The Loma Prieta Earthquake struck at 5:04 PM, October 17, 1989. “Most stood wordless before the trench, awed by the jagged wound in the redwood forest,” the reporters wrote. A madrone tree and a big freezer in the basement kept the structure from tumbling down the ridge.”. In one rented home, “four young male farm workers were sleeping inside, ignoring the condemnation notice posted by city inspectors on the front door.”, “No place to go,” Raul Bacerrea, 23, told DelVecchio through a translator. Use them to answer the following: 2 Where was the epicenter? “Then the rains made a mess of the job.”. Feel free to use any of these images but please cite the photographer and the U.S. Geological Survey. We thank our colleagues: Richard Pike, for his thorough scrutiny of the entire manuscript; Robert Mark, for reviewing the computer section; Edward Helley, who originally reviewed Open-File Report 90-547; Evelyn (Newman) Billo, David Traudt, Sue Mayfield, Sara Boore, George Havach, Peter Stauffer, and Bob Page for facilitating authoring of this report; Todd Fitzgibbon, for a short course in HTML; and Jack Hillhouse, for supporting the project. This publication consists of the online version of a CD-ROM publication, U.S. Geological Survey Digital Data Series DDS-29. “Some new buildings were standing as if nothing had happened at all. “It was just a double whammy,” said Terry Medina, the town’s police chief. “It was eerie,” Mardi Wormhoudt, then mayor, told Chronicle writer Carl Nolte 10 years later. Sign up for the newsletter here, and follow Chronicle Vault on Instagram. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred in Northern California on October 17 at 5:04 p.m. local time (1989-10-18 00:04 UTC). Then, suddenly, another once-in-a-lifetime event struck. Seen here October 20, 1989 Photo ran 10/23/1989, P. C11, A passerby looks at the fallen wall of the Capitola Venetian Motel and apartment complex after the Loma Prieta earthquake October 20, 1989, The Ceballos family of Watsonville watches TV by a barbecue because they're concerned their homes are unsafe after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 17, 1989, Mike Miller , Pastor of the St. Patrick's Catholic Church in Watsonville conducts mass in the auditorium of nearby Notre Dame High School after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 22, 1989, A building in Watsonville tthat was damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake, carries a hopeful message supporting the Giants in the World Series, October 26, 1989, A structural engineer moves on to check another building in Los Gatos after the Loma Prieta earthquake. The mall was destroyed by the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 20, 1989, Photo: Michael Maloney / The Chronicle 1989, A portion of Highway 1 collapsed through it's support foundation during the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 18, 1989, The media is taken on tour of Pacific Garden Mall, severely damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 23, 1989, Photo: Chris Stewart / The Chronicle 1989, A group of residents of Watsonville are staying in tents at the Watsonville High School because their homes are unsafe after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 21, 1989 Families find useful clothes the boxes of donated clothes, Santa Cruz County towns face unique problems rebuilding after after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 27, 1989, Warning signs were posted throughout the SantaCruz area beaches after the Loma Prieta earthquake caused sewer pipe leaks. “Most of the hardest hit streets were in the downtown area, housing thousands of Spanish-speaking residents who work in the fields and canneries surrounding the city,” DelVecchio wrote a week after the quake. On October 17, 1989, at 5:04:15 p.m. The earthquake occurred when the crustal rocks comprising the Pacific and North American Plates abruptly slipped as much as 2 meters (7 ft) along their common boundary-the San Andreas fault system. He has a weekly column “From the Archive”, that focuses on photo coverage of historic events. https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-29, Date created: December, 1995 CLICK HERE to browse the PCD image collection (PCDs at 3072 x 2048 pixels; /photocd folder). The digital images are stored in the "photocd" folder and can be read across Macintosh, Windows, DOS, OS/2, SGI, and UNIX platforms which have applications that can read Kodak's Photo-CD (YCC) file format. 3. A group of residents of Watsonville help feed their neighbors in Watsonville after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 23, 1989. The buildings was damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake , October 20, 1989 Photo ran 10/25/1989, P. A1, Photo: Deanne Fitzmaurice / The Chronicle 1989, Resident Kenny Reid shores up pilings under his from his house near Lompico Canyon in the Santa Cruz mountains. Major property damage i… Dozens of houses in the Santa Cruz Mountains had either collapsed or slid off their foundations, leaving 200 people homeless in the area. Life after disaster: Chronicle’s oldest negatives show a return to normality in 1906, Bam! October 26, 1989 Photo ran 11/01/1989, p. 10 Briefing Section, A group of residents of Watsonville are staying in tents at the Watsonville High School because their homes are unsafe after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 23, 1989 Photo ran 10/29/1989, P.6 Sunday Punch, Summit Road in the Santa Cruz Mountains was lifted up and over by theLoma Prieta earthquake, October 17, 1989 Seen here somewhat repaired October 23, 1989, A group of residents of Watsonville