake but the Northridge Earthquake I was 152 Mi South of Northridge in Chula Vista California. It is the far most Southwest place on the US map. Things got eerily silent. And then you feel your house is on rollers. And it's moving underneath you not like when someone slams a door really hard and shakes everything. First I noticed it and then I sat up in bed and then I stood to go to the doorway and then I was going to go through the doorway and wake people up in the house. This happened at about 4:00 in the morning. They mentioned the aftershocks which registered even as earthquakes themselves. Aftershocks can be even stronger than the earthquake and oftentimes can be felt for days after the event. I know a lot of reactors watch the tornado videos and that has to be really really scary but at least you get a bit of a warning. There is no warnings with earthquakes. They're trying to develop a system but they get to do so. Mother Nature is the strongest force in the universe
I was in my bosses office and I felt a large vibration, then watched the door way move left 3ft and then right 3ft. We tried to run out ,but the door jam hit me in the shoulder. We couldn't get out until it stopped. I'll never forget that.
Kabir, I'm from Northern California and at the time of this quake was about 80 miles away north in my city, 8.5 months pregnant with my 3rd baby. Was in my bathroom and felt my floor moving and saw power lines moving. This was terrible, especially at the time of rush hour traffic on the Bay Bridge and it collapsing on the lower tier crushing people in their cars. It's called the Loma Prieta Quake where it's epicenter was. My first quake I experienced happened in my town in 1969 when I was 6. I was scared because I didn't understand why our whole house was shaking and Mom telling us to get down under the kitchen table. After it was over, Mom got out the encyclopedia for me and showed me what an earthquake was. After that knowledge, I wasn't afraid of them anymore. It was the not knowing beforehand. The worst quake though was the devastating one in San Francisco in 1906.
I had an uncle that lived in San Francisco. I was a big baseball fan so I was watching the World Series. When the announcers mentioned earthquake, I yelled for my mom since he was her brother. Heard from him a couple days later. He was fine. We’d just been there two months before visiting him
7:06 The story of this six year old who's foot needed to be amputated to rescue him always stuck with me. Thankfully I've seen interviews with him as an adult for documentaries and he actually laughs about it so it's great to see he didn't let it ruin his life.
My ex and I drove across the Bay Bridge two weeks before this happened. I was stationed at Mare Island, in Vallejo, about 45 mins north east of San Fran. I was off that day, and I was running laps at my apt complex, and I started to notice all the parked cars started rocking back and forth. I went back the apt and saw picture frames on the walls askew.
I'm from Chile, and is still so hard to comprehend how much damaging a quake that for us is "nothing" or just "a little tremor" can be. Growing up always though it was fun when the ground would shake but is so hard to watch all this terrible things happening around the world 😢
My parents were watching TV in Mississippi waiting for the World Series to start. It took me over 48 hours to be able to call out and they were terrified. We slept in the living room for two weeks with our kids.
My mother lived In Oakland. The freeway ran just behind her house and a block away.The foundation on her house cracked and the house shifted slightly.All her plates and glasses were pitched out of the cabinets and broke on the kitchen floor.There was a crack in the ceiling in the back end of the house, and her driveway had a crack in it also. The ball game that was going in San Fransisco at the time evacuated.Later it was discovered that the concrete grandstand bleachers had cracked and in places pulled away from its anchors .
From san francisco. Lived through this at age 11; me and my mom had just gotten off the bay bridge and were on Highway 80 when the bridge came down. The biggest quake came a few years later in Northridge.
My cousin lived in the Bay Area at this time and I remember seeing the news reports coming in on the other side of the country. Thank goodness she was okay!
I am from San Diego and I was 5 years old when this happened but have only heard stories about it. Maybe my parents sent me out of the room when the news footage was on? What is amazing is if you have experienced a 4.0 or bigger, it is as though the ground turns to liquid and you are trying to ride waves. You can visibly see that in the footage of some of the street damage. You can see how the roads were moving in a wave like motion and the damage is in that pattern. I only point that out because if you have never been in an earthquake it must sound strange to hear people describing the ground as moving, liquid or wave-like.
That’s why people who live in an area of the world that is prone to earthquakes must learn to prepare for one to occur at any time ahead of time. If you wait until you feel the ground moving under your feet to start preparing it is too late and the only hope you have is that it is a mild earthquake with very little damage.
The Nimitz is a double-decker. The top deck crushed people on the lower deck. I was on that bridge on vacation a month earlier and remember wondering what would happen if a big quake hit. Glad I wasn't there to find out.
I lived in Santa Cruz at the time. I was walking home from work at the Kindo's print shot near the downtown mall when it happened. I got knocked to the ground by it, and a guy in the intersection nearby fell with his motorcycle on top of him. It fell on his leg, and the engine was burning him. I helped him out from under and he took off at top speed, and so did I. I was a block from home and when I walked into our apartment, I saw the water heater had taken a frickin' walk across the place. What a mess! And no power or water for a week after. It was pretty bad, someone died in the bookstore I worked at part time too.
I think it's wild that they had so many blimps and helicopters in the air already for the World Series, they became the "eyes in the skies" to see where destruction or fires were happening. I wonder if you can see the earth moving from a helicopter? I can't imagine being in an earthquake zone. There's a fairly simple bridge over some train tracks near me, and when a truck crosses while you're on it, your car bounces a little, and even THAT is terrifying to me. We get really minor quakes in N. Georgia, but not regularly, and not strong enough to be felt.
I was five when this happened, and lived in Sonoma, a town about 45 miles north. We felt the tremors but it wasn't devastating, thankfully. Seeing the footage on the news however was a scary realization of not only how close we were, but of the lives that were lost.
I lived in Roseville, (a suburb of Sacramento), at the time and remember that a bunch of buildings went down locally. San Francisco got hit so much harder. Devastating for so many.
I lived in Riverside County (about 400 miles away) when it happened. It sloshed the water out of the pool and made the windows rattle in their frames. It was a big one, for sure.
