A Brief History of: The Cypress Street Viaduct Collapse Disaster 1989 (Documentary)
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ต.ค. 2024
- #disaster #bridge
On October 17, 1989, the portion of the structure Cypress street Viaduct (Nimitz Freeway) I-880 collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, due to ground movement and structural flaws.
The event happened during the 1989 world series and in doing so prevented many from losing their lives due to the quieter roads.
Want to become a channel member? / @plainlydifficult
Paypal Donate Link: www.paypal.com...
Help the Channel Grow Like, Comment & Subscribe!
Subscribe Here: www.youtube.co....
Equipment used in this video:
Rode NTG3, Audient ID4, MacBook Pro 16, Hitfilm, Garage Band
Check out My Twitter:
/ plainly_d
Check out these other great channels:
/ dominotitanic20
/ cynicalc. .
/ jabzyjoe
/ @qxir
Would you like to see more structural failure videos let me know below 👇
I have a soft spot in my heart for engineering disasters and structural failures... I'm a little morbid...
yes please
La caída de una parte de la línea 12 del metro de la ciudad de México en 2021.
Please!
Its good stuff
I remember watching a TV documentary on this, and one survivor pulled from a semi-crushed car talked about how he was pinned partially sideways in his car, and the way the car was crushed set the horn off. And when asked if that drove him insane listening to it for 72 hours he said no, becaues hearing it meant he was alive and that it meant it was likely rescuers would be drawn to that spot. I don't know why this sticks so damn hard with me to this day but that one interview is something I'll always remember.
Yeah, that really captures the mindset you'd be in when trapped alive like that, having no clue if anyone will reach you in time or are you going to slowly be missed and forgotten about in that spot? You'd have no idea and even tho it's "rationale" to get annoyed by a car horn that is stuck on.. in THAT moment it would feel like your 1 flare gun shot to signal a passerby when your trapped on a abandoned island... It really shows how you can turn the oddest thing to a glimmer of hope when stuck in the darkest moment.. perspective really is so powerful. Because the more I thought about what you wrote, I was like, "yeah I'd be so annoyed with a constant horn blasting" then I let it sink in further, and I saw myself getting to a place of peace and Contentment with the obnoxious horn, because, 1 you can't turn it off, then more importantly, that person was right that it would attract rescuer's and in a huge mass of rubble, you'd feel miles away from any rescuers even if you later found you were 20 ft away from a edge point of freedom... So yeah, I'd tell my mind to make peace with that Horn.
Same here especially when the broadcast recreated the crush on the car
Regardless, dead or alive they'd want to kill the horn so they could listen for other survivors so it guaranteed his survival.
@@benmcreynolds8581 that one survivor was my grandfather.
This is probably the wrong time to say this, but imagine his panic if the horn were to stop.
As an engineer, the event is more of a 9 on the legacy scale. California's concrete building code was completely rewritten due to this event and the analysis of how the viaduct failed.
Not for Kobe, Japan unfortunately
@@KathrynsWorldWildfireTracking Japan did learn from this too. The problem in both places is that given the numerous existing structures which new knowledge exposes as inadequate, there's no real way to replace them or even retrofit them all to a new standard due to cost. And unless you build for extremes far beyond what you think will happen you're going to be surprised someday when you learn it can be worse than you had thought it would be.
Many large public projects using concrete and road building above street level suffer from corruption and often find ways to bill for x concrete and actually use less. Boston's big dig the contractors later were found to have used a shorter concrete skirt so if cats or trucks hit it wrong they would sail off the deck.
You can definitely rate it at a 9.... In YOUR video that YOU make on this subject for YOUR channel. How can anybody tell another person that there opinion is wrong? It's an opinion!
@@adamberndt4190 Damn karen calm down, clearly it's his own opinion also, lol
My roommates and I were watching the World Series live when this hit. We were just sitting in our house outside DC with our jaws on the floor as the feed cut out and Al Michaels switched instantly from sportscaster to newscaster. I think we ended up watching live coverage of the aftermath for several hours afterward. It's one of those things you never forget, the first sight of that viaduct pancaked down.
Yeah, the shaking was so bad that the network satellite signal went out. They finally switched over to a landline, and it was audio only.
@@5roundsrapid263, TV crew tapping backup power and getting distinctive compressed audio working over buried trunk line in middle of a major earthquake once again proved man's inventiveness.