line up for water from a large tanker on Main Street, after the Loma Prieta earthquake has damaged the water system.October 19, 1989. • The big one: Long-forgotten Loma Prieta quake photos show disaster’s depths. Last modified: July 2, 2009, IV. CLICK HERE to browse the print-resolution images (TIFs at about 2000 x 3000 pixels; /tif folder). Hundreds of homes were knocked off their foundations, with 1 in 8 houses destroyed — the highest per capita damage of the whole earthquake. Forest of Nisene Marks State Park: Epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. A Journey to the Epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake Located deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains in an area known as The Forest of Nisene Marks is … CLICK HERE to view a Fact Sheet about the 10 years since the earthquake (https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1999/fs151-99/). This building housed a bicycle store and a law office before the quake. He moved to the Chronicle in 1985, just as the library was beginning their digital text archive. The earthquake caused severe damage in some very specific locations in the Bay Area, most notably on unstable soil in San Francisco and Oakland. : We found the winner of The Chronicle’s ‘Batmobile’ contest, Chess legend George Koltanowski: An archive deep dive of record-breaking chess champion and Chronicle columnist, Essential workers risk their health amid the pandemic. Figure 169 shows three simulated seismograms from the October 17, 1989, Loma Prieta Earthquake. It was spontaneous, not done by a relief organization, Mary Camera owner of Lily Marlene restaurant salvages a few items near the Pacific Garden Mall in downtown Santa Cruz. It can be easy to forget that Santa Cruz County was hit hard by the temblor on Oct. 17, 1989, when most of the memories seared into the collective consciousness are … The focal depth was 11 miles (typical California earthquake focal depths are 4 to 6 miles). On October 17, 1989, at 5:04:15 p.m. (PDT), a magnitude 6.9 earthquake severely shook the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions. The earthquake measured 7.1 on the Richter scale, classifying it as "major".The earthquake ran along the San Andreas Fault, the epicenter was located near the Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Death, destruction, and havoc were again visited upon the San Francisco area in 1989. While more than 600 people were being housed in shelters, others were living in tents and sleeping in vans, despite city officials attempting to get people to move into the formal shelters. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park approximately 10 mi (16 km) northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. A San Francisco culture podcast, hosted by Peter Hartlaub. This online version does not include the Acrobat Search index files. CLICK HERE to view the captions file (captions.txt) for this publication in ASCII format. He does research for reporters and editors and manages the photos, negatives and text archives. Here are the images and words of those who have, to varying degrees, risked their health to keep a nation working. The epicenter was located near Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, approximately 14 km (9 mi) northeast of Santa … This publication provides images for use by the interested public, multimedia producers, desktop publishers, and the high-end printing industry. “Watsonville continued to move its homeless from makeshift tent cities near the hard-hit downtown to two professionally run tent cities with hot food, running water, medical care and privacy for large families,” reporter John Wildermuth wrote Oct. 24, 1989. San Francisco earthquake of 1989, also called Loma Prieta earthquake, major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area, California, U.S., on October 17, 1989, and caused 63 deaths, nearly 3,800 injuries, and an estimated $6 billion in property damage. The epicenter was located in the Santa Cruz Mountains west of Loma Prieta Peak on a previously undiscovered fault near the larger and well known San Andreas Fault. Its GPS coordinates are 37.036 N, 121.883 W. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake's epicenter is deep in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park. Santa Cruz County towns, particularly Watsonville face problems rebuilding after after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 28, 1989, over 500 homes were destroyed. Watsonville, a farm town 15 miles away, was even harder hit. The preview thumbnail and screen-resolution images listed above are in GIF and JPEG formats, respectively, but undergo resolution loss due to downsizing, compression and (or) color-palate reduction relative to the original Photo CD images provided below. For this column Bill scans and publishes 20-30 images from photos and negatives that haven’t been seen in many years. He was inside inspecting the damage down to the structure. Like what you’re reading? However, using the Universal Ektachrome or Universal Kodachrome transforms found in your software will provide excellent color. The Loma Prieta earthquake, also known as the Quake of '89 and the World Series Earthquake, [4] was a major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area of California on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 pm local time. Essential work has always been essential work. This major earthquake caused 63 deaths, 3,757 injuries, and an estimated $6 billion in property damage. The epicenter was on the San Andreas fault roughly 56 miles south of San Francisco and 10 miles northeast of Santa Cruz, near Mt. Has just able to get out of the house during the Loma Prieta earthquake before his house slid down the hill, Seen here October 25, 1989 Photo ran 10/27/1989, P. A20. In Santa Cruz, the quake brought significant damage to downtown. On Oct. 17, 1989, the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake hit the Bay Area. Fire Road to Aptos Creek Trail and back. • Oral history: The shaken Series — A’s vs. Giants in the World Series, an unprecedented slice of Bay Area sports history. 