Loma Prieta Earthquake: Surviving California's Deadliest Disaster

[00:00:01]An earthquake slams into your city.

[00:00:04]>> It looked like a small nuclear device had been set off.

[00:00:08]>> Set up. There's a lot of people under there. It's pinned.

[00:00:12]>> What do you do?

[00:00:13]>> You wake up and you think, "This didn't really happen."

[00:00:16]>> People move away, please.

[00:00:18]>> They're closing all the bridges. You can't get home. You're stuck here.

[00:00:21]>> Where do you go?

[00:00:23]>> You're inside a building that's already been crushed and collapsed in half and there's still more that could come down.

[00:00:29]>> How do you survive?

[00:00:31]>> Everybody was running toward us screaming, "Get off the bridge. Get off the bridge. Get off the bridge."

[00:00:36]>> Test your knowledge, strategy, and instincts during the Loma Prieta earthquake. When nature strikes.

[00:00:50]October 17, 1989.

[00:00:54]San Francisco, California.

[00:00:56]It's a hot and humid Tuesday afternoon.

[00:01:01]About 62,000 baseball fans pack Candlestick Park for the third game of the World Series.

[00:01:10]>> The mood in the stands was so high. Like everybody [music] in the stands was rooting and happy and cheering.

[00:01:19]>> 5:00 p.m.

[00:01:21]59 mi south.

[00:01:24]Deep under the Santa Cruz Mountains.

[00:01:27]Pressure along the infamous San Andreas Fault builds.

[00:01:33]5:04.

[00:01:36]The fault ruptures.

[00:01:40]Starting at a single point, the break tears along the fault plane at more than 5,000 mph, releasing enough force to lift the mountains. The shock waves spread out in a deadly ripple.

[00:01:53]Crashing into Santa Cruz.

[00:01:55]Watsonville.

[00:01:57]And shooting up the peninsula towards San Francisco.

[00:02:02]>> First pitch in about 12 minutes from right now. Let's go back out to Candlestick.

[00:02:05]>> Uh we're having a Well, we're having a tremendous earthquake.

[00:02:10]>> Take.

[00:02:11]>> Hey, we're having a >> Oh my god, we're having an earthquake.

[00:02:14]Wait a minute. Hold on. Hold on.

[00:02:16]Can you feel that?

[00:02:17]>> 911 emergency.

[00:02:19]>> This is humongous. This is humongous.

[00:02:21]This place >> For 15 seconds, the ground rolls. The 7.1 magnitude earthquake rips through the San Francisco Bay Area.

[00:02:29]>> What about the baby? What's wrong with it?

[00:02:31]>> [cheering] >> Earthquake code 33.

[00:02:34]>> Earthquake code 33.

[00:02:36]>> Get out of the building now.

[00:02:37]>> Everybody get everybody out of the building. Somebody's stuck in the elevator.

[00:02:41]>> We have advised we suffered a major earthquake.

[00:02:44]>> We have just had a major earthquake.

[00:02:45]It's a major earthquake we have had.

[00:02:47]>> Let me check if anybody was hurt.

[00:02:49]Can you go door to door?

[00:03:04]>> It was just this roar of sound, and as our eyes went back down, we could see the seats in the stadium moving almost independently of each other. And then, as we got to the field level, Will Clark [music] was walking across the first baseline, and his knees just buckled and he fell from the rolling of the ground.

[00:03:23]>> The stadium escapes with only minor damage, but other areas are hit hard.

[00:03:28]>> Preliminary location, 37.0 north, 122.0 west.

[00:03:35]>> In downtown Santa Cruz, just 10 miles from the earthquake's epicenter, buildings are reduced to rubble.

[00:03:44]In Oakland, part of the double-decker Cypress Street Freeway crumbles.

[00:03:48]>> That is completely collapsed. That's the upper section collapsing into lower section of the Cypress.

[00:03:55]>> Tons of concrete and steel crush motorists.

[00:04:01]>> I do hear that something happened to the Bay Bridge.

[00:04:04]>> I heard that too, but I can't confirm it.

[00:04:06]>> A 50-ft section of the towering San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge smashes onto the lower deck.

[00:04:14]And on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, houses in the Marina District collapse.

[00:04:19]>> Okay, ma'am. Ma'am, I need you to calm down. How many people are in the building?

[00:04:23]>> Fires now rage.

[00:04:25]>> The fire department is not going to be there immediately.

[00:04:28]>> It seemed like every block had a building collapsed or partially collapsed on it.

[00:04:32]>> Go home and secure your residence. Shut off the gas. Shut off electricity. Store water. Prepare for aftershocks. Prepare for 3 days of no services. You got 90 minutes of light left. You better make use of your time.

[00:04:46]>> At Station 38, the Marina District's command center, Assistant Fire Chief Dennis Callaghan implements the disaster operations plan. He must send firefighters and resources to the worst-hit areas. But where are they?

[00:04:59]Before Dennis can respond, he needs the big picture.

[00:05:03]>> I have to evaluate the situation, the resources, and the staff. We had to know where we were going to send them and get them out there as quickly as we could.

[00:05:15]>> You're a fire chief. What's the quickest way to assess how much damage has been done to the city?