I came off from surfing off of Oceanside (it was the last day of a 96-hour liberty), called my parents in Texas to check in, and was informed of the quake. I hit the Armed Forces Y to get to a TV, and watched it for a couple of hours...
My dad was in high school at football practice when the quake happened and told me he could see the field literally rolling like a wave. He said it was hella trippy to watch. I’m just thankful he was in the middle of an empty space
One of my sisters worked in Oakland at the time, she normally took the Nimitz to and from work. That day as she was getting ready to leave she noticed no one had cleaned the coffee maker so she stopped to do that, it saved her life. That extra few minutes was the difference between being on the highway and being on a surface street. I was watching the beginning of the World Series game and when the announcers started talking about the earthquake and it was obvious it was getting worse, I was worried about her. My level of concern jumped considerably when the initial pictures of the Nimitz were shown. Fortunately it wasn’t too long before she was able to get a call out to my parents and they then called me and our other sister. I’m still shocked at how the levels of the Nimitz, sections of the Bay Bridge and other structures you would have thought could withstand a sizable earthquake didn’t.
My Grandparents lived at 2200 Beach St in the Marina District you see at 7.38. While buildings around theirs collapsed, the building they lived in miraculously escaped major damage. But the trauma of it all took the fight out of them, and they were both gone within three years.
I lived in San Francisco for several years and moved to Los Angeles in 1987. I was working in my office in a building in downtown LA at the time of the quake, which I could feel here over 400 miles away.
This earthquake happened during rush hour traffic. But since the World Series was happening, a lot of people either went home early or was at the game. However, there were still a lot of people on that freeway, hence the high death toll. I remember this earthquake quite clearly. I was in my first semester in college then.
My bro was under his desk in Oakland ..it took us two days to reach him… that freeway was a double decker bridge those under the top layer were all crushed
I was about 7 or 8 when the Loma Prieta quake happened. More like dozens of homes collapsed, not hundreds or thousands. Wood does a lot better in earthquakes than those brick buildings you get all turgid for.
I remember this happened when I was 11 years old. I was at home in New Jersey, preparing to watch the World Series between the A's and the Giants and during the pregame everything started shaking. The next day I saw that part of the Golden Gate Bridge collapsed onto the bottom level and it took years for me to get over the fear of crossing a bridge
If you haven't already, check out the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. 1933 Long Beach quake, 1971 Sylmar quake and 1994 Northridge quake - all are in Southern CA.
Hi Kabir, here in Fort Worth, Texas, we really don't have too much to worry about from earthquakes. We are at the northern end of the Balconies fault line, but it's not very active. I remember one time that I heard on the news that we had had a magnitude 2 earthquake, but I didn't feel it. I don't think England has too much to worry about either.
I was home alone after school. I had taken a nap after school and woke up to my bed moving across the floor. I’m Gen X/latchkey kid so I was home alone. My dad got home 1st and then he and my brother had to go get my mom who got stuck on the freeway cause the earthquake killed her engine
I lived there at the at the time. I lived across the bay in Oakland, CA. It was horrible. It was a 6.9 earthquake. The highway to Santa Cruz was cracked open. It was very scary. I live in Iowa now still near an earthquake fault. The New Madrid Fault. It is devasting watching this again.
We had two earthquakes about a week and a half ago. They were only 4's I think, plus one aftershock that I felt. In both cases the epicenter was close to my Orange County, California home. I didn't hear of any damage. Pretty much all buildings are on rollers now.
This happened during a live broadcast of the World's Series- the baseball championship. It's an amazing video to watch. Also read up on the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1909 which was believed to have been a 7.9 intensity. The quake then caused massive fires
I was on the bus. It was a World Series day - Battle of the Bay - and all of us at the office were skipping out a little early. It was a very hot day and people were talking about 'earthquake weather' cuz it often happens when it's extra hot out, but such talk is always just an aside joke. So I left at 4:30 and at that young age, I often opted to walk home - approx. 4 miles away, but decided not to thinking - we might have an earthquake. 34 minutes later it hit. My neighborhood was not hit that hard. It was really the south bay that took the brunt - and of course that collapsed freeway in the east bay and the Marina District. Two years later was our next Bay Area disaster - the Oakland Firestorm. You won't believe the destruction.
I was in SF a few days before this happened. I actually drove on that bridge that collapsed, so when I saw the video, I knew exactly where that was. I almost extended my stay there, but I'm glad I didn't.
I am a Santa Cruz native who was here in 1989 during the earthquake. It was way more devastating than this video can even capture. Weeks without power, without water, and with roads closed. No phone service, so family didn't know if anyone was okay. Schools closed. And we are *still* feeling the impact, if you can believe it. Demolished buildings only now being replaced.
I was in LA the day it happened and we felt it. I had been living in San Francisco and drove across the bridges that collapsed daily. In LA, to me, it wasn't that bad but everyone around me freaked out. When the news came on it was amazing seeing the places I saw every day destroyed.
I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years. My parents lived there for 37. I've lost count of how many earthquakes large and small I've been through. The smaller ones were harder to tell. We'd look at the pool and if there were waves we go..."yep, it's an earthquake". The grandfather clock would go wonky too. I was working at the San Jose International Airport (50 miles south of San Francisco) during the big one in 1989. I had a customer in front of me and we were listening to the start of the World Series Baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's. Battle of the bay baby! The ground started shaking. The power went out immediately. The quake would shake the ground violently and then it would roll like a wave. It would go back and forth doing this. I was in a small aluminum customer service booth with a large steel awning/cover. The steel support beams and top were really moving. I thought damn if that comes down, were dead. You didn't have time enough to do anything but grab onto the counter and hold on for dear life. The tall light poles in the parking lot were swaying at a 45° angle back and forth. The cars were hopping off the ground like a low-rider hopping contest. Google it. I can't tell you how long it went on but it was probably only a minute or so. It stopped abruptly. My customer had disappeared. I went out of the booth to find him spread eagle on the ground. He hopped up and asked "was that an earthquake". I said yep and a very big one. We'd been having some moderate ones leading up to this day. We put batteries in the radio and listened to the news. It's was pretty bad. I've driven the freeway that collapsed countless times. It was a double-decker one. Now if a big truck rolls by and shakes the ground I tense up. I don't like to get stuck at a light or traffic under a bridge/overpass either. Gives me the willies. Fun times.
