Earthquake
This video is about a destructive earthquake that happened on North California on October 17, 1989. It is also known as Loma Prieta earthquake. It occurred on October 17 at 5:04 p.m. local time. The epicentre was located near a peak named as Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mountains, approximately 14 km northeast of Santa Cruz and 96 km south-southeast of San Francisco. It was caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault. It lasted 10-15 seconds and measured 6.9 on the MMS (moment magnitude scale), or 6.9 on the Richter scale. The quake killed around 63 people, injured more than 3500 and left so many people homeless. And there was more than $6 billion in damage.
The highest number of casualties, 42, happened in the City of Oakland because of the failure of the Cypress Street Viaduct on the Nimitz Freeway, where a double-deck portion of the freeway collapsed, crushes the cars on the lower deck. One 50- foot section of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed. Three people were killed in the slump of the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, and five people were killed in the slump of a brick wall on Bluxome Street in San Francisco.
It was a 15 seconds wake up call to the bay area. Most of the more than 1,000 landslides and rock fall occurred in the epicentre zone in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Extensional fractures were observed about 12 kilometres northwest of the epicentre, in the Summit Road – Skyland Ridge Area. Other towns in the area that also experienced severe property damage include Boulder Creek, Corralitos, Hollister and several smaller communities in the Santa Cruz Mountains. This earthquake was felt over most of central California and in western parts of Nevada.