[00:05:21]Drive. You can talk to rescue workers [music] and assess their needs.

[00:05:26]Climb the roof of a tall building. It will give you an immediate view.

[00:05:31]Fly in a helicopter. You can cover a lot of distance quickly. [music] A drive through the city will give you an accurate first-hand assessment of the situation, but many of the roads are blocked by debris and broken water pipes. It will take too much time. Climb onto the roof of a tall building and the Marina District is easily visible, but other areas are hidden by hills. Fly. A helicopter is the best way to get a quick and detailed visual of the disaster area.

[00:06:02]>> Well, the helicopter gives you the largest overview. In the case of San Francisco, we're talking about a city that's only 49 square miles.

[00:06:13]>> The San Francisco Fire Department arranges to use KPIX-TV Chopper 5. A trip over the city confirms the Marina District has the greatest amount of damage.

[00:06:24]Entire buildings are either fully or partially collapsed.

[00:06:28]A major fire burns on the corner of Beach and Divisadero streets.

[00:06:33]>> Never seen that much destruction in my career in one location like that.

[00:06:38]>> Man, let's go. Everybody out.

[00:06:42]>> Firefighter Richard Allen arrives at the main fire on Beach Street. The tightly packed wooden buildings are the perfect fuel.

[00:06:51]In 15 minutes, the fire consumes three floors and spreads to neighboring buildings. The flames look unstoppable.

[00:06:59]>> Main concern at that point was that it would just leapfrog from one building to another and eventually take a square block and then a couple of blocks.

[00:07:07]>> Worse yet, the earthquake has ruptured the auxiliary water supply system. What little water there is is not enough to stop the spread of the fire.

[00:07:17]>> I was told at that time that there was no water available.

[00:07:20]They didn't know where they were going to get water.

[00:07:23]The hydrants were out.

[00:07:27]>> Firefighters fear they will have to leave the Marina District to burn.

[00:07:31]>> There was also some talk of the pulling back to Lombard Street and possibly making a stand at that point, which would meant they would have pretty much given up the whole Marina District.

[00:07:44]>> Rescue workers hear a woman call from a collapsed building.

[00:07:48]The three-story structure is little more than a 12-ft pile of wood and plaster.

[00:07:52]It may take hours to free her.

[00:07:55]>> She was talking. She was calling out.

[00:07:57]Calling out, "Somebody help me. Please don't leave me."

[00:08:02]>> A trained paramedic, Richard volunteers to crawl into the pancake structure with firefighter Jerry Shannon.

[00:08:08]If the building catches fire, they will burn to death.

[00:08:12]>> Hello.

[00:08:12]>> And all we were trying to do was tell her to keep talking so we could at least head in that direction. We were trying to follow her voice and find out where she was.

[00:08:24]>> The Marina District sustained the city's worst damage.

[00:08:27]The culprit, the massive 800-mi San Andreas Fault.

[00:08:32]Across the bay, the 55-mi Hayward Fault poses an additional threat.

[00:08:38]>> These are the principal or the most dangerous faults in the area.

[00:08:42]>> These master faults mark the boundary between the Pacific Ocean Plate and the North American Continental Plate. Like two giant rafts, the plates slide past each other. When the movement is stopped, pressure builds.

[00:08:56]>> They kind of get hung up and they they stop. And while they're hung up, the plate's still moving so there's stresses that build up at the boundary.

[00:09:04]And eventually those stresses exceed the strength of the of of the area and they pop. And that pop is the earthquake.

[00:09:12]>> These two major faults make California one of the most seismically active regions in the world.

[00:09:19]>> The red dots show the several hundred thousand earthquakes that have occurred in California since about 1980.

[00:09:27]>> Most are little more than rumbles, one or two magnitude shakes. But at 7.1, the Loma Prieta earthquake is a major rupture.

[00:09:36]>> As the fault moves and it moves fairly rapidly, uh it sends out waves, sound waves and shear waves away from the fault as it moves, and that's experienced as as the shaking from the earthquake.

[00:09:48]>> In the city of Oakland, the ground beneath the double-decker Cypress Street Freeway shakes.

[00:09:59]In a moment of unimaginable horror, the concrete pillars between the decks fail.

[00:10:04]The top deck slams onto the deck below.

[00:10:19]Oakland Firefighter Lieutenant Mark Hoffman and his crew from Engine Company 1 are the first firefighters on the scene.

[00:10:26]>> When my driver stopped, we looked at each other, and you know, it was just, "Oh my god."

[00:10:31]Took a moment to process what we were seeing. It looked like a small nuclear device had been set off.

[00:10:39]>> It was actually overwhelming.

[00:10:41]From as far as the eye can see, you could see collapse. The top of the structure collapsed into the lower portion of the structure.

[00:10:52]The cars were crushed like an aluminum can would be crushed.

[00:10:56]>> Everywhere there's chaos.

[00:10:58]>> We got to leave some of the PRIOR TO DOING.

[00:11:00]I NEED TO GET THE PRIOR TO DOING.

[00:11:02]COME ON, leave some of the prior to doing.

[00:11:05]>> Local residents try and help the wounded.

[00:11:07]>> Bring it down here.

[00:11:08]>> Can you hear me in the fire side?

[00:11:09]>> Truck is upside down.