This was a verY scary earthquake. An entire block was destroyed in my hometown which is just 30 mikes from the epicenter. Many homes were brought off their foundation and condemned.
Kabir, Try to keep a light heart, it was better that he lost his leg than his life! Many things in nature can be devastating here in the United States, that's why I choose to live in Michigan, it's considered to be the third safest state to live in from natural disasters! I loved your reaction to this and your calm cool talk at the end!
There should have been tons more fatalities, especially when the Cyprus/Nimitz freeway collapsed. It was rush hour when the quake hit. The only saving grace was the fact that both of the Bay Area baseball teams were playing each other in a 'derby' series in the World Series and everyone had gone home early to watch the game.
That little boy didn't just lose his leg -- they had to cut through his dead mother to get to him.
That is so heartbreaking
It wasn't the mother's dead body it was her mother's friend
Wasn't there a movie that involved this kids story?
OMG how horrible!
I’m a California gal, and lived in the Bay Area when this happened. I just had knee surgery, and was in a wheelchair in my apartment. All the people ran out of their apartments, but I stayed inside. All my stuff fell down around me. I really thought I was going to die. Luckily I didn’t.. we have at least 12 earthquakes a day here in California.. we even have “ earthquake warnings “ apps for our iPhones..
Love Grandma Debbie
My husband is an SF native but we live in my home state of FL, where nothing ever happens, except when a hurricane comes. So I’ve been to SF many many multitudes of times. Never once was there an earthquake. I've always wanted to feel an earthquake but it’s like, when I set foot in CA, earthquakes are not allowed to happen.
I was in the 1989 Loma Prieta/World Series earthquake. There is a lot more to the Bay Area than San Francisco. I was in San Jose, watching light poles doing a four foot arc, with the arm out of phase. I helped my landlady clean up her former collection of Depression Glass with a scoop shovel.
The Bay Bridge had all the expansion joints in the deck get shoved to one side, and one section dropped, destroying two cars, I remember.
I was watching that game on TV as a kid.
One thing most people don't realize is San Francisco a good portion of it is built on landfill into the bay when you have a big earthquake that landfill liquefies
I remember seeing that during the 2011 Japan quake. It was weird seeing the water come up from the ground.
The other parts that make the hills in San Francisco, are the buildings that crumbled in the big earthquake that they had in the early 1900s. Learned this when my class went up there on a field trip. Where else where they were going to put all of the piles that were once buildings. Another thing to know is, a worker on the Golden Gate bridge fell to their death, while helping to build it, and is rumored to be in the concrete base of that bridge.
That's what happened in the Marina District. Beautiful 3 story wooden buildings built on landfill, which collapsed so they looked like one story. Sturdy furniture alone keeping residents from being smashed.
Im pretty sure NYC also is like that, but they got lucky since earthquakes don't happen as much or as severe as the west coast
I remember I was watching the World Series when this happened. I have family in Newark, California and it was heartbreaking to see the catastrophe!
I was at work in Santa Cruz when it struck. It was definitely the strongest quake I had ever been through. That night a bunch of us slept outside because the aftershocks were so frequent. I will never forget the feeling of the earth shaking while lying on the ground. Needless to say, we didn’t sleep much.
Hey, I'm from Santa Cruz as well. I was only a kid at the time though. We use to always ot to Candlestick to watch the A's and Giants play
My ex-wife worked at a hotel in Santa Cruz at the time, and said everyone went there because they had the only working cigarette machine. :P
I lived through it and can still hear the rumble when I close my eyes.
The top level of the double story freeway collapsed on top of the lower one and crushed multiple people in their cars. Some of the most horrific body recovery stories came from that destruction. Seems like yesterday. Then I see that old footage and the fact that I was 24. Unbelievable. Time really flies.
There's a show called Make it Out Alive on Paramount and the episode on this Earthquake was extremely powerful. They explored the devastation but also some amazing rescue stories. I highly recommend checking it out (not necessarily as a reaction because it's pretty intense).
My brother-in-law was on the Bay Bridge when it collapsed. He was able to turn around and get off the bridge.
I lived in Long Beach for a few years. On my 12th bday I was gifted a 6.0 on the rector scale. As we drove around after that, I was always terrified on the freeways. They looked like a big bowl of spaghetti to me. I hate them and still freak out on them today. Even here in my home state of Texas I’d just rather not go over any bridges and travel freeways. It was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. So, when we left in 88 I was over the moon!
Dude I was watching the ballgame from Canada that day and the coverage went out. I went to the news to find this out. Crazy
I wish they had included a scene of the man who was rescued after the second day on freeway 880 in Oakland.
He was in a car that was smashed down to about 18 inches tall (about 45 cm), but when they pryed the door open he wiggled out with very minor cuts and scratches. He was just trapped.
There were lots of good stories... and bad, too.
I was at work in Emeryville, CA, across the bay from San Francisco. I was getting ready to go home to watch the World Series when the earthquake hit. I left the building after the shaking stopped and went out to my car. The first thing I noticed was smoke rising from a fire in nearby Berkeley. That scared me, because most of the damage from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was from fires, not the quake itself. Fortunately, the Berkeley fire department put out the blaze pretty quickly.
I turned on my car radio to get some news. All of the stations were knocked off the air. I couldn't find any broadcast, AM or FM.
I lived about seven miles from my job. I decided to stay off the freeways on my way home, because the overpasses could have been damaged. None of the stop lights were working. Lots of people, ordinary citizens, were out in the intersections directing traffic. People will pull together and do the right thing in an emergency.