Ah yes, Al Michaels’ infamous line, “I tell you what, we’re having an earth-“
I live in DC and I remember watching that when it happened. My ardor to move to California cooled immediately. Of course I remember the earthquakes we had in the DMV so what can you do...
Yep. I was watching it too from Philadelphia. Knowing my sister just moved out there two weeks prior
As a native Californian, this earthquake and the 1994 earthquake in Southern California was the defining memories of my childhood. It can’t be underestimated how much this event changed structural engineering in California.
Weird...I would have thought it was the 1906 San Francisco earthquake that did that.
If only California would do something about the disastrous social engineering taking place there leading to mass murder, looting on a regular basis, and hordes of homeless camps.
honestly yeah. you're right, Japan tends to a lot of earthquakes as well and their earthquake proofing of their buildings is amazing, and California has also improved over time. though cali typically only did it AFTER a disaster.
@@RepublicConstitution Look over here! It's a yokel with an attitude!
@@RepublicConstitution So true.
As an ironworker who has built bridges and roadway decks, I can tell you that everything is placed well steel-wise, but once it's buried in concrete it's in the hands of the chemical bond between the bar and the concrete.
epoxy-coated iron has been the go-to standard for bridge construction in WI now for my entire career, but I am not convinced of it's efficacy - we are already seeing rust streaking and concrete blowouts on projects less than fifteen years old. Personally I feel that the alternatives are less inspiring of confidence, but then again, i'm no engineer.
epoxy rebar is banned now due to excessive rusting from galvanic action on exposed parts of bare steel where nicks or rubs expose it
it rusts through WAY faster than traditional rebar when this happens, now they are looking at fiberglass rebar and carbonfiber with very promising results, not just from strength gains but weight as well, but rebar is very well understood over a hundred years... we dont know the long term effects of these new things
@@narmale obviously then we should just replace every structure right now with the new stuff and just hope nothing goes wrong. Works for Pfizer.
But it also depends on the concrete itself, in Gateshead in the 1960's they built a complex called Trinity Square, a brutalist building consisting of a shopping centre and a multistory car park. Within 5 years of opening, they found cracks in the building because of shitty cement and were always patching it. They demolished it in around 2005 and rebuilt into a shopping promenade. I visited the shopping centre as a kid, it was a tip. Visited it as an adult, it was like a scene from Chernobyl, place was dead.
@@narmale just an old plumber talking, but I always considered the epoxy finish a sales tool. I have plumbed many a swim pool to return because of shifting. In the ensuing jackhammer work(years later) raw iron had very little degradation. Difficult at best. Always questioned the efficacy of coating a steel rod in concrete
@@omeyehead7436 I'm just a lay person, but we were taught that this was the best to make a structure stronger.
My mum, my brother, sister, and I were driving to the beach where my Dad was going to meet us. We had driven across that section of freeway just three or four minutes earlier and my Dad was nearing the end of the Bay Bridge when the earthquake hit. Since we were at the beach my mum had no idea how bad it was until she overheard someone's radio and we hurriedly left. We arrived home just as my dad was leaving to go help get people out of the Cypress structure as he thought we might have been there.
I bet your father was thanking every religious figure that he could think of that you and the rest of the family was safe
I can only imagine for a few minutes there your dad had the worst feeling a human could possibly have about the welfare of his family.
I used to have a really nice antique bottle collection until my cat (who normally has bad hips) jumped up high and knocked half of them over running back and forth. She wouldn't stop so I kicked her out of my room and closed the door. 20 minutes later I hear the bottles shake and start falling again, but I can't find the cat. Then I notice the whole house is shaking under my feet for almost a minute. Turns out it was an earthquake from the New Madrid fault line! My kitty was sensing something I couldn't before it happened and was freaking out.
@Pickles, Our dog did that this summer. We had an approx 30 min period of extreme winds, a rare occurrence where I live in Canada, our dog Molly was barking inside the house while I puttered amongst my plants outside, prior to it happening.
My husband was watching (Ironically) ball on TV, and texted me that Molly was unsettled and barking, within 5 mins nature went still, so I knew something was up, and boom, the huge spruce tree in our yard almost bent in half, and away we went!