[00:11:10]>> Man, listen.

[00:11:11]>> The injured need aid desperately.

[00:11:17]Lieutenant Hoffman sets up a triage center.

[00:11:20]He then climbs up the outside of the support columns and enters the gap between the decks.

[00:11:25]>> I really had [music] to go through a kind of a gut check, and do I really want to do this?

[00:11:30]>> In the 4-ft high crawl [music] space, cars burn. The air is thick with smoke.

[00:11:36]Mark can smell gasoline from ruptured fuel tanks.

[00:11:39]>> WE CAN'T DO MASS CASUALTY. YOU GOT TO GET the patients down first.

[00:11:47]>> I'd never really seen this before. The suspension just completely went to the ground. The floorboards were right against the road bed and the wheels were just tucked up.

[00:11:56]>> Lieutenant Hoffman searches each vehicle for signs of life. At first, he finds only death.

[00:12:03]Then on the edge of the freeway, he sees a car pinned under a concrete slab. In the wreckage, two children are in need of help.

[00:12:11]>> Well, the boy was delirious. The girl was also at a high level of anxiety, but was able to respond to direction, uh which the boy wasn't.

[00:12:22]>> He needs to get the injured children out quickly. It will be difficult. The children are trapped in the twisted metal.

[00:12:30]You're a firefighter. What tool should you use to free the children?

[00:12:35]A Halligan bar. It can snap open the door quickly.

[00:12:40]A hydraulic spreader. It's got the muscle to rip metal apart.

[00:12:44]A reciprocating saw. It's perfect for a precision cut.

[00:12:51]This is a tight space. A Halligan bar needs room to create leverage. And a reciprocating saw's metal teeth may produce a spark and ignite leaking gasoline.

[00:13:01]But a hydraulic spreader, also known as the Hurst tool or Jaws of Life, is safe and has the strength to tear the metal apart.

[00:13:10]>> The advantage to the Hurst tool is it's pneumatic. That in the environment we were in, there were gas tanks that had ruptured. Uh there were people working close to each other. You don't really want to be generating heat, sparks.

[00:13:23]>> Firefighters can use used tool and cut through the car's back door. They pulled the young girl from the wreckage, but her brother is still trapped. His leg is caught between the seats and pinned under the dashboard.

[00:13:36]>> Everything had been compressed to about 5 in tall, including the engine block. I couldn't believe that this thing had compressed a cast iron motor.

[00:13:45]But just everything was crushed.

[00:13:47]>> Lieutenant Hoffman is afraid the boy will die before they can free him.

[00:13:51]>> I ordered a chainsaw to be brought up with the intention of possibly cutting this kid's leg off if he started to code on me or started to pass away.

[00:14:03]>> Next, to save a young boy's life, rescue workers face a tough decision.

[00:14:09]>> We couldn't do anything with the boy until we could get his leg >> Tuesday, October 17th, 1989.

[00:14:29]In the worst disaster of the Loma Prieta earthquake, the double-decker Cypress Street Freeway has collapsed.

[00:14:39]In a 4-ft space between the collapsed decks, Lieutenant Mark Hoffman battles to free a young boy from a crushed car.

[00:14:47]>> Well, he was incoherent. He was in a lot of pain.

[00:14:51]>> [music] >> For more than 4 hours, firefighters cut at the twisted metal.

[00:15:03]Once enough space is cleared, doctors examine the [music] boy's leg.

[00:15:10]It's bad news. The boy's foot is still trapped by the dashboard and his leg is badly damaged.

[00:15:19]Doctors [music] decide to amputate.

[00:15:23]It's the only way to save the boy's life.

[00:15:27]>> Incredibly stressful on the individuals, you know, myself included, that we're having to do this. And then the fact that you knew that even if you did your best work, the kid's still going to lose his leg.

[00:15:39]>> It is a difficult operation in extreme conditions. Rescue workers are afraid that the boy will go into shock and die.

[00:15:50]You're a medic. Which symptom indicates that a patient is going into shock?

[00:15:56]A rapid pulse.

[00:15:58]Unequal pupil size.

[00:16:00]Difficulty swallowing.

[00:16:04]Difficulty swallowing and unequal pupil size are signs of many medical conditions, but they are not associated with shock. A rapid pulse, however, is a sign that the heart is trying to compensate for the loss of blood to vital organs caused by injury or a drop in blood pressure. It's an important sign that the patient is going into shock.

[00:16:25]>> They had him on a monitor, you know, for his heart rate. They were able to check his respirations. So, we then stopped worrying about the fact that, you know, we might lose this boy.

[00:16:38]>> The operation's quickly underway.

[00:16:44]In about 20 minutes, the boy is eventually free.

[00:16:50]>> Some guys were elated.

[00:16:52]Other people were just relieved. On a personal level, I was just glad it was over.

[00:16:59]>> There's a gas leak. Let's go. Turn around and go that way.

[00:17:02]>> Gas leak!

[00:17:05]>> Back in the Marina District, on the edge of the San Francisco Bay, firefighters Richard Allen and Jerry Shannon are searching for a woman inside a collapsed building. They can hear her call for help, but they can't find her.