It was the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland that was damaged. The eastern span of the bridge was a double-decker cantilever construction. One section of the upper road bed had come loose and fallen onto the lower deck. The Bay Bridge is one of the most heavily traveled in the world, so the damage did terrible things to the transportation in the Bay Area. The bridge was closed for a month, and has since been replaced with a single-deck suspension bridge that should be more earthquake-safe.
The freeway that collapsed was the old Cypress structure, so-called because it followed the path of Cypress Street in Oakland (since renamed to Mandela Parkway). It was the first double-decker elevated freeway built in California, in 1957. They didn't know much about building elevated roads in those days, and you could tell something was wrong with it even before the earthquake destroyed it. The roadbed sagged between the pillars, so going over it at freeway speed felt like a carnival ride, with the car going up and down. That section of freeway has been replaced with one that goes through a different neighborhood. The new location was a good thing for residents of west Oakland, because the old freeway had cut off their part of the city from the rest of the area.
When the Cypress structure collapsed, people from the neighborhood came out and went into the wreckage to rescue people. They did this at great peril to themselves, which I'm sure they knew. I've always thought this was underreported.
It seems likely that the World Series saved a lot of lives that day. Both teams, the Giants and the A's, were from the Bay Area. A lot of people were already home, or at sports bars or other venues, when the quake hit. The Cypress Structure was normally wall-to-wall cars at that time of day, but the traffic was relatively light due to the game.
BTW, the epicenter of the earthquake was at Loma Prieta, a mountain about 50 miles south of San Francisco.
When I was a kid in the 60s and 70s, we lived in San Jose and my grandparents lived in Richmond. We would go up to visit them every month or two I used to LOVE it when we would drive on the Cypress structure (aka I-880, aka the Nimitz freeway) (the one that pancaked in the earthquake) because -- as you said -- it felt a bit like a carnival roller coaster. As I recall, it was more "wavy" going in one direction (heading home, I think) than the other direction. Little did we know what it signified.
I felt it. I was in Sacramento and a row 17 of 5 drawer metal file cabinets knocked together like dominos. In SF the Nimitz freeway which was a double decker collapsed in downtown. Killed everyone in cars in the lower deck. My father was a federal inspector and was called to inspect the federal installations throughout the bay area. The Bay Bridge was repaired within the year and has since been replaced. It is called the Loma Prieta quake.
I went to San Fran a year after the earthquske to run a 10 mile race. A part of the course ran by a still collapsed entrance ramp to a freeway. So sad.
The collapsed freeways is one of things I remember most about this tragedy. Stopping under an overpass or a bridge still makes me slightly nervous because of that.
Where one of the bridges top deck fell flat onto the bottom deck and flattened the car’s below. They assumed that everyone was dead. Seven days later they found a poor man still alive. Unfortunately a few days later he died. They have suspension bridges. I drove over one once. As your driving it moves side to side because of the high winds. I can’t imagine what it would be like in an earthquake.
Yeah, I remember that. It was so eerie to see the top deck resting on top of vehicles on the lower deck. I was surprised that they were able to get to him.
This quake happened in the middle of a World Series game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's and was seen on national TV. The game broadcast suddenly became a breaking news report with play by play man Al Michaels continuing to led the broadcast for a time. Interesting that the now iconic sounds and imagery from that broadcast at the moment the quake hit was barely touched upon in the video you're reacting to, but then again, the human devastation was minimal at the game compared to the rest of the San Francisco Bay region.
It was a miracle more people were not killed. The World Series saved tons of lives. People left work early to be home by 5 o’clock to start watching the World Series that was held in San Francisco versus the Oakland A’s. Imagine that bridge when it it broke if that bridge was full of cars what would’ve happened. I still call it. A miracle people were in their houses instead of on the road. I was home early too to watch the World Series. I survived this. Luckily the house I lived in was built on bedrock so we didn’t have much damage a couple of cracks in the plaster, but no major problems no major injuries.
I was in Emeryville next to Oakland. I was working swing shift for a catalog company. I would've grabbed my lunch in Downtown Oakland but my boss wanted me to stay and take a later lunch. That decision saved my life because I would've been on the lower deck of the Cypress freeway returning to work.
I was there. I was still at work in a single-story office building in Sunnyvale (about 40 miles south of SF, and about 30 miles (by car) from the epicenter. Here are some of my random memories and observations, just to give you an idea of what it was like for an average person who wasn’t affected by any of the related tragedies:
I was born and raised in the SF Bay area of CA, so pretty blasé about earthquakes, but this was the first time I ever crawled under a piece of furniture. At first, I went to stand in the door frame, but after several seconds I got under my desk.
It seemed to last for an extraordinarily long time - felt like minutes. Not sure how long it actually lasted though. (The quake itself lasted 10-20 seconds, but the residual movement varies depending on the underlying structure of any given place; rock will move less, and less-consolidated soil (like the Marina District in SF) will move more and for longer.)
Initially, it hit like one sudden, BIG jolt (including a loud bang), then a few seconds of violent rapid shaking, and eventually ended in a rolling or swaying sensation.
When it began to subside, I went outside to the asphalt parking lot, and for several minutes I could feel the earth gently rolling under my feet. That is the first time I was ever outdoors during an earthquake event, so I’d never felt that before. It was indescribably freaky. The mind can understand the shaking of a manmade thing like a building, but to feel the actual earth moving was bizarre.
It normally took me about 15 minutes to get home from my office. But because all the traffic signals were out, and EVERYONE flooded onto the roads all at the same time, it took over 2 hrs to get home.
The power was out, and by the time I got home it was nearly dark, but I could see that the fridge had opened (nothing fell out, fortunately), but didn’t close all the way. Also, some things had fallen out of the pantry. And an open shelving unit had tipped over. Some lamps had tipped over, too.