Was the cat okay? I’m assuming they were but I’m just curious lol, I’m sorry about your bottles though luckily antique bottles aren’t too hard to come across
I was 2 minutes from the bridge when it collapsed that day. I got as far as the toll booth, they took our money, then turned us around.
I’m trying to remember the toll then was $1.00 but you should have gotten a refund as you didn’t go over the bridge
@@frankchan4272 ikr?
That wasn’t you in the car trying to jump the gap?
Oh wow. Talk about a stroke of good luck.
@@yankees29, the gap jumpers were vehicles accidentally told that the bridge was safe ahead due to a misunderstanding.
This incident also had a massive impact on the San Francisco skyline as it lead to the removal of the Embarcadero freeway and the replacement of the Bay Bridge's eastern span
The eastern span boondoggle fiasco merits its own video.
@@rocketbackhander6280 Indeed, a special thanks are due to former SF mayor Willie Brown who lead the effort to have Caltrans scrap completed designs for a replacement span only to have then start over on prettier design at substantial added expense.
Not just the Embarcadero, it also lead to the de-freewaying of SF. Construction was halted long before the earthquake, but the quake led to the tearing down of what remained. Good example, 101 used to extend past Market street up Octavia all the way up to Jefferson Square Park.
There's still that section of I-280 for about a mile east of 101 where it's a double-decker. There's just no land to spread it out on, so they beefed that up. They also beefed up all the columns for the elevated freeways downtown. I'm so used to the fat piers everywhere that when I travel to other parts of the country, I think the bridge columns are too skinny.
@@sirusfox Yes we used to have an exit in Lower Haight.
I’m always impressed by the research and work demonstrated in these videos - the level of effort demonstrated by John is phenomenal.
Thank you
Especially since he’s not local. I know there is a wealth of information out there on this disaster, but filtering out the applicable information to create this video is not easy.
"California collective memory" - you are not kidding. I was born two years after the quake and still heard about it frequently. Lots of us had parents and sibling who remembered. Plus, I lived in Livermore, where the national lab is located. At the time, there was still some limited top secret nuclear stuff there, before it all went out to the desert. Everyone at the lab had to shelter in place in reinforced bunkers right after the quake.
My mom was driving past Vallejo, which is usually windy, so she assumed the earthquake moving her car around was just wind...despite the absolutely still trees. Then, she drove OVER the Benecia Bridge, not realizing the collapse of both the Cypress and the top deck of the Bay Bridge had just happened. About 10 min after she drove over, they closed the bridge. She still shakes her head in disbelief when talking about it sometimes.
I think I remember stories but really didn't know about it until now. Good to know. Thanks for sharing.
I was a teen in Australia. Even we remember the news reports and the images of the collapsed road with smoke billowing out from the cars that caught fire and burned the occupants alive. The biggest feeling was, why the hell would you build a structure like that in an earthquake zone?
@@YeahNo Yeah i lived in Long Beach CA at the time. Near Los Angeles. People thought the same thing after this and the Whittier Narrows Earthquake 1987. Why would people keep building these things? I was just a kid and i dont remember any kind of answer at the time. I do remember the whittier one dumped over my bowl of cheerie o's.
I was 1 year old when Loma Prieta hit. I was with my mom at the time driving home, we were in the tunnel just north of the golden gate bridge and part of the tunnel roof collapsed.. I dont remember this since i was only a year old, but it scared the ever loving crap out of my mom
@@YeahNo to be fair, it's not like you can't build tall structures in earthquake zones. It's just that the political will to shore up our outdated highway infrastructure wasn't there until the quake made it impossible to ignore. Large quakes that cause this level of damage happen on average once every couple of decades, and in the intervening years people can get complacent.
I was on that very freeway a week before the disaster. The roadway is extremely claustrophobic to begin with and I was thinking to myself how this would not be the place to be in an earthquake!
I had driven on that many times, always thinking, "wouldn't want to be here during an earthquake" 😕!
I lived in Santa Cruz and worked in Milpitas, for 7 pm to 7 am. I had just gotten in the shower to get ready for work...
Our electricity was off for 10 days, we just heard about what was going on at the time. Didn't see the videos of what happened until we got power back.
Ah! A day you want to forget, but can't!
@@brucelytle1144 I lived just on the other side of the hill from you in Los Gatos. You’re right, it’s a time you’ll never forget, and pray it never happens again!