[00:17:18]>> It must be horrible to be trapped in a building, first of all, not know if anybody can even hear you. Then they hear you and you know they're looking for you, but you wonder if they're ever going to find you.

[00:17:29]>> Neighboring buildings burn out of control.

[00:17:32]Worse yet, there is little or no water to fight the fires. The earthquake has ruptured the auxiliary water supply.

[00:17:40]>> They were sending engine companies as far out as possible to find hydrants that still had water.

[00:17:45]>> Go back over here.

[00:17:48]>> Inside the building, Richard and Jerry have to tunnel their way through a maze of shattered beams and broken pipes.

[00:17:58]At times, the crawl space is only 18 inches high.

[00:18:02]To move forward, they cut the unstable beams with chainsaws.

[00:18:06]>> So, as you were cutting, you kind of held your breath and then the chunk of wood fell out, the building didn't come down, so you knew you were safe enough to go another two or three feet forward to the next pipe or the next piece of wood.

[00:18:18]>> Surrounded by tons of debris, Richard smells gas. Then his worst nightmare is realized, the building catches fire.

[00:18:27]>> We knew that they had to start putting water on that to put it out or we were going to be trapped in a fire building.

[00:18:35]>> With the auxiliary water system knocked out, what's the best way to transport water to the fires?

[00:18:42]Fireboats. The bay is 250 yards away.

[00:18:46]Fire engines. They have water on board already.

[00:18:50]Fireplanes. Each payload can deliver [music] huge amounts of water.

[00:18:56]While fire engines often carry their own water, it won't be sufficient to put out a major fire. And fireplanes can drop huge amounts of water, but in an urban area, the force might injure people below.

[00:19:08]However, fireboats are readily available and have access to an unlimited supply of water.

[00:19:14]>> The fireboat has uh the capacity to draw the water from below the water line into pumps and then those pumps can pump the water into a hose.

[00:19:29]>> Firefighter Nathan Hardy is a marine engineer on the fireboat Phoenix.

[00:19:36]He receives a desperate call. Get the Phoenix to the marina immediately.

[00:19:42]>> At that time, the traffic was backed up.

[00:19:45]There was no way to get a crew back here.

[00:19:47]So, that's when we realized we had to go without a crew and and the the three of us took the boat.

[00:19:53]>> The fireboat Phoenix cuts through the water. It is a race against time.

[00:19:57]The approaching low tide threatens to expose a sandbar at the entrance to the marina.

[00:20:02]If the tide drops any further, the sandbar will block the entrance.

[00:20:09]>> Well, as we approached it, we could actually feel it hit the bottom of the vessel.

[00:20:15]And I turned to the pilot and said, "If we get stuck out here in the mud, we're not going to do anybody any good at all."

[00:20:22]>> The fireboat Phoenix maneuvers slowly over the sandbar.

[00:20:26]The massive 520 horsepower engines push the boat through.

[00:20:30]Alongside the dock, the plan is to use the Phoenix as a massive fire hydrant.

[00:20:38]Hose lines are connected to the boat's manifold.

[00:20:42]Individual fire hoses are joined together to make a hose long enough to reach the fire.

[00:20:49]It's an ingenious plan, but there's a problem. The hose is too heavy for the firefighters to haul to the front line.

[00:20:59]Next, how will firefighters get the heavy hose to the fires?

[00:21:04]>> I could smell a definite odor of gas in the air and I can see some panic in some [music] people's eyes.

[00:21:13]>> [music] >> In the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the fireboat Phoenix has arrived at the edge of the Marina district. Firefighters connect an extra long fire hose to the boat's massive pumps, but there's a problem. There are not enough firefighters to haul the heavy hose to the fires.

[00:21:38]>> A firefighter without water can't do a lot.

[00:21:42]>> The problem is easily overcome. San Francisco residents grab the line and run up the street.

[00:21:51]>> More and more people grabbed hold of it, and it just started to really go up the street in a hurry.

[00:22:04]It was amazing. I would not have wanted to get tangled up in that hose because it was coming right off the boat like a machine was pulling it.

[00:22:12]>> The pumps on the fireboat Phoenix kick in.

[00:22:17]The 12-valve engines build up about 170 lb of pressure, and the hose lines fill with water.

[00:22:27]On Beach Street, a cloud of white steam rises as the salt water hits the flames.

[00:22:36]But for firefighters Richard Allen and Jerry Shannon, deep inside the remains of a collapsed building, the water can be as deadly as the flames.

[00:22:44]>> Every time you you dump water on a building, you add weight to that building, and and that increased our concern of collapse.

[00:22:54]Even if it dropped a foot, it would have been enough to pin us.

[00:23:01]>> Firefighters find a delicate balance.

[00:23:03]They hit the flames with small amounts of water by using a special nozzle that creates mist. The water [music] turns to steam and draws heat from the fire.

[00:23:12]As soon as the flames die down, the hoses shut off and the firefighters wait for the next flare-up.

[00:23:19]>> Had they just put water in unlimited quantities in that building, they almost certainly would have collapsed the rest of that [music] building in on us.

[00:23:31]>> The technique buys Richard and Jerry enough time to [music] find the victim pinned beneath her bedroom closet door.

[00:23:38]>> Once we had made physical contact with her, we're able to touch her and hold her hand, uh there was a great deal of relief. I think she really believed at that point she was going to be saved, that we were going to be successful.

