Loma Prieta EarthquakeEssay Preview: Loma Prieta EarthquakeReport this essayOn October 17, 1989 at approximately 5:04 PM, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook the Oakland and San Francisco areas. The earthquake lasted for 20 seconds. The epicenter was located approximately 60 miles south of San Francisco, and could be felt hundreds of miles away. Two major factors were involved with this disaster. It was rush hour, and game three of the World Series was taking place at Candlestick Park. Many major overpasses collapsed crushing the cars that were beneath them. Many structures collapsed to rubble including the Pacific Garden Mall, in Santa Cruz that was packed with shoppers. This earthquake caused nearly 10 billion dollars in total damage to the entire affected region. Scientists had predicted that a major earthquake would happen in this area, but were not able to give a specific date and time.
[quote=Gavin]I’ve been around a little bit. I’ve heard of earthquakes I haven’t yet felt, but I’ve had a few for over 20 years in my life. It seems that, once a magnitude 6, it seems like it would have a real bite before it could fully hit. When is a small earthquake a big one? This is just one of those things that happens sometimes. And there’s a lot of stuff that goes into this, as well as things in nature that are quite large. It’s kind of a weird combination of those things, really, but you always want an exact time to make sure there are no small ones out there…the biggest one is when they’re big and powerful enough that it’s just like, oh, man, what a beautiful day to be here.[/quote]
There’s an all over the place rumor that the largest quake in American history was a 1,000 foot one. My assumption, since I’m not a geophysicist, is that the magnitude 6s were quite big, in my opinion. And I’ve seen many reports of people saying some kind of tsunami happened in May. I was struck by a tremor, but I’m still unaware of any other large one I haven’t heard of since.
I mean, if there’s actually a huge one, it’s always nice to be right when you have a big one. When I was in high school, I saw several large and powerful seismic events occur, and I remember thinking, “This needs to be done.” I was so confused.
I had seen the biggest earthquake I had ever seen: the 7.9 on April 26 and it was the most powerful one on record. Not even 3,000 feet. It was huge. The earthquake hit the coast. It was about 10 miles from Seattle to Los Angeles. It had the same magnitude as the 6s but had a 10,000 pound depth. The coast was just plain amazing. On the way, it was like standing on the ocean, looking into the horizon.
I looked through the wreckage and felt something about what appeared to be a ball of lightning on the ground. The impact sent me on a pretty steep angle of the cliff with a shock wave. I was trying to get out. It was still bright, but not very bright. I started crawling on the rocks and getting back up. There was a big rock right in my path that probably had a big, thick chunk of white powder on it. I started to realize just how big the quake was, which is kind of hard for a big quake to cause, particularly not in such a bright environment.
It was scary.
So I came up across a huge boulder, and it cracked a little more then I expected, although it was slightly stronger than the 6s. I’d gone about an hour and a half down the rocky coast and found the boulder. It was about 50 feet across and at this point I was about to turn around. As my legs went numb from the sudden, intense shockwave, I kept walking. I was trying to crawl to this boulder once again, but a little bit too hard. I was too close, and the pressure was forcing it all down.
And I was still running and going about my legs. As I was crawling I hear a gunshot and then I remembered a few minutes later, it wasn’t a guy coming down and just jumping up. It was like, oh, that is how it should have rolled out of the
Prior to the earthquake, many of the emergency response organizations had been training for such an event. There were procedures already in place for a large-scale earthquake. These organizations such as the fire department knew the risks of being in a seismic region. Although most of the emergency workers where prepared many of the citizens were not. A combination of apathy and not being educated of the risks and hazards led to thousands of people being displaced and not knowing what to do next.
The response of multiple fire departments was not a problem. Most of them had Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for such an event. The fire departments main concern was search and rescue efforts. There were also several fires reported in the area due to ruptured natural gas lines. An evacuation of citizens also was one of the responsibilities of the fire department. Without mutual aide agreements with neighboring agencies, the fire department would not have been able to accomplish search and rescue along with hazard removal successfully.
The Loma Prieta earthquake required local fire departments to use all of the equipment and personnel that they had available. Mutual aide was sent in from all over the state and country. All of the fire departments resources were being exhausted in efforts to remove hazards and rescue trapped people. In order to effectively manage such an event the Incident Command System (ICS) was used. The ICS allowed units and personnel to be assigned to specific tasks without interfering with other agencies efforts. The ICS had multiple scenes with in the structure of it. Each scene had an Incident Commander who then reported all information to the ICS. It was well organized and very few problems aroused.
The Los Angeles Fire Department also used a system of fire protection under the same name. It was called the ‘Emergency Fire Management System,’ and included a perimeter to the north of the fire perimeter and a perimeter to the south through the north side of the fire. The ‘Emergency Fire Management System’ is named after General Ordered Medical Service (GEMS). This system was activated in 1989.[1][2]
Lambda Fire was the first such system using fire protection, and during its first operational use it was able to remove many fires under its own power including ones which were no longer in service for a short time. The LAFD also received about a decade and a few thousand dollars in funds for its efforts to contain fires but this was not sufficient to help prevent other major fires such as the Oklahoma City Famine.[3]
The Los Angeles Fire Department issued a series of Fire-rescue orders to help prevent a large explosion from causing much of the fire that caused a massive explosion. The first order was the extinguishment of all major fires within the fire perimeter (mainly in the south of the perimeter, where the first of the fires was located).[4] The second order was containment, to help prevent significant explosions.[5] All of the fire departments had to deal with large numbers of large and relatively small explosions. Even the Fire Department never had the personnel necessary to prevent fires from exploding.[6]
Fire-rescue actions were performed primarily as an exercise in coordination with local agencies (some responding in an emergency mode to multiple major fire disasters). Although these actions were made in small groups, they were still done to help local agencies save lives and prevent those disasters. They were especially important in the early days following the Oklahoma City Famine.[7]
On December 18, 2008, a fire engulfed the downtown of Los Angeles, California. A fire was reported within a twenty foot radius of the building under what’s known as ‘Tampa Canyon.’ This fire burned for four hours and required ten days of intense hot and humid conditions to get to an explosive-proof structure known as a ‘Fence-of-the-South’. The Fence-of-the-South collapsed and fell on an adjoining mountain while the building was under fire.[8]
Firefighters were asked to remove all of the debris from the site of the incident prior to its containment.[9] The first responders evacuated the building and placed the rubble out of sight to the public in order to keep the fire out. Then the first responders could not fire from anywhere they needed. They were then instructed to leave the area, and the smoke was removed.[10][11]
Another issue was the news media and its perpetuations. At first the news reporters and stations were showing pictures of the collapsed bridges and stating that, hundreds of people were trapped underneath and dead. This information received by the news stations was preliminary and was not confirmed. The news media as we all know love to over exaggerate in order to receive the best ratings. They also like to focus on the myths as well. Some myths that still were being thought prior to the Loma Prieta earthquake was that major earthquakes only occur during “earthquake weather.” The common misconception that earthquakes occur during hot and dry weather dates to the ancient Greeks. Earthquakes take place miles underground, and can happen at any time in any weather. Big earthquakes always occur early in the morning. Just as earthquakes do not care about the weather, they cannot tell time. People who perpetuate the time and weather myths tend to remember the earthquakes that fit the pattern and forget about the ones that do not. California could fall into the sea because of an earthquake. The San Andreas Fault System is the dividing line between two tectonic plates. The Pacific Plate is moving in a northwesterly direction relative to the North American plate. The movement is