@@tattooeddragon I'll tell you...
I've lived in Kansas since 2015, I grew up here, the tornadoes always scared the shit outta me, but that was something else!
On Labor day, 2015(?) We had a 5.4 in Kansas! I couldn't believe it! It lasted 90 seconds or so! All I could think the whole time was "don't get worse!, don't get worse!"
I was in a steel building that was rattling like crazy!
Don't what no more of that!
They stopped injecting fraking water since then, and we've stopped having those.
I was born and raised in SF and went through the Loma Prieta earthquake and am old enough to remember the 1957 Daly City quake that was 5.7 But what I remember most about riding on the Cypress structure in the 1960's is how the car would bounce up and down when driving on the lower portion of that section of freeway in-between the columns, and I remember my grandfather always saying that he didn't think the freeway could stand up in a big quake
I was in Santa Clara, CA (Silicon Valley) south of San Francisco interviewing for a job when the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred (Loma Prieta is the name of the tallest mountain in the Santa Cruz Mountains near the quake epicenter). The interviewers office was on the second floor of a "tilt-slab" building, which was a common type of construction for light industrial buildings in the region. As soon as the shaking started we both crouched under office furniture. When it stopped I observed that the suspended acoustic tile ceiling had failed around the edges of the large room, which was divided by office cubicles, and many of the tiles has fallen to the floor. We then walked into the research lab where six foot high storage shelving had fallen over. Shortly afterwards, the PA announced that the building should be evacuated. It was less than ten miles to my home in Sunnyvale, CA but it took over an hour because traffic was completely gridlocked. The only damage at home was from a large wall mounted speaker that had fallen onto a glass topped table and shattered it. As mentioned in the video, the epicenter was well away from San Francisco. I was on a group hike some years later when we walked to the actual epicenter, which is in the Forest of Nicene Marks in the Santa Cruz Mountains east of Aptos, CA. The towns nearer the epicenter, e.g., Santa Cruz and Watsonville, CA suffered incredible damage but it was much less covered on the news because of the Cypress St. Viaduct collapse and the structure collapses and subsequent fires in the San Francisco Marina District.
@@_-Karl-_ No, but I got a better job shortly afterwards.
News covers larger populations overlooking small ones when widespread disaster strikes. We got the same with the 2011 Alabama tornado outbreak where Joplin and Tuscaloosa were all over the news while the Smithville and Hackleburg/Phil Campbell tornadoes which were two of the strongest in all of history went totally uncovered for a week afterward, and then only got a small mention. Just how the news media works I guess.
@@P_RO_ correction: it's how humans behave. The media is making profit off of news that people wanna see. We can blame ourselves for the lack of reporting I smaller communities. Local channels still exist who cover these tragedies but no one is gonna watch them instead they tune in to stuff like this and then complain about the focus of main Media channels.
My wife was in San Francisco for training in her company staying with her family. I was at her parents house watching the baseball game when it hit and she was able to call her mom as soon as it stopped but the phone line went down right as she said she was ok. We weren’t able to find anything out until she got a flight out. She said it was a huge earthquake and although the house she was in was ok the neighborhood was heavily damaged and she refused to return to training when it was rescheduled. It made a big impact on her. She said it was unreal how the earthquake threw her all over the hallway and she couldn’t get to the door frame. I can’t imagine what those people were going through in the bridge.
Your wife is a lesbian
@@michaelmichaels138 why are three year olds even allowed on this platform
@@foximacentauri7891 - actually I’m this many 🖐🏿🖕🏿
Ya know, I'm pretty sure I'd say fuck it, too. I'd never want to go back.
I'm glad your wife was OK. It must've been terrifying for her.
Just wanted to add that the commonly held belief that the doorway is the safest place in an earthquake is a myth. Instead, get under a table/desk/bed and hold on.
Growing up in CA during that time gave me a phobia of being crushed under a collapsed roadway. I was 6 when this happened. I was a full fledged adult when I was finally able to drive on the lower levels of bridges/roadways without freaking out. Loma Prieta and Northridge were close enough together that I legitimately thought "the big one" was imminent. It was super stressful.
understandable actually
You weren't the only one who felt that way!