[00:23:49]>> The victim's hip is injured. Unable to move, Richard and Jerry strap her to a stretcher and pull her from the building.

[00:23:59]>> Most of my exhaustion was just emotional exhaustion. It was just to finally be finished with the the rescue. Once it's over, then it just kind of all [music] kind of comes in on you and you realize the magnitude of the of the operation.

[00:24:11]>> With the building evacuated, the firefighters open the hoses. The fireboat Phoenix pumps 6,400 gallons of salt water per minute onto the flames.

[00:24:20]>> You can see [music] the white steam, that the telltale evidence of water getting on the fire.

[00:24:29]>> 60 miles south, the coastal town of Santa Cruz is living its own nightmare.

[00:24:42]>> I had to say it's earthquake damage to all the way from San Francisco all the way down here.

[00:24:45]>> Just 10 miles from the earthquake's epicenter, the city receives the full force of the earthquake.

[00:24:53]>> The force was so strong, you couldn't get out of your chair.

[00:24:57]>> This has got to be the strongest one that has hit to Santa Cruz.

[00:25:02]>> Built with unreinforced masonry, 1/3 of the historic downtown buildings rock on their foundations and crumble.

[00:25:11]>> [music] >> You can see the mortar fall, the bricks roll.

[00:25:17]>> It just looked to me like the downtown had died.

[00:25:21]There was a lot of debris and rubble.

[00:25:24]The downtown that you always had known uh no longer existed. It was just gone.

[00:25:32]>> Dan Coyro, photographer for the Santa Cruz Sentinel, is one block from Pacific Avenue, downtown's main street, when disaster strikes.

[00:25:42]He grabs his camera and heads for the destruction.

[00:25:46]>> I just kept going.

[00:25:48]And just walking [music] down the mall shooting people and with dazed looks.

[00:25:57]I saw a lot of people walking down the street crying. They could not handle it.

[00:26:01]They didn't know what happened.

[00:26:10]That was minutes after the earthquake.

[00:26:19]>> Most people flee the destruction.

[00:26:21]>> Where were you when >> But Dan notices a group running back into the remains of a building.

[00:26:29]The Ford's Department Store is little more than a pile of wood and plaster.

[00:26:34]Through the dust and debris, Dan sees people frantically digging for survivors.

[00:26:44]>> Nobody was saying much. They were just digging. All you could hear were were were the bricks clattering.

[00:26:56]>> Not much talking. Just people scrambling to get debris out of the way.

[00:27:03]>> Dan photographs the search [music] for 30 desperate minutes.

[00:27:07]Finally, Edith Dominguez is pulled from the rubble.

[00:27:11]And Dan captures the moment on camera.

[00:27:22]>> People move away, please.

[00:27:24]>> Her leg was severely damaged.

[00:27:29]People just lifted her out of the rubble, brought her out to the street, and they put her in the back seat of a car and drove her to the hospital.

[00:27:42]>> You're in a shopping mall during an earthquake. Where's the [music] best place to find shelter?

[00:27:48]In a corner. Corners are structurally sound. They tend [music] to fail last.

[00:27:53]In the central courtyard. Out in the open, you'll be safe from collapsing walls.

[00:27:59]Under an escalator. It'll protect you from falling debris.

[00:28:04]Courtyards are often covered by large sections of glass. During an earthquake, this could break and fall causing injury to persons below. The top and bottom of an escalator [music] can be pulled in opposite directions leading to a dangerous collapse and injuring anyone beneath. However, [music] in a corner, the walls tend to brace and strengthen each other often creating a safe spot.

[00:28:26]>> You're surrounded with uh walls that are structural, they're bearing. You have a ridge line probably from the roof over you. So, all those structural components uh combine to make a system that's actually strong.

[00:28:43]>> Meanwhile, back at the Cypress Street Freeway, another victim waits for rescue.

[00:28:50]>> I'm driving along and I feel like I have four flat tires.

[00:28:53]And then, boom, something hits from above.

[00:28:58]>> This failure was very, very sudden, but it sliced through the the connection between the the upper and lower deck.

[00:29:04]And it just slid outwards and then downwards, so the upper deck collapsed onto the lower deck. It's a very, very scary.

[00:29:15]>> Tim Peterson's trapped between the sandwich decks. He's in terrible pain.

[00:29:20]Both feet are pinned behind the brake and accelerator pedals. The steering wheel is pressing down on his thighs and he's having trouble breathing.

[00:29:28]>> I could hear other people screaming and the horns. Uh all the other cars were packed down.

[00:29:35]The horns had activated with the steering wheels.

[00:29:41]>> I don't know how the hell we're going to get them out, okay? We have one woman is semiconscious, bleeding from the head.

[00:29:46]She is breathing, she's got a pulse.

[00:29:51]>> People would poke their head in and then they would leave.

[00:29:54]Cuz nobody wanted to be near it.

[00:29:56]So, because the fear was it was going to fall again and I guess there were aftershocks and so it was still moving.

[00:30:04]>> Firefighters Victor Quezada and Andy Park are the first to climb between the decks.

[00:30:11]Tim's car is the closest to them.