3 of 159 Civilians assist firefighters in extinguishing the massive block-long fire at Divisadero and Beach Streets in the Marina District, which was triggered by … The data for this publication total 606 MB on the CD-ROM and 564 MB for this online version. Seven people died in the county, and more than 800 were injured. BRUCE BABBITT, Secretary, U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY Santa Cruz looked as if it had been bombed. The site is a quite a distance from the urban Bay area and San Francisco, where the tremors brought down bridges and houses. Each 24-bit color image is stored as five resolutions: 1. “Downtown crumpled into the street,” Nolte wrote. The epicenter: Rediscovered photos show Loma Prieta quake’s Santa Cruz devastation, Photo: Scott Sommerdorf / The Chronicle 1989, A landslide caused the Loma Prieta earthquake would block southbound lanes Interstate Highway 17 across the Santa Cruz Mountains, October 18, 1989, Photo: Steve Castillo / The Chronicle 1989, Downtown Santa Cruz was severely damaged as seen here the day after the the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 23, 1989, Children walk by a home at the corner of 5th and Jefferson Ave. in Watsonville damaged by the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 26, 1989 Photo ran 11/2/1990, P 10, Briefing, A group of residents of Watsonville are staying in tents at the Watsonville High School because their homes are unsafe after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 17, 1989, Santa Cruz County towns get blasted b y the the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 19, 1989, Bing Loeong Yim stood in the rain with other Pacific Garden Mall merchants in downtown Santa Cruz . The epicenter was located at 37.04° N. latitude, 121.88° W. longitude near Loma Prieta peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, approximately 14 km (9 mi) northeast of Santa Cruz and 96 km (60 mi) south-southeast of San Francisco. The town had already been behind in housing its residents when the quake hit. The images in this file are 1024 x 768 pixels. Measured at 6.9 on the Richter Scale, the worst damage was in the nearby cities of Watsonville and Santa Cruz. This folder was created in 2008 and contains .tif files as we received requests for them in this large, uncompressed, but common file format. Research was done using paper clippings, and cameras shot film. Seen here October 18, 1989 Photo ran 10/21/1989, P. B1, Stephanie Garcia, 6, is eating soup provided by volunteers, to families in Callaghan Park in Watsonville because they're homes are unsafe after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 21, 1989, A relief truck navigates over the crumbling Redwood Lodge Road in the Santa Cruz mountains after the Loma Prieta earthquake, , October 23, 1989, A group of residents of Watsonville are staying in tents at the Watsonville High School because their homes are unsafe after the Loma Prieta earthquake, October 21, 1989 Here a boy finds a shirt among the boxes of donated clothes, Earthquake expert Peter I. Yanov struggles to crawl back out of a destroyed building in Watsonville after the Loma Prieta Earthquake. Near the epicenter, earth itself had been torn apart. Aptos, California. It had a moment magnitude of 6.9 and a surface wave magnitude of 7.1. (P.d.t. More than 4,500 people were displaced and the damage created a homelessness crisis in one of the county’s agricultural centers and remade downtown Santa Cruz. The epicenter was approximately 8 miles north-northeast of Santa Cruz and 50 miles from downtown San Francisco. The Loma Prieta Earthquake was a powerful earthquake that struck at 5:04PM on Tuesday, October 17, 1989 in the San Francisco Bay area in Northern California (USA). This devastating 6.9-magnitude earthquake rocked Northern California on Oct. 17, 1989, with the Bay Area and Central Coast bearing the brunt of the impact. Where. San Francisco and San Mateo County Coast, IX. Loma Prieta in the Santa Cruz Mountains. “I prefer being out here,” Jill Bard said. CLICK HERE to view a slideshow (slideshow.pdf; 36 MB). • Changed region: All of our 30th anniversary coverage of the 1989 quake. • Changed life: Thirty years ago, a firefighter made a vow while rescuing a woman after the Loma Prieta earthquake. We especially thank Alpha CD Imaging of Menlo Park, Calif. for their technical assistance. It is edited by Taylor Kate Brown, The Chronicle’s newsletter editor. On October 17th, 1989, California's Central Coast was rocked by the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta Earthquake. ), a magnitude 6.9 (moment magnitude; surface-wave magnitude, 7.1) earthquake severely shook the San Francisco and Monterey Bay regions. The duration was 15 to 20 seconds. The Loma Prieta earthquake, named after the mountain peak near its epicenter, wreaked havoc on the region, killing 63 people, injuring nearly 3,800 more and causing an estimated $6 billion in property damage. Summit Road Area, Santa Cruz Mountains. Peterson, Stephen D. Ellen, Ralph A. Haugerud, Robert J. McLaughlin, G. Reid Fisher, and Michael F. 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