@@m.woodsrobinson9244 I can imagine why, especially among those who live in earthquake prone areas of the world, I live in North Carolina, a hurricane prone part of the world
I hated it even before the quake. Dad worked in SF and we'd take it often. Not sure if it had to do with my dad's driving, his car's suspension, or the road itself. But, every time we were in the lower level, the car bounced in the most creepy sine wave. Freaked me out every time.
@@macaylacayton2915 I can relate to that, too. My father's family are from Louisiana. You know the bad luck Louisiana and North Carolina have with hurricanes!
Watching this in hospital, thanks for making it a bit nicer to be alive.
hope you get better
We moved to Southern California when I was ten but I remember driving on those double decker freeways when I was young. I thought it was cool how each level went a different way. I also remember sitting down to watch this World Series and watching it cutout and back in live. And then the crowd looking around with everyone wondering if the stadium suffered damaged. Seeing those images of the collapsed freeway decks on the news later brought back that feeling from my childhood in a visceral way. I was freaked out for the poor people trapped.
You mentioned the Skyway walk way incident you covered which reminded me of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge accident from 1980 in my home state of Florida. You should consider doing a video on that. I think you'll find it interesting.
Definitely a good subject for a video. I was working in St. Petersburg at the time, a lot of my co-workers lived south of the bridge and for a time their only commuting option was to drive all the way around Tampa Bay.
@@tncorgi92 St.Pete was my home town. Went over that bridge a number of times.
My starter home was 5 miles from the epicenter of this one (Loma Prieta) deep in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With no big structures around, I was witness to watching the huge redwood trees around my property wildly swaying about as if dancing with each other. Each large tree did their own dance and sometimes stumbled into one another, causing big branches and their tops to crash to the ground. The rumbling and buckling seemed to last much longer than the reported 15 seconds, but the aftermath in Santa Cruz county were lives lost in collapsed downtown structures and mountainside houses. What is remembered by those that go through large quakes like this one are the hundreds of aftershocks afterwards that keep you awake and on edge for weeks, not knowing if 'the big one' happened yet.
I was watching this, it was crazy. I was mad the Reds didn’t make it into the World Series but I watched it anyways. Then when the camera starting shaking and the signal cut out it was crazy
I bet it felt like one of those "Am I in a movie?" moments.
It was weird for sure, the next day we saw the news about the freeway collapse and how bad the earthquake really was.
We referred to it as the "Cypress Structure".
I live in the East Bay but was on middle east deployment stationed on an aircraft carrier at the time. When news of the quake reached us, as a sleep-deprived sailor I was completely freaked out not knowing what consequences the disaster had for members of my family. Weeks later, my then wife related that she had a pretty good time getting drunk with neighbors as PG&E and other utilities struggled to restore services.
The Embarcadero Freeway in SF was similar in design. A fortunate consequence of this was the demolition of that horrible eyesore. Today's Embarcadero is free of that visual blight. To see what it used to look like, watch the original Dirty Harry film or episodes of the Streets of San Francisco TV show.
We were watching that game when the breaking news alert came on, I still remember that clearly. I don't think I have heard such a comprehensive review of the failure. Really interesting, thanks for sharing! You and a cup of coffee are how I start my Saturday.
I think a good addition to your list of categories would be freak weather instances like the iowa derecho or the cold front dubbed "snowmageddon" by alabama natives that caused snow as far south as the gulf of mexico. Would be interesting to see your take on natural weather disasters.
Or snowvember here In. Buffalo new york
Agreed 👍
I have family out there and the derecho was an unbelievable hand-of-God type event. On top of the considerable damage it truly freaked people out.
I second this! I would really love to hear about freak weather incidents.
Definitely! I’ve lived through my fair share of weird weather phenomena and would love to see him narrate some.
I was in SF and was let off work about 5 min early that day otherwise there's a good chance I would have been in the elevator since it hit at 5:04pm. The entire thing was absolutely frightening from the destruction all around me to the unforgettable sounds that earth and buildings made. I was lucky to be in the exact spot I was in.
I moved to S.F. right after this happened and watched the whole area be rebuilt, it was surreal.
And then devolve into a sh*t hole by 2021...unfortunately.
My teacher was on that road when it happened. We didn't see her for weeks afterward. She was physically fine but needed time to process it. I don't blame her one bit.
@@imadequate3376 🤡
I rate this video 9, on my excellent scale.
