Research, Science & environment

Video Q&A: Lessons learned from Loma Prieta

By Public Affairs

Video by Roxanne Makasdjian and Phil Ebiner

In advance of the 25th anniversary of Loma Prieta, the biggest quake in recent local memory, Professor Richard Allen sat down with the NewsCenter’s video team to answer questions about the lessons learned. Allen is director of the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory.

The quake struck Northern California at 5:04 p.m. on Oct. 17, 1989 and registered 6.9 on the Richter scale. Centered on a section of the San Andreas Fault near Santa Cruz,  the temblor caused 63 deaths, several thousand injuries and $6 billion in property damage. A section of the upper deck of the Bay Bridge collapsed, along with a stretch of the double-decker Cypress Freeway (I-880) in Oakland and many residential homes in San Francisco’s Marina District.