It took about an hour to find my cat. I called and called, but he wouldn’t come or answer. Finally found him hiding behind the drapes, facing the corner of the wall. It took him several minutes after I picked him up to look at me with any kind of recognition, and begin to relax. Every aftershock we got that night and in the next days sent him into a panic.
I wanted to call my mom to let her know I was okay. Of course, this was way before cell phones, so I had to wait until I got home to try calling. All the circuits were busy for hours, because everyone else was also trying to do the same thing. I think it was around 11pm before I was finally able to get a call through.
My sister lived in Boulder Creek in the Santa Cruz Mountains -- only about 20 miles from the earthquake's epicenter. She was outside when it hit, and it literally threw her to ground. The shaking was so violent that she couldn’t regain her feet, and basically had to crawl back to the house to get to her 3-yr old daughter, who was on the toilet. The quake knocked her off the toilet and onto the floor, which of course terrified her. After that, she was afraid to use the toilet again, and my sister wanted to reassure her that it wouldn’t happen again, but unfortunately she couldn’t really say that because there were so many strong aftershocks that the same thing could well have happened again. The whole thing set back my niece’s bathroom habits significantly for a while.
For many months after the earthquake, if I sensed even the tiniest bit of movement, I would go on red alert... heavy, fully-loaded semi-trucks passing by on the road seemed to be the worst and most frequent culprit. Sitting in my car on an overpass or bridge was also particularly triggering. I guess it was kinda like a teeny-tiny version of PTSD.
I'm from Oakland and when this happened I was teenager about to clock in to my McDonalds job. I lost my manager and her son that day. Her car was crushed. That was a wild day.
I was in sixth grade when this happened. Thankfully, I was far enough east of San Francisco that we got a lot of shaking, but we had no actual structural damage. I had finished my homework and we were about to watch the World Series game, and it all went crazy.
I remember that, I live in Stockton, Ca. We’re about 80 miles away from SF. I was on a bus and the bus started shaking hard, there was a group of teens at the back of the bus. The driver thought they were playing around so he yelled at them to stop. At the next stop, a teen with a skateboard got in the bus, he shouted “Did you guys feel the quake “? We were all shocked, and I loved the driver because he apologized to the teens. Fortunately, we’re far enough away it didn’t do major damage.
You should check out the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles - about 70 people died and there was billions of dollars in damage.
I remember feeling that one and the Whittier quake
I was coming to say the same thing. I lived in Bakersfield with id between an hour and two hours north. It shook the water out of our pool snd fish tank. Also, danced my chair around the living room with me sitting in it.
The Ridgecrest quake in 2019 was crazy too. That's the first time in many quakes I've felt that the ground felt like ocean waves under my feet.
I remember the Northridge earthquake and all the different shopping centers in the San Fernando Valley and nearby areas that had parts of the buildings collapsed. Although a number of people did die in the Northridge earthquake there are two major factors that kept it from being worse than it might have been. The first factor was that it occurred early in the morning I don’t remember the exact time so I will just say sometime between midnight and 6:00 in the morning local time. The second factor why it was not so bad was because it happened in January. If we had the same earthquake but in the afternoon and a month earlier in December when dozens, hundreds, or possibly thousands of people could have been in those shopping malls that had partially collapsed then the death toll could have been much higher. If I remember correctly I believe that most of the people who died in the Northridge earthquake had lived in one of those apartment buildings or homes that had collapsed during the earthquake and were believed to have been crushed to death in their sleep.
My stepmom was in that quake, she was on a BART train that stopped on the tracks somewhere outside of Oakland. She literally watched a bunch of cows tumble down a hill. Ironically her father and uncles were in the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake. She used to have a picture from the San Francisco newspaper of them standing amid the rubble of downtown.
Yea, the double-decker highway was one of the worst parts of this earthquake and why we don't really build them anymore, at least as long of a stretch, it had to be terrifying seeing the top section come down on you knowing you have no wheres to go and end up becoming pancaked under the highway above.
I think the proximity to the San Andreas Fault makes earthquakes common. Look up pics of the fault... Fascinating and creepy.
Checkout the Northridge California quake
My family lived in the Bay Area, but they couldn't contact each other. I was on assignment for a job in Virginia and could reach all of them.
Another thing people don't realize is that freeway was a DOUBLE DECKER freeway. When the top crashed down, it crushed the cars below. Look at it and you'll see the bumps below the asphalt.... Those are cars, crushed. Take a good look at it, it's horrific. Tragic was light because of the game. Who builds a double decker freeway on a major fault??!!
I was in college in Santa Cruz that day. I remember thinking "this one's different" because of the motion and how long it lasted. It heaved and rolled under our feet and just kept going.
Was in San Jose for this. Just packing up to go home from work. Had to dive under my desk as books flew off the shelves, and the cheap materials of the small building I was in began to deconstruct. Phone service was out in the entire region. A woman from a classroom next door came into the office begging to use the phone, as she had tried the pay phones and wasn't getting anywhere. She was in so much shock that she couldn't understand my explanation that no phones anywhere would work - I wasn't just being mean to her. She kept offering to pay more and more money to use the phones, and I finally had to tell her loudly, slowly and carefully that NONE OF THE PHONES ANYWHERE ARE WORKING. I hope she was all right once she got home (hope she had a home left to get to). Phones didn't work for several days after; I was able to get a call on day one from my brother who lived in SF at the time, and we had just enough time to let the other know we were alive and OK before service was lost again, not to return for at least 3 more days.
Before this earthquake, the powers that be were arguing that San Francisco didn't need a fireboat and that the expense of having one was unjustified - and then, when all the fire mains failed in the Marina district, they were reminded of why they needed a fire boat.
I was a kid back then. I definitely remember this quake watching it live during the WS. Just a crazy day.
I was on bedrock and it still felt like I was on a small boat in the ocean
Just wanted to say I love your channel Kabir. Your reactions are always so honest and heartfelt.