I was 8 and living in downtown Sacramento, it felt like a train was passing by a block away. My dad was a courier and had stopped for a pickup in Vacaville before heading on to SF. It took him 6 hours to get home. Longest six hours of my life as this was before cell phones, we didn't know if he had was in the bay area or not. If he hadn't of had that pickup, he would of been right there.
I was a baby living in Petaluma, CA in Oct '89. A friend of my mother was over when the quake hit, and it was significant, but we were north enough for it not to be devastating. My mom's friend immediately got uneasy, and said, "that was a bad one." My mom thought she was overreacting, as sometimes people do with earthquakes around here. Later, friend goes home, then calls my mom and tells her to turn on the news.
Meanwhile, my dad was working in San Francisco in a wine shop called House of Daniels, about two blocks from the eventual Marina fire. When the quake hit, he ran to the front door frame, until he realized the façade of the building was glass. He looked up and saw apartment high rises down the street, widely swaying back and forth. Ran back inside and under the solid front counter. Amazingly, in a building full of bottles of wine and spirits, they only lost a display case of olive oil. Since all the phone lines were down and cell phones weren't a thing, my mom didn't hear from my dad for hours.
I was too young to remember all of this of course, but it was a crazy time for sure. It's been 32 years and you can still mention the '89 quake and everyone around here knows what you're talking about.
I was on the 34th floor at 50 California St.
I ended up staying late at work to finish one half of the floor where we were installing new communications.
Otherwise I probably would've been on the Cyprus. There was a red car that went down the collapsed section of the Bay Bridge, and my roommates thought it was me.
I lived in the Bay Area for a couple of years in the mid-'90s, and was always a bit leery of the entire MacArthur Maze (the confluence of I-880, of which the Cypress Viaduct was part, I-580, and I-80 at the east end of the Bay Bridge). Not only is it a colossal and confusing mess (that at the time was _still_ under construction, rebuilding from Loma Prieta), it has flyovers stacked on top of flyovers stacked on top of surface roads, and it's mildly amazing the whole _thing_ didn't collapse in '89. I miss a handful of things from my time out there, but commuting to work on those freeways is not one of them...
I am so glad my commute was from Alameda...to Alameda 🤣
It was terrifyingy to drive over too. When I went there is a child I kept asking Mommy and Daddy from the back seat if we were going to fall off of it and die, or after top would collapse on us - and we would die.
Not having to deal with that stuff is why I always take the train whenever I head over to SF. So much simpler.
@@willd1790 The Transbay Tube requires seismic retrofitting as well lol
@@haroldlipschitz9301 I'm sure it does, but at least I never have to worry about getting stuck in traffic or getting on the wrong freeway (which I have done multiple times despite living there for years lol)
iirc the Tube was up and running again within hours of the Loma Prieta quake? Maybe things are worse now-it wouldn't surprise me given the state of infrastructure in this state/country honestly.
I very first got interested in disasters when I watched a documentary about this very collapse. Something about it stuck with me and I’ve got a keen interest in engineering fails and other disasters. Was nice to be taken back to what started my interest!
ooh a new Plainly vid. Just gonna put the kettle on and watch it with a fresh brew...
My brother has a piece of candlestick park that broke off cuz he was at the battle of the bay and my father had just crossed the bay bridge right before the collapse. I was riding my bike down a long straight street when the earthquake hit and could see the road look like a waves of water. Crazy day!
"Tell me you're Californian without saying you're Californian."
"Y'all ever literally surfed asphalt?"
You should Ebay it and make some cash
Excellent discussion, as usual. I'm impressed that you were able to find so much detail on one I actually know something about: your explanation of the build was very informative. I also appreciate your bringing up the social angle; this like many city viaducts was built by knocking down low-income families' houses, with the excuse that poor, black people's neighborhoods were "slums," and in this case the viaduct provided convenience for rich people but divided a thriving poor community in half for forty years. It's been replaced with a freeway along the edge of Oakland that is more useful because it's more equitable for everybody.
There was only one tiny detail in your discussion I'm not sure about: you contrasted "unconsolidated soils" with clay and silt as far as transmission of earthquake vibrations, but as far as I know, they're vulnerable too, since the gaps let water percolate up through them, although not quite as badly as silt which tends to liquefy. Bedrock like the Hollywood Hills is best, if one can find it. Unfortunately a lot of Oakland and San Francisco are built on manmade fill & the leveled debris from the 1906 earthquake and fire, and down south Los Angeles is built on a silty alluvial plane and old sea bottom with fault-shattered hills of bedrock poking up through it.
