There must be a way, he thought, to translate his gut check into a short but useful warning.Īfter decades of work, Heaton's dreams have taken form. Heaton recalled how he had guessed the size of the earthquake when the first, gentle waves reached his bedroom. There had been no warning, no sirens sending people into the streets. The Northridge quake, as it came to be known, killed 57 and caused many billions of dollars in damage. The quake had struck farther north, under the neighborhood of Reseda, on a previously unknown fault. At the office, seismic readings partially validated his gut: 'I was right about the magnitude and approximate distance,' he says-though not the location. He drove to the office in darkness, imagining the fires, collapsed bridges, and crumbled buildings closer to the epicenter. 'I've got to get to work,' he told his wife.Īt the time, in 1994, Heaton was the lead scientist at the earthquake field office of the U.S. By feel and duration, he guessed this quake was big, maybe a magnitude 6.5, and close, under west Los Angeles. As a seismologist, Heaton had spent his career studying seismic waves like these. As Heaton lay in bed next to his wife, waves vibrated through their house. The streets were empty, with sunrise hours away. See the NIST report, ' Performance of Structures During the Loma Prieta Earthquake of October 17, 1989,' for more information.The shaking woke Thomas Heaton on a quiet winter morning in Pasadena, California. The team traveled to the San Francisco area and carried out its investigation during the period of October 18-26, 1989. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology requested the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) investigate earthquake damage including the elevated section of Interstate 880 and the other bridge structures. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and the U.S. Three people were killed in the collapse of the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, and five people were killed in the collapse of a brick wall on Bluxome Street in San Francisco. One 50-foot (15 m) section of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed, leading to the single fatality on the bridge. The highest number of fatalities, 42, occurred in the City of Oakland because of the failure of the Cypress Street Viaduct on the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880), where a double-deck portion of the freeway collapsed, crushing the cars on the lower deck.

The quake killed 63 people throughout northern California, injured 3,757 and left some 3,000-12,000 people homeless. Caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault, the quake lasted 10–15 seconds and measured 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale, or 6.9 on the open-ended Richter Scale.

Net-Zero Energy Residential Test FacilityĮarthquake Loma Prieta California 1989 The Loma Prieta earthquake was a major earthquake that struck the San Francisco Bay Area of California on October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m.

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