[00:30:14]>> It was probably crushed down to maybe [music] about 27 inches.

[00:30:20]I mean, if you can imagine uh stepping on a soda can, that's how these cars were completely crushed.

[00:30:28]>> Worse yet, the top deck continues to settle.

[00:30:33]>> When we first got there, the highway patrolman had a tape measure and he had indicated to us that during the time he's been there, the uh freeway had come down 2 and 1/2 3 in. So >> Rescue workers try to shore up the freeway with heavy timbers, but the wood cracks under the weight of 600 tons of concrete and steel.

[00:30:55]>> You hear the wood start to splinter because the weight of the freeway and you're realizing that you have to hurry up and it's going to come down to a certain point.

[00:31:04]>> Oh, yeah. We're still getting series of aftershocks.

[00:31:07]>> Here comes another one.

[00:31:08]>> Oh my god.

[00:31:10]>> Aftershocks rattle the freeway. A big one could collapse the structure completely. Battalion commanders face a tough decision. Should they pull and order rescue workers out or risk losing more lives by letting them remain? They call in engineers to assess the stability of the damaged structure.

[00:31:27]You're an engineer. What's the most important feature to inspect before you let rescue workers enter a building?

[00:31:35]Cracks. They show there's damage throughout the entire building caused by uneven movement.

[00:31:41]Sags. The overhead beams are bending or broken. The building could collapse from above.

[00:31:48]Bows. The bricks have [music] moved out from the wall. The wall could give way at any moment.

[00:31:56]Cracks and bows are important signs that serious structural damage has been done to the building. However, it is unlikely that the building will collapse unless more weight is added or there is an aftershock. Sags, however, indicate that main support beams are dangerously compromised.

[00:32:12]>> [music] >> The whole structure could come crashing down.

[00:32:16]>> Probably the most important thing is a sag or a lean in the building. And what that tells us is that some of the inter-structural members are beginning to fail.

[00:32:29]>> Engineers cannot guarantee the safety of rescue workers.

[00:32:34]>> Even >> [music] >> the officer that was in charge of Vic and and Andy's safety [music] basically said, "Hey, if you guys can't do anything with him, just leave him."

[00:32:44]>> He was so anxious [music] to get out that he wanted us to cut his legs off just to get him out.

[00:32:55]>> Next, the top deck continues to drop. It may be impossible to free Tim from the wreckage.

[00:33:02]>> We started tearing the stuffing [music] and the springs out of the seat so that it can give him a little bit more room.

[00:33:09]>> [music] >> Between the decks of the collapsed Cypress Street Freeway, firefighters are in a life-and-death struggle to free motorist Tim Peterson from his crushed vehicle.

[00:33:27]>> The steering wheel was pressed against his thighs causing a lot of pain and also trapping him.

[00:33:36]>> The gap between the decks continues to narrow. The rescue may have to be abandoned.

[00:33:42]>> They had measured it and they'd tried to shore it up and and they had realized that it was getting smaller.

[00:33:49]>> The Jaws of Life or Hurst tool will speed things up, but crews are using them elsewhere on the structure. Rather than give up, the rescue team tackles the wreck with hand tools.

[00:34:00]>> Andy was able to cut the steering wheel completely off so that he can have a little bit more room.

[00:34:06]After prying and pulling on the metal and just trying to move things apart, these jacks to try to stretch the the metal to try to get him out.

[00:34:17]>> Finally, a fire truck from the neighboring city of Fremont arrives.

[00:34:21]They have the Jaws of Life.

[00:34:26]>> We were able to make a couple of cuts and couple of pries here and uh we're able to make enough room just to to squeeze them out.

[00:34:37]>> Tim is rushed to the hospital.

[00:34:42]>> When we finally got him out, it was like it was a a sigh of relief for everybody.

[00:34:48]We were able to do our job and uh we were able to get him out in one piece and he was going to survive.

[00:34:56]>> [screaming] >> 42 motorists die in the collapsed Cypress Street Freeway.

[00:35:02]It's a tragic reminder that in earthquake country, even the most impressive structures can fail.

[00:35:10]Just 2 mi away, the towering San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge suffers a similar fate.

[00:35:17]Abby Malamud is on the bridge when the earthquake hits.

[00:35:21]>> My car began to shake. I mean, it was more than a little vibration. It was a shake and it was rocking side to side.

[00:35:31]>> Ahead of her, Abby sees brake lights.

[00:35:37]Five lanes of traffic come to a complete stop.

[00:35:40]>> All of a sudden, we saw all these people running toward us screaming, "Get off the bridge. Get off the bridge. Get off [music] the bridge."

[00:35:57]>> Opened for traffic in 1936, the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge was the longest suspended deck bridge in the world. Hailed as an engineering masterpiece, it appeared indestructible.

[00:36:10]But now, 53 years later, it's no match for the Loma Prieta earthquake. A 50-ft section on the upper deck slams into the road below.

[00:36:19]>> The truss structure in the middle is very, very stiff and things [music] that are stiff tend to attract more load, more force. And so, what happened was that the deck structure actually broke away [music] from the support, and then it pulled the next deck along with it, and then it fell off its support at this other end.

[00:36:38]>> Caught 191 ft above the San Francisco Bay, Abby grows frantic. Ahead, the bridge has collapsed, and aftershocks rumble through the structure.