There were three reasons the Cypress Freeway was so bad (although it should be noted it was the ONE big catastrophic failure in that earthquake, whereas the 1906 quake destroyed all of San Francisco). First, after the 1906 quake there had been a long "seismic shadow" with no big quakes up north- remember, California's a third again as big as the UK, so San Francisco's like Edinburgh if LA were London. Second, while the San Andreas had been identified after 1906, it's part of a whole network of faults, most of which aren't visible at the surface, obscuring regional hazards. Third, the lack of computer modelling and large-scale testing meant engineers didn't know how much of a lateral component there was in earthquakes. This was still a problem even in Kobe in 1995, where a major roadway collapsed.
Since then, more data plus computer modelling has revolutionalized seismic engineering. We saw all those Japanese bridges and elevated roadways standing while the 2011 tsunami debris passed under or piled up against them, so I have hope they've solved the problem.
It's funny. I grew up in Pennsylvania, but now when I travel, I instinctively pay attention to support columns- are they robust and round and slightly convex like a lighthouse, with a rubber skin to keep the concrete from spalling or exploding out the sides, or are they rectangular concrete columns that can snap, or, even worse, steel trusses? Such thoughts never used to go through my head, but thanks to the Cypress Freeway and the parking structure collapse in Northridge, I am cautious. It also shows I'm not a native Californian- those born here don't worry, since for them that's just normal!
I definitely would like to see you do more structural stories like this one; you cover them with a depth and accuracy no other channel does, save Mentour Pilot for aviation.
The sad reality was that West Oakland was actually a very thriving community, it saw a small downturn at the end of WW2 but the construction of the viaduct insured that the neighborhood would languish
The collapsed roadway in Kobe was built in 1969. My understanding is that at the time, the strongest earthquake considered credible in the Kobe area was less than that which actually occurred, and the horizontal acceleration of that magnitude earthquake was underestimated. So the actual forces were considerably greater than the structure was designed to withstand.
Between 1969 and 1995 the earthquake withstanding requirements were increased, but did not apply retroactively to the roadway. An earthquake powerful enough to damage it was now considered possible but unlikely. The cost of rebuilding it was large. The number of people at risk was moderate. So the risk was considered to be acceptable.
Seems we follow a couple of the same channels 🤣
The highway extension built a few miles from where I spent the first 25 years of my life also went through a low income area with everyone offered one of three choices with all being much better than before. I went to school with many kids that had to move and they were not only happy to get out but sad that friends beyond the zone didn't although they got many improvements done to the neighborhoods and now those properties shot up in value because of easy access to the highway and Metro. Race had nothing to do with it. Like Hilary said, it's for the greater good not to mention in this instance it was elevated for less of an impact on the local community.
@Joseph Speak for yourself. Sure made neighborhoods safer removing a huge portion of traffic which keeps pollution down as well.
The "as designed" bent/column stirrups (basically a cage around the vertical bars) were missing (i.e. not installed during construction). This allowed the now unconfined vertical rebar to bend excessively and blowout the columns. Yes, the rest of the design features you mentioned contributed but it was the failure of the columns being "jackhammered apart" that you can plainly see in the photos.
Bridges are an engineering marvel. I live in St Paul, Minnesota and there are tons of bridges. One did fall some years ago and WOW! It's amazing anything works!
35W bridge. I remember making panicked calls cause family was near the bridge and didn't know what bridge they were crossing
@@tripplefives1402 Imagine if the government diverted the billions going to the military into basic things like infrastructure maintenance and healthcare?
@@tripplefives1402 You can't fix a problem by ignoring it either, and our infrastructure has been long ignored by politicians as a way to create an illusion of us a having better economy than actually exists. The problem has to be addressed sooner or later so the real question is whether we're going to wait till something falls apart to fix it or whether we should fix it before it fails. The latter is always the cheaper option both in terms of money and in terms of humanity. Instead of maligning those who have brought this unpleasant truth to light we should be blaming those who slyly, quietly, and intentionally led us to where we are now. And we should remember that so we don't let it happen again. But we won't and that's the real shame of it all which is on us alone..