I love your channel. So...I was going to school at Stanford University at the time. The epicenter was just east of Santa Cruz near the coast, and Stanford, which is northeast of Santa Cruz, near San Jose, was 30 miles from the epicenter, and San Francisco twice that distance. Look at the damage at that distance. My story is an odd one but still a little scary, especially since I was barely out of my teens. I was living in one of the older buildings on campus and most of my housemates were away from what I recall. The house was probably 100 years old. I lived on the second of three floors. The house shook like a cardboard box. I never had earthquake preparedness since I wasn't from California. I shared a room, so there were two beds, as well as two dressers and two desks. A lot of furniture sliding back and forth as I tried to extricate myself from the room. I got out without incident. I had opened the window next to my desk, and when the shaking had stopped I looked up toward my window and noticed my small lamp hanging out of the window, still plugged in apparently. The end to the story for me was it took some time to contact my family in Arizona, and by then I had decided I was taking a leave of absence because the house had foundational damage, and I would have to find a place and had no more guaranteed housing. When a couple of my siblings came and picked me up we also had to deal with the thickest inland fog I had ever seen in my life. I can't say that I was extremely terrified at the time, but that was probably because I managed to keep a cool head and the house avoided collapse. If we had cell phones back then I probably would have posted that lamp dangling from my window.
I remember when this happened. I lived across the country from there but I remember being glued to the television. Just awful, awful devastation and loss of life.
You should look up information on the 1994 Northridge quake. It hit at 4:31 in the morning
I lived about 20 miles from the epicenter. I was driving when it hit, but saw people running out of the buildings. We were very fortunate and didn't have much damage to our house other than broken dishes. But my friend that lived a few blocks away had everything come off of her walls and cabinets tipped over. It was a mess. The after shocks were hell. They were pretty strong and lasted for months. But I'll still take earthquakes over tornadoes any day!
Most quakes come & go. 1 minute is an eternity during a quake! Quakes can act like tornadoes in that they can wreck one house & the one next door is fine. They are super dynamic so one person's experience might be totally different and distance from the epicenter of the quake obviously makes a tremendous difference.
You should check out the Ice Storm of 98. I live in Upstate New York about 45 minutes away from the Canadian border. We had no power for a week,thunder,lightning and so much ice. Over 10,000 power poles had to be replaced in New York State,alone.
We were the same in Pittsburgh. I had trees snapping all around my yard. Had a tree on my roof, just the corner. Came back on just in time for the Steelers in the super Bowl
The Loma Prieta quake left fires in San Francisco near Golden Gate Park. Multistoried older building pancaked, the upper section of westbound Bay Bridge fell into the lower east bound lanes and the Cupress Structure, double decked freeway, collapse trappingand killing people in their cars.
Santa Cruz, closer to the epicenter, saw their fowntown historic masonry building crumble into the streets.
The World Series between the SF Giants and cross bay Oakland Athletics was just starting. The mobile broadcasting when the principal tv and radio stations were stll off-line.
And we are still waiting for "The Big One".
Dude! I remember that day. I have a VCS tape I set on record that evening because my best friend lived in San Francisco and I was the person who supplied their news that day. . It was strange that I (living in Florida) knew more about what was going on in SF than they did. I had no trouble calling from FL to SF, but they had no access to local news. My brother-in-law in Sunnyvale was outside the house when the earthquake hit and he was knocked on his ass and he said, I've fallen and I can't get up. TMI, but my husband’s family are long time SF natives, there before even the 1906 earthquake. But this quake was the most significant one in the Bay Area in a long time.
I don't remember where I was with this earthquake but the Northridge Earthquake I was 152 Mi South of Northridge in Chula Vista California. It is the far most Southwest place on the US map. Things got eerily silent. And then you feel your house is on rollers. And it's moving underneath you not like when someone slams a door really hard and shakes everything. First I noticed it and then I sat up in bed and then I stood to go to the doorway and then I was going to go through the doorway and wake people up in the house. This happened at about 4:00 in the morning. They mentioned the aftershocks which registered even as earthquakes themselves. Aftershocks can be even stronger than the earthquake and oftentimes can be felt for days after the event. I know a lot of reactors watch the tornado videos and that has to be really really scary but at least you get a bit of a warning. There is no warnings with earthquakes. They're trying to develop a system but they get to do so. Mother Nature is the strongest force in the universe
I was in my bosses office and I felt a large vibration, then watched the door way move left 3ft and then right 3ft. We tried to run out ,but the door jam hit me in the shoulder. We couldn't get out until it stopped. I'll never forget that.
Kabir, I'm from Northern California and at the time of this quake was about 80 miles away north in my city, 8.5 months pregnant with my 3rd baby. Was in my bathroom and felt my floor moving and saw power lines moving. This was terrible, especially at the time of rush hour traffic on the Bay Bridge and it collapsing on the lower tier crushing people in their cars. It's called the Loma Prieta Quake where it's epicenter was. My first quake I experienced happened in my town in 1969 when I was 6. I was scared because I didn't understand why our whole house was shaking and Mom telling us to get down under the kitchen table. After it was over, Mom got out the encyclopedia for me and showed me what an earthquake was. After that knowledge, I wasn't afraid of them anymore. It was the not knowing beforehand. The worst quake though was the devastating one in San Francisco in 1906.
I was living in Woodland at the time! Wasn’t that the scariest thing? Love Grandma Debbie
I had an uncle that lived in San Francisco. I was a big baseball fan so I was watching the World Series. When the announcers mentioned earthquake, I yelled for my mom since he was her brother. Heard from him a couple days later. He was fine. We’d just been there two months before visiting him
7:06 The story of this six year old who's foot needed to be amputated to rescue him always stuck with me. Thankfully I've seen interviews with him as an adult for documentaries and he actually laughs about it so it's great to see he didn't let it ruin his life.