[00:36:50]You're caught on the San Francisco Bay Bridge during an earthquake. What should you do?

[00:36:56]Stay put. The panicking crowds could injure you.

[00:37:00]Drive away. Get off the bridge as fast as possible.

[00:37:04]Abandon your car. You will be able to avoid major obstacles.

[00:37:10]Staying put in your car may make you feel safe, but aftershocks could cause the bridge to collapse. Driving away may seem like a good idea, but abandoned or crashed cars may block your escape. In this situation, your best bet is to abandon your car.

[00:37:26]>> What's going through my mind is, should I lock my car? Should I leave the keys in the car? What if the car needs to be moved? What if someone steals the car? I mean, totally irrational thoughts. The only way to escape or get off the bridge was obviously to run, walk, or crawl.

[00:37:44]>> 911 emergency.

[00:37:45]>> Yes, are you going to work on the Bay Bridge?

[00:37:47]>> Abby decides to run for it.

[00:37:49]>> The upper deck appeared to have collapsed in the earthquake.

[00:37:52]>> The upper deck is missing.

[00:37:53]>> Uh I tried to keep um as cool as I could because um I figured I would be able to figure out where to go and how to get off the bridge quickly if I sort of kept my wits about me.

[00:38:08]>> Abby and the other motorists head for Yerba Buena Island, a small island in the San Francisco Bay, where the east and west spans of the Bay Bridge meet.

[00:38:17]>> I imagine some people would have felt as if they were trapped on the island, uh unable to get off, but frankly I felt very safe. I figured, you know, if it took days a boat would come by if the bridge in fact was down.

[00:38:31]>> After a few hours, Abby Malamed's allowed back to her car and redirected off the bridge.

[00:38:39]Meanwhile, in the coastal town of Santa Cruz, residents continue to search for survivors in the ruins of the historic downtown.

[00:38:48]>> When we looked to the downtown [music] area on Civic Avenue area, we saw these what turned out to be large dust columns rising from the areas where the unreinforced masonry buildings had collapsed.

[00:39:01]>> Masonry buildings aren't very good in earthquakes because they're very brittle structures. You might imagine that actually brick is quite strong. The thing is the actual mortar in between [music] that is very weak. It tends to fail along the mortar lines.

[00:39:15]>> Firefighter Matt McCaslin arrives outside a collapsed coffee shop. He hears people are trapped inside.

[00:39:22]Matt enters the shattered building.

[00:39:25]>> We're going into a building and we know it that everybody's just run out of and that sets the tone.

[00:39:36]>> Next, firefighters face death and injury when aftershocks hit the unstable building.

[00:39:43]>> [music] >> In the devastation following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, firefighter Matt McCaslin searches for survivors in the remains of the Santa Cruz building.

[00:40:02]>> Everybody in here?

[00:40:03]>> The air was acrid with uh dust and the smell from the broken and crumbled pieces of masonry and the light was very dim.

[00:40:16]>> As Matt makes his way to the second floor, a powerful aftershock hits the building.

[00:40:23]The unstable structure rocks and shifts.

[00:40:27]Matt has seconds to get his team to safety.

[00:40:32]>> The place that I could find for us is actually uh next to a pillar column that was bolted to a a main beam that supported the overhead. And the debris that did fall was deflected away.

[00:40:44]>> Matt's training and quick thinking saves his crew.

[00:40:50]For several days, Matt and rescue crews continue to search while families wait outside.

[00:40:58]>> A third body has been recovered from the mall. The second body in the Coffee Roasting Company.

[00:41:06]It is the body of 22-year-old Robin Ortiz.

[00:41:13]>> I would say mixed emotions. There's some sadness, but yet some uh relief that, you know, we'd found them and that >> [music] >> uh we could have some closure.

[00:41:28]>> Changed the city drastically from for months and months and months we were still trying to dig ourselves out of the rubble.

[00:41:37]>> [music] [music] >> The 7.1 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake is the largest earthquake to hit California [music] in 83 years.

[00:42:00]63 people are dead.

[00:42:03]Nearly 4,000 injured.

[00:42:06]The aftermath comes with a hefty $5.9 billion dollar tag.

[00:42:12]>> We all like to think we're in control and that's one of the moments you realize is that the gods are in control and you're not.

[00:42:19]>> As the dust settles, the questions begin.

[00:42:22]What brought the Marina District to its knees?

[00:42:25]Why did the Cypress Street Freeway collapse?

[00:42:29]Scientists and engineers turn to an obvious culprit, the soft and wet bay soil.

[00:42:35]When this type of soil shakes during an earthquake, its particles move closer together and force the surrounding water out. This makes the ground liquefy, causing buildings to sink.

[00:42:48]It's a process called liquefaction.

[00:42:51]>> So, basically, you get the strong shaking, which is what [music] causes the soil to then soften. And as the soil softens, then you have a large motion back and forth on You can imagine waves in a bathtub moving back and forth. It would be the same type of motion.

[00:43:07]>> Maps created by the United States Geological Survey show vast areas along the margins of the San Francisco Bay are built on soft bay mud.

[00:43:16]Even more disturbing, California is heading for another major earthquake.

