The Day San Francisco Is Hit

What would happen to the San Francisco Bay Area if it were hit by a major quake (8.3 on the Richter scale) during the evening rush hour? This question was posed by the Federal Office of Emergency Preparedness to leading earthquake experts. The following scenario summarizes their responses:

It is 4:30 in the afternoon, and San Francisco's evening rush hour has already begun. Thousands of cars are inching along the highways; cable cars, buses, BART trains and ferries are packed with people. Suddenly the earth begins to tremble and sway, accompanied by a roar that some people liken to the sound of a hundred freight trains. Huge cracks open in streets and sidewalks. Shaken loose by the violent vibrations, tons of glass and ornamental stonework tumble onto the streets, crushing pedestrians and automobiles. Many older buildings collapse completely. Chinatown's famed Grant Street becomes a death row.

The new office towers and luxury high-rises that have so dramatically changed San Francisco's skyline rock like ships in a storm. Inside, people are flung across rooms. Windows and walls crack. When power lines snap, lights go off and elevators abruptly stop, trapping hundreds of panicked office workers.

Fires erupt everywhere in the city, ignited by short circuits and fed by leaking gas mains. Fire fighters quickly scramble into action, but their trucks cannot negotiate torn-up streets. Because of broken water mains, fire hydrants are useless. At least half the city's phones are dead. The rescuers are further hampered by the destruction of medical supplies--including vital blood plasma--and the collapse of half of the Bay Area's hospitals.

In nearby Daly City, hundreds of cliffside homes overlooking the Pacific slide into the sea. Most other frame dwellings remain standing, but their interiors are a maelstrom of flying dishes, bookshelves and wall hangings. Landslides block the northern end of the Golden Gate Bridge. The great span itself, although whipping like a giant snake, appears to be holding. The Bay Bridge, too, survives the initial battering, but its clogged approaches fall, bringing down hundreds of cars with them. In the Bay Area Rapid Transit System's 3.6-mile-long underwater link between San Francisco and Oakland, hundreds of commuters are trapped in the terrifying darkness of the swaying tube. Only 30 seconds have elapsed since the first jolt was felt, but everywhere there is unbelievable death and destruction. At least 10,000 people are dead; more than 300,000 have been injured, 40,000 of them seriously enough to be hospitalized. Property damage is $10 billion.

Could it happen? "The probability is high," says Seismologist Robert Wallace, chief of earthquake research for the U.S. Geological Survey at nearby Menlo Park. "The best estimate of the long-range rate of occurrence of great earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault is about one every 100 years, so a significant probability exists of another within the next 30 years." Another specialist, Berkeley's Karl V. Steinbrugge, perhaps the country's leading expert on designing quake-resistant buildings, is even more blunt. Says he: "Thousands of lives snuffed out in 30 seconds is going to blow the roof off this country. And it's going to happen."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.