A 6.9 quake hits the Bay Area as the World Series is about to start on live national TV
At 5:04 p.m. on October 17, 1989, millions of Americans were tuned in to ABC for Game 3 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics when the broadcast cut to static. A magnitude 6.9 earthquake centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains had just ruptured the ground across the Bay Area. A section of Oakland's double-deck Nimitz Freeway pancaked. Part of the Bay Bridge fell. Buildings crumbled from Santa Cruz to San Francisco's Marina District. Sixty-three people died and property damage reached an estimated $6 billion.
Because the quake hit live during a World Series broadcast watched coast to coast, it became one of the first disasters Americans experienced in real time on national television, and it set a new expectation for live disaster coverage. Congress and President Bush responded fast, with a $1.1 billion relief package signed within nine days. Separately, the quake's confusing magnitude reports pushed the U.S. Geological Survey toward the moment-magnitude standard still used in American seismology today.
QWhy did KTVU's news anchors end up reporting from a parking lot?
The Oakland-based Fox affiliate went off the air when the quake hit, like most Bay Area stations, but came back roughly an hour and 40 minutes later with anchors Dennis Richmond and Elaine Corral broadcasting from the station's own parking lot rather than a damaged studio. KGO-TV was dark for about 15 minutes, KRON-TV for half an hour, and KGO-AM radio for 40 minutes. KCBS-AM stayed on air by switching to backup power, surviving even a generator failure, and later won a Peabody Award for its coverage, as did KGO-TV.
QWhat went wrong with the Bay Area's official emergency alert system?
KNBR-AM was the designated Emergency Broadcast System station for the region in 1989, meaning it was supposed to issue official instructions to the public during a catastrophe. Its engineering department suffered major technical failures after the quake and never activated the system. San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos ended up giving public updates over KNBR-AM anyway.
QWhat is a sand volcano, and where did they appear after the quake?
Liquefaction near Watsonville was severe enough to push saturated sand up through cracks in the ground, forming small cone-shaped mounds called sand volcanoes in a strawberry field near Pajaro. The same ground failure cracked the front of Ford's department store in Watsonville, destroyed a causeway at Moss Landing, and knocked homes off their foundations if they hadn't been bolted down. Twin bridges over Struve Slough near Watsonville also failed structurally.
