Loma Prieta Earthquake Gallery

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The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in photographs

The Cypress Street Viaduct, part of Interstate 880, mostly collapsed between 16th Street and the MacArthur Maze in Oakland as a result of the Oct. 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake. (All photographs are from Caltrans archives)

The earthquake, which registered 6.9 on the Richter scale, also caused a 50-foot portion of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge to fail.

State Route 17 between Santa Cruz and Los Gatos sustained heavy damage from the earthquake, whose epicenter was in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The earthquake struck 30 minutes before the scheduled start of Game 3 of the World Series between the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants at Candlestick Park.

Forty-two people, 35 of whom were traveling on the lower deck, died as a result of the Cypress structure’s collapse. The 1.6-mile stretch opened in 1957 and was built to seismic standards of the time.

Seven people who had been in vehicles atop the Cypress structure died as a result of crashing on or catapulting off the deck.

On Oct. 18, 1989, the day after the Loma Prieta earthquake, a Caltrans worker looks between the Cypress site’s decks for vehicles. Rescue and then recovery operations continued there for almost three weeks.

The search at Cypress for cars and victims posed challenges and dangers for emergency responders and other workers at the scene.

Caltrans bridge engineers worked with contractors to shore up areas under the Cypress structure so that rescue and recovery efforts could proceed in as safe a manner as possible.

A Caltrans survey team works at the scene of the Cypress Street Viaduct collapse. Mark S. Turner, shown taking notes, still works for Caltrans. Toni Scoralle, standing, spent 35 years with Caltrans before dying at age 57 in 2017.

Professor Jack Moehle of the University of California, Berkeley, oversaw seismic testing of the 200-foot-long portion of the Cypress structure that did not collapse. The bracing that had been attached after the earthquake held up as expected, providing Caltrans with vital information for its bridge-retrofitting program. Above, Moehle addresses the press before the December 1989 test.

The Loma Prieta earthquake attracted huge worldwide media attention, in no small part because of the damage it caused to the famous Bay Bridge.

The bridge’s collapsed portion was on the eastern side of Treasure Island; the portion between San Francisco and the island is visible in the left background.

Round-the-clock repairs allowed the bridge to reopen exactly one month after the earthquake.

The earthquake opened up large cracks on the approach to the Bay Bridge Toll Plaza.

Caltrans crews also had to repair cracks that appeared on State Route 17. More than half of the 26-mile road was closed for weeks.

Work crews remove trees and other debris from Highway 17. Nearby Santa Cruz sustained extensive damage to many of its downtown structures.

Near Watsonville, Highway 1 partially collapsed over The Struve Slough, with posts punching through the roadway’s surface.

Roadway damage from the earthquake occurred within San Francisco, too. Above is a cracked pillar that helped to support Interstate 280 as it approached the downtown area.

This embroidered jacket was given to then-Caltrans bridge engineer Erol Kaslan by CC Meyers, a contractor heavily involved at the Cypress collapse site. "To me, this jacket always embodied the profound camaraderies and team efforts experienced by those working around the Cypress Structure in the days after the quake," said Kaslan, who has never worn the jacket as a way to help preserve it. "We all felt genuine affection and respect for each other, regardless of who we worked for or what we did. I think that CCM made the team effort real by having us all ‘fly the colors.' "

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