[00:43:22]>> We know the plates are still moving and that the San Andreas Fault is building up stress for another large earthquake.

[00:43:28]>> [music] >> Californians are doing more than just bracing themselves. They are designing buildings to withstand the awesome power of earthquakes.

[00:43:40]>> With the technology developments we've had over the last 10 15 years, we have now reached a point where we can design any building or any bridge to be able to withstand the strongest possible earthquake that could happen in California and not be damaged.

[00:44:01]>> What's the best floor plan for a house in an earthquake area?

[00:44:05]Square. Symmetrical buildings have the greatest structural strength.

[00:44:10]Cross. Corners are the strongest point in a building. The more corners, [music] the stronger the building. L. The long axis provides stability for the entire building.

[00:44:22]In complex L and cross-shaped buildings, the force of the earthquake is concentrated at the inside corners. If they fail, the building will collapse.

[00:44:31]Shake a square-shaped building and the forces are evenly distributed. There is less chance of damage.

[00:44:38]>> As the earthquake comes, the stiffness is not the same and so the structures can can move in ways which creates great stress in the structure. But a square foundation or a rectangular foundation has stiffness which is equal in all directions and it moves more as a unit and not as much in torsion which rips a building apart.

[00:45:01]>> Scientists predict the next big earthquake along the San Andreas Fault will be a magnitude 7 or higher.

[00:45:11]To face that kind [music] of power, Californians have turned to performance-based design.

[00:45:18]>> Performance-based design is actually looking at different levels of performance for a structure. So for example, a standard code approach would be to design [music] for life safety which is obviously very important. But nowadays, owners are interested in business continuity. Things like hospitals and power plants, they obviously want to be operational after an earthquake.

[00:45:38]>> Victor Zayas of Earthquake Protection Systems is the inventor of the friction pendulum bearing, a shock absorber for buildings. It works by isolating the building from the ground, allowing it to rock during an earthquake without breaking up.

[00:45:53]>> We have this concave spherical ball.

[00:45:56]And by supporting the weight of the structure on this slider that sits in the middle of the bowl.

[00:46:03]During an earthquake, instead of the structure being shaken violently, what happens is it goes through a gentle swaying motion where it moves from side to side and it's lifted up rather gently. In this way, we can somewhat harmlessly dissipate the motions of an earthquake without damaging the building.

[00:46:23]>> But out on the San Francisco Bay, designers of the new San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge have come up with a different solution.

[00:46:33]They've designed the bridge to intentionally fail at key locations.

[00:46:37]>> So, we know that if there's going to be a seismic event, there is going to be damage. And so, rather than let the damage occur wherever it wants to, the engineers have gone in and and designed this bridge to have failure in certain locations that are easily accessible, you can get to them, and you can make the repairs and get the bridge back underway.

[00:46:53]>> The key to the system is the hinge pipe beam.

[00:46:57]>> In the background, you'll see two large holes in the end of that bridge, and those holes are to accept the hinge pipe beam.

[00:47:05]Hinge pipe beam is made up of eight separate cans welded together.

[00:47:10]And in the middle, there's one can that is weaker than all the other ones. And at that location, when the stresses and the ground movement moves so much, it's going to fail right at that location.

[00:47:19]That's where we want it to fail.

[00:47:21]>> By bending and buckling, the hinge pipe beam absorbs the earthquake's energy and protects the rest of the structure and anyone on it.

[00:47:29]After an earthquake, repairs are easy.

[00:47:31]Service engineers access the broken segment through utility corridors in the structure and replace the damaged section. The result, the bridge remains intact and in service.

[00:47:44]>> I think this is probably one of the the best designed bridges in the world. It's very safe.

[00:47:54]>> With innovations in building designs and construction, Californians are preparing for the next great earthquake.

[00:48:01]But for those who survived the 1989 earthquake, it is the courage of the individuals that is remembered.

[00:48:09]>> It was uh taking [music] a unique person to want to crawl down in there and be a part of getting this person out.

[00:48:16]It took those type of guys to finally do that.

[00:48:20]That's why they're the heroes.

[00:48:27]>> Tim Peterson was pulled from the horror of the Cypress Freeway with two broken ankles, a broken back, shoulder, and ribs.

[00:48:38]Today he's an Oakland firefighter working alongside Victor Cuevas, the hero who rescued him.

[00:48:44]>> You know, I figured it was over. So, uh and I and and now these are all bonus days for me.

[00:48:50]>> There's a guy in there.

[00:48:52]>> He's up on this freeway somewhere.

[00:48:54]>> The Loma Prieta earthquake was a day that changed many lives. It was a day where ordinary citizens performed extraordinary deeds.

[00:49:03]>> I saw a man there in a business suit and another one in shorts and sandals. It was quite a cooperative effort there from everyone.

[00:49:14]>> I saw a whole bunch of civilians who with no training and no experience and they got up there and tried to help.

[00:49:20]That's heroism to me.

[00:49:22]>> Living with earthquakes will always be unpredictable and often deadly. We can study, monitor, and learn. We can even build to protect. But when the earth shakes and the ground rolls, those who face nature's power will have to make life or death decisions, choices that will forever change their lives.

[00:49:50]>> [music] [music] >> Mhm.