My ex and I drove across the Bay Bridge two weeks before this happened. I was stationed at Mare Island, in Vallejo, about 45 mins north east of San Fran. I was off that day, and I was running laps at my apt complex, and I started to notice all the parked cars started rocking back and forth. I went back the apt and saw picture frames on the walls askew.
I'm from Chile, and is still so hard to comprehend how much damaging a quake that for us is "nothing" or just "a little tremor" can be. Growing up always though it was fun when the ground would shake but is so hard to watch all this terrible things happening around the world 😢
My mom was 18 and was a senior in high school when the Loma Prieta earthquake happened.
My parents were watching TV in Mississippi waiting for the World Series to start. It took me over 48 hours to be able to call out and they were terrified. We slept in the living room for two weeks with our kids.
My mother lived In Oakland. The freeway ran just behind her house and a block away.The foundation on her house cracked and the house shifted slightly.All her plates and glasses were pitched out of the cabinets and broke on the kitchen floor.There was a crack in the ceiling in the back end of the house, and her driveway had a crack in it also.
The ball game that was going in San Fransisco at the time evacuated.Later it was discovered that the concrete grandstand bleachers had cracked and in places pulled away from its anchors .
They use new engineering techniques now adays, then back then. There are a type of shock absorber which keeps the buildings from collapsing as easy.
From san francisco. Lived through this at age 11; me and my mom had just gotten off the bay bridge and were on Highway 80 when the bridge came down. The biggest quake came a few years later in Northridge.
My cousin lived in the Bay Area at this time and I remember seeing the news reports coming in on the other side of the country. Thank goodness she was okay!
I am from San Diego and I was 5 years old when this happened but have only heard stories about it. Maybe my parents sent me out of the room when the news footage was on? What is amazing is if you have experienced a 4.0 or bigger, it is as though the ground turns to liquid and you are trying to ride waves. You can visibly see that in the footage of some of the street damage. You can see how the roads were moving in a wave like motion and the damage is in that pattern. I only point that out because if you have never been in an earthquake it must sound strange to hear people describing the ground as moving, liquid or wave-like.
Earthquakes are the worst. There is no warning they can happen any time. Even s tornado you have a warning and time to take cover.
That’s why people who live in an area of the world that is prone to earthquakes must learn to prepare for one to occur at any time ahead of time. If you wait until you feel the ground moving under your feet to start preparing it is too late and the only hope you have is that it is a mild earthquake with very little damage.
The Nimitz is a double-decker. The top deck crushed people on the lower deck. I was on that bridge on vacation a month earlier and remember wondering what would happen if a big quake hit. Glad I wasn't there to find out.
I lived in Santa Cruz at the time. I was walking home from work at the Kindo's print shot near the downtown mall when it happened. I got knocked to the ground by it, and a guy in the intersection nearby fell with his motorcycle on top of him. It fell on his leg, and the engine was burning him. I helped him out from under and he took off at top speed, and so did I. I was a block from home and when I walked into our apartment, I saw the water heater had taken a frickin' walk across the place. What a mess! And no power or water for a week after. It was pretty bad, someone died in the bookstore I worked at part time too.
I think it's wild that they had so many blimps and helicopters in the air already for the World Series, they became the "eyes in the skies" to see where destruction or fires were happening. I wonder if you can see the earth moving from a helicopter? I can't imagine being in an earthquake zone. There's a fairly simple bridge over some train tracks near me, and when a truck crosses while you're on it, your car bounces a little, and even THAT is terrifying to me. We get really minor quakes in N. Georgia, but not regularly, and not strong enough to be felt.
my dad and step-mom were at Candlestick Park....it took them hours and hours to get home 50 miles north
I was five when this happened, and lived in Sonoma, a town about 45 miles north. We felt the tremors but it wasn't devastating, thankfully. Seeing the footage on the news however was a scary realization of not only how close we were, but of the lives that were lost.
I lived in Roseville, (a suburb of Sacramento), at the time and remember that a bunch of buildings went down locally. San Francisco got hit so much harder. Devastating for so many.
I remember that quake. It was massive. 6.9 I believe? I think I'd have been traumatized living through that if I was there.
I lived in Riverside County (about 400 miles away) when it happened. It sloshed the water out of the pool and made the windows rattle in their frames. It was a big one, for sure.
I came off from surfing off of Oceanside (it was the last day of a 96-hour liberty), called my parents in Texas to check in, and was informed of the quake. I hit the Armed Forces Y to get to a TV, and watched it for a couple of hours...
My mom was there at the time too! She moved back home to michigan the following year.
My dad was in high school at football practice when the quake happened and told me he could see the field literally rolling like a wave. He said it was hella trippy to watch. I’m just thankful he was in the middle of an empty space
One of my sisters worked in Oakland at the time, she normally took the Nimitz to and from work. That day as she was getting ready to leave she noticed no one had cleaned the coffee maker so she stopped to do that, it saved her life. That extra few minutes was the difference between being on the highway and being on a surface street. I was watching the beginning of the World Series game and when the announcers started talking about the earthquake and it was obvious it was getting worse, I was worried about her. My level of concern jumped considerably when the initial pictures of the Nimitz were shown. Fortunately it wasn’t too long before she was able to get a call out to my parents and they then called me and our other sister. I’m still shocked at how the levels of the Nimitz, sections of the Bay Bridge and other structures you would have thought could withstand a sizable earthquake didn’t.
My two sisters and a brother in law was at Candlestick Park watching the world series when it happened.
My Grandparents lived at 2200 Beach St in the Marina District you see at 7.38. While buildings around theirs collapsed, the building they lived in miraculously escaped major damage. But the trauma of it all took the fight out of them, and they were both gone within three years.
I lived in San Francisco for several years and moved to Los Angeles in 1987. I was working in my office in a building in downtown LA at the time of the quake, which I could feel here over 400 miles away.
I experienced that one too. I was 2-1/2 hrs south of San Francisco and we felt it there. We had no power for 3 days.
