Railroaders' Nostalgia > Earthquake 1989 - Oakland, CA - 25 Years Ago

When the shaking started I was at my desk at SP Western Div HQ at 1707 Wood Street in Oakland. Within a couple of seconds I knew this was not like any other earthquake I had ever experienced despite being a native Californian. Our fully loaded 5 drawer legal-size filing cabinets were rocking onto their edges and I could imagine overturned railcars in the yard. I braced myself in an open doorway and after the sound of glass breaking ended, went out into the parking lot where I first noticed a narrow column of smoke ascending like a little mushroom cloud over the Nimitz Freeway just to the northeast. Then I looked to the east and saw the horrible sight of the collapsed freeway at rush hour, just 3 blocks away. Electrical power and phones were out but at least water was on.

Once I got into my company car and had access to the SP radio road channel I heard much talk about the situation, but it was mostly about checking various aspects of the railroad. I do not recall anything about damage to tracks or structures. The damage to Oakland was worse than San Francisco, with collapsed older houses and severely damaged commercial structures resulting in businesses that would never reopen. Each day after that I had to find a new route to come to work as city streets were closed or intersections were blocked, for about a month.

The branch line on 18th Street went by my office, curved through Peralta Street and passed under the Nimitz Freeway where it served a steel company. Here is what it looked like...

1. 30 minutes after the earthquake struck.

2. A couple of days later

3. Weeks later

---

---

---

I was the LSA on #11 that day. We had passed through Oakland that morning- the last ever to call at the 16th St Station. (the newer SP offices where you worked would be used from then on)
The quake hit when we were almost to Santa Barbara, and we ran at restricted speed on to LAX.
But my story is pretty tame compared to others at Amtrak that day.
SR



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/19/14 16:46 by BoilingMan.

Happened to be at the world series game, did not know anything about the damage until we got the power back on at 11pm. Seeing these pictures brings back a lot of memories both good and bad. I still remember the heros of the day gladly serving others without regard to their own safety.

I also remember how we all followed the rescue for those trapped in the Cypress structure for days.

Had a friend of mine who I had just helped move from the Marina district of "The City" to the Richmond district. A move of about a mile.
Old place was wrecked bad enough for a Red tag. New place had just a few cracks and a cracked window pane in the standard issue San Francisco living room bay window.
Amazing how badly the fill in the Marina failed. Of course it was rubble from the 1906 quake...

Not railroad related, but to illustrate how powerful that quake was. I remember watching the World Series, the screen going to snow (static), and then the dining room lamp swinging gently. Not that big a deal except I was in Hesperia CA some 350 MILES to the south east!

Luke

And yet: The 1989 quake, a 6.9, was small -- compared
to the 1906 quake, which has been estimated as a 7.8!
Every whole number is 10 times more energy released
at the epicenter than the whole number just lower than it.
This refers to "wave amplitude", which refers to how much
the material was displaced by the quake. The stronger
the quake, the farther the earth moved.

For you who are into math, this scale is logarithmic.

(I am NOT a seismologist, so if anyone here is, PLEASE
jump in and correct me where I am wrong, and explain
this for everyone. TIA!)

The Richter scale increases exponentially thus a 2.0 earthquake is twice as strong as a 1.0 and a 3.0 earthquake is 4 times as strong as a 1.0. Now try and fathom the 9.0+ earthquakes we've seen lately in Japan & Indonesia......

I was the conductor on Amtrak #710 that day and wrote an article that appeared in Passenger Train Annual 1990 entitled: "Earthquake '89, the day the earth didn't stand still." The same article was forwarded to the "Official Guide" that year... might have been the last year for the Official Guide?!?

As Westbound testified in word and photos, the collapse of the Nimitz was something never to be forgotten. In my memory, I can still hear that incredible thundering sound like it was yesterday...At the time, I thought the 16th St station was collapsing behind me as I ran to safety out of the building, under the old electric overhead platforms and alongside the #4 mainline. My train of one F-40 and superliners was rocking back and forth in place. 16th tower looked like it would fall over!

Everyday I run by the ruins of that once great Beaux-Arts structure, I think about that day. For some reason, that building still stands as a haunting reminder and is covered with awful graffiti. I look forward to the day when the wrecking ball takes it completely down, once and for all.

our tracks out by the turn off towards SF were messed up our switch engine wasn,t hurt but the scenery terrifing for about three days .

Castle_Romeo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The Richter scale increases exponentially thus a
> 2.0 earthquake is twice as strong as a 1.0 and a
> 3.0 earthquake is 4 times as strong as a 1.0. Now
> try and fathom the 9.0+ earthquakes we've seen
> lately in Japan & Indonesia......

Actually, as Margaret says in the post above yours, it's much greater than that. What I've seen is that each whole number is THIRTY times the strength of the number before. So a 3.0 would be 900 times stronger than a 1.0 and a 9.0 would be 1,000,000,000 times a 1.0.