San Francisco–Oakland earthquake of 1989

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major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area, California, U.S., on Oct. 17, 1989. The strongest earthquake to hit the area since the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, it caused more than 60 deaths, thousands of injuries, and widespread property damage.

The earthquake was triggered by a slip along the San Andreas Fault. Its epicentre was in the Forest of Nisene Marks State Park, near Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz mountains, northeast of Santa Cruz and approximately 60 miles (100 km) south of San Francisco. It struck just after 5:00 PM local time and lasted approximately 15 seconds, with a magnitude of 7.1. The most severe damage was suffered by San Francisco and Oakland, but communities throughout the region, including Alameda, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and Monterey, also were affected. San Francisco's Marina district was particularly hard hit because it had been built on filled land (comprising loose, sandy soil), and the unreinforced masonry buildings in Santa Cruz (many of which were 50 to 100 years old) failed spectacularly.

The earthquake significantly damaged the transportation system of the Bay Area. The collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct (Nimitz Freeway) caused most of the earthquake-related deaths. The San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was also damaged when a span of the top deck collapsed. In the aftermath, all bridges in the area underwent seismic retrofitting to make them more resistant to earthquakes.

Remarkably, the earthquake struck just before the start of the third game of the 1989 World Series, which was being played in San Francisco's Candlestick Park between two Bay Area baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics. The disaster's occurrence during a major live television broadcast meant that news of the earthquake, as well as aerial views provided by the Goodyear blimp, reached a large audience. The baseball championship, which was suspended for 10 days, would come to be known as the “Earthquake Series.”

Copyright © 1994-2009 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com.

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