This earthquake happened during rush hour traffic. But since the World Series was happening, a lot of people either went home early or was at the game. However, there were still a lot of people on that freeway, hence the high death toll. I remember this earthquake quite clearly. I was in my first semester in college then.
My bro was under his desk in Oakland ..it took us two days to reach him… that freeway was a double decker bridge those under the top layer were all crushed
I was about 7 or 8 when the Loma Prieta quake happened. More like dozens of homes collapsed, not hundreds or thousands. Wood does a lot better in earthquakes than those brick buildings you get all turgid for.
The picture of the fire in the Marina district, my aunts appartment was the next wall over. It didnt burn, but they all moved.
I remember this happened when I was 11 years old. I was at home in New Jersey, preparing to watch the World Series between the A's and the Giants and during the pregame everything started shaking. The next day I saw that part of the Golden Gate Bridge collapsed onto the bottom level and it took years for me to get over the fear of crossing a bridge
It was the Bay Bridge, not the Golden Gate Bridge.
If you haven't already, check out the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
1933 Long Beach quake, 1971 Sylmar quake and 1994 Northridge quake - all are in Southern CA.
Hi Kabir, here in Fort Worth, Texas, we really don't have too much to worry about from earthquakes. We are at the northern end of the Balconies fault line, but it's not very active. I remember one time that I heard on the news that we had had a magnitude 2 earthquake, but I didn't feel it. I don't think England has too much to worry about either.
I was home alone after school. I had taken a nap after school and woke up to my bed moving across the floor. I’m Gen X/latchkey kid so I was home alone. My dad got home 1st and then he and my brother had to go get my mom who got stuck on the freeway cause the earthquake killed her engine
I lived there at the at the time. I lived across the bay in Oakland, CA. It was horrible. It was a 6.9 earthquake. The highway to Santa Cruz was cracked open. It was very scary. I live in Iowa now still near an earthquake fault. The New Madrid Fault. It is devasting watching this again.
We had two earthquakes about a week and a half ago. They were only 4's I think, plus one aftershock that I felt. In both cases the epicenter was close to my Orange County, California home. I didn't hear of any damage. Pretty much all buildings are on rollers now.
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This happened during a live broadcast of the World's Series- the baseball championship. It's an amazing video to watch. Also read up on the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1909 which was believed to have been a 7.9 intensity. The quake then caused massive fires
1906
I was on the bus. It was a World Series day - Battle of the Bay - and all of us at the office were skipping out a little early. It was a very hot day and people were talking about 'earthquake weather' cuz it often happens when it's extra hot out, but such talk is always just an aside joke. So I left at 4:30 and at that young age, I often opted to walk home - approx. 4 miles away, but decided not to thinking - we might have an earthquake. 34 minutes later it hit. My neighborhood was not hit that hard. It was really the south bay that took the brunt - and of course that collapsed freeway in the east bay and the Marina District. Two years later was our next Bay Area disaster - the Oakland Firestorm. You won't believe the destruction.
I was attending San Jose City college, fortunately I was sitting outdoors on campus when a stampede of students came running outside.
I was in SF a few days before this happened. I actually drove on that bridge that collapsed, so when I saw the video, I knew exactly where that was. I almost extended my stay there, but I'm glad I didn't.
I am a Santa Cruz native who was here in 1989 during the earthquake. It was way more devastating than this video can even capture. Weeks without power, without water, and with roads closed. No phone service, so family didn't know if anyone was okay. Schools closed. And we are *still* feeling the impact, if you can believe it. Demolished buildings only now being replaced.
I was in LA the day it happened and we felt it. I had been living in San Francisco and drove across the bridges that collapsed daily.
In LA, to me, it wasn't that bad but everyone around me freaked out. When the news came on it was amazing seeing the places I saw every day destroyed.
Just to add a bit of context... the distance in miles between L.A. and the epicenter of the quake is roughly 360 miles or 580 kilometers!
I was watching the world series live from San Francisco. Unbelievable.
My aunt lived there at that time. She went to college at ucla.. she said it was frightening.
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I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for 15 years. My parents lived there for 37. I've lost count of how many earthquakes large and small I've been through. The smaller ones were harder to tell. We'd look at the pool and if there were waves we go..."yep, it's an earthquake". The grandfather clock would go wonky too. I was working at the San Jose International Airport (50 miles south of San Francisco) during the big one in 1989. I had a customer in front of me and we were listening to the start of the World Series Baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland A's. Battle of the bay baby! The ground started shaking. The power went out immediately. The quake would shake the ground violently and then it would roll like a wave. It would go back and forth doing this. I was in a small aluminum customer service booth with a large steel awning/cover. The steel support beams and top were really moving. I thought damn if that comes down, were dead. You didn't have time enough to do anything but grab onto the counter and hold on for dear life. The tall light poles in the parking lot were swaying at a 45° angle back and forth. The cars were hopping off the ground like a low-rider hopping contest. Google it. I can't tell you how long it went on but it was probably only a minute or so. It stopped abruptly. My customer had disappeared. I went out of the booth to find him spread eagle on the ground. He hopped up and asked "was that an earthquake". I said yep and a very big one. We'd been having some moderate ones leading up to this day. We put batteries in the radio and listened to the news. It's was pretty bad. I've driven the freeway that collapsed countless times. It was a double-decker one. Now if a big truck rolls by and shakes the ground I tense up. I don't like to get stuck at a light or traffic under a bridge/overpass either. Gives me the willies. Fun times.
This was a verY scary earthquake. An entire block was destroyed in my hometown which is just 30 mikes from the epicenter. Many homes were brought off their foundation and condemned.
Felt this in PHX AZ,all the way to Las Vegas
Kabir, Try to keep a light heart, it was better that he lost his leg than his life! Many things in nature can be devastating here in the United States, that's why I choose to live in Michigan, it's considered to be the third safest state to live in from natural disasters! I loved your reaction to this and your calm cool talk at the end!