I will admit that, the obvious tragedy of human life lost aside, this IS refreshing compared to most disasters on this channel.
No graft, no real cut corners, no incompetance or maliciousness.
This was caused by a fundamental misunderstanding of how a type of force worked when applied to architecture, and the lessons learned and applied everywhere to ensure it was not repeated.
Best case scenario, given the situation.
I remember being on this bridge in 1967.
It was so sagging that you would get a weightless feeling as you came off of the main braces.
I was not surprised when it collapsed.
I lived about 20 miles away.
I live in Sacramento and was a very little kid when this happened, I remember we were running out the door to take my sister to Drum and Guitar City for her guitar lessons. I noticed the chandelier was swaying in our dining room. I pointed it out to my Mom but we were in a hurry and she didn't really pay much attention, however as soon as we got in the car all the radio stations were taking about the earthquake. I really don't remember much of my childhood, but this day is so clear it was like it happened yesterday.
I was at work (wine & liquor store) when this happened. The back room guy had been listening to the game. He came out just as customers were coming in talking about the earthquake. It took a bit for the news of the collapse to filter into the store. I learned a couple of years later that the woman who would become my sister-in-law was heading to dinner at the dining hall of her college in Oakland when the quake hit. She was a sophomore.
I remember this earthquake-I was home sick from school and I remember I thought my little brother was shaking my bed to annoy me at first. I was terrified of driving on that bridge for years and years afterwards.
Pedantic note: It was Candlestick Park, not Candlestick Stadium. Please reference the old George Carlin stand up routine on the differences between baseball and football to understand why. 😉
Also “the Cypress Freeway”, not Cypress Street
I lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains at the time of the quake. I was about 14 years old and it was pretty crazy, no power and our main road had a massive rock slide. I was standing in the front doorway and watched the huge redwoods shake violently. Looking back, I'm glad my family was safe and we did not have a lot of damage to our house.
I was at 6th grade science camp in Sonora when this happened. We didn't feel it, and councilors came in and told us there'd been an earthquake. We all went into hysterics thinking our entire city had been reduced to rubble. Suffice to say the news was not clearly delivered because our hometown is over 70 miles from Oakland & we all thought we'd lost our houses and families. So, yeah, little bit of a different experience for me lol.
My Loma Prieta earthquake story:
I was in Rohnert Park, CA on the bus home from Santa Rosa Junior College and we were stopped at a stoplight by the Chevron on the north side of town by 101. I felt a single wave go through the bus that felt like a much bigger blow of wind. (The bus got moved slightly by wind gusts.) Only issue with traffic from that point on was a longer than normal wait time at a local stop sign in Penngrove. I didn't find out that what I had felt on the bus was an earthquake wave, from what was to be called the Loma Prieta earthquake, until I got home and went to watch the game, Bay Bridge (World) Series, game three and the change to San Francisco, and found out about all the consequences of the quake from the game cancellation (immediately known) to the Marina district collapses and fires to the Bay Bridge eastern span collapse to the Cypress Street Viaduct collapse. No major damage in the North Bay so the next day I was back at school.
My grandparents own two large vases that came crashing down that day. We still have them here as a reminder, luckily glued back together.
"shear keys" and "supports built on fill" in an EXTREMELY quake prone region... you read that off and I was instantly terrified. What were they doing?
Most of the development near the water of the bay is built on fill in the major cities around here. If you didn't build roads or skyscrapers on fill, you wouldn't build on half the land, and that land is some of the most valuable in the world.
If you look at old maps of San Francisco everything East of Montgomery Street is landfill from the 1906 earthquake
I studied this particular failure in graduate school. The design was perfectly adequate for the original design criteria. What happened is that that the vertical acceleration from the seismic event was much higher than anticipated. The result was a reinforcement of existing columns for freeways and other structures coupled with an increased vertical acceleration design criteria for future construction.
One thing to remember in seismic design is that the goal is not that the structure survives unscathed but rather that people can escape the structure and survive. The structure in question may need to be demolished but if everyone that was inside the structure survives then it is a good design.
Also, in designing structures to meet anticipated seismic accelerations, the vertical acceleration component is much harder to design for than the horizontal movement. The vertical acceleration in the Loma Prieta earthquake was about 0.6g.
The failures of the columns on IH880 show that they failed due to a vertical loading rather than a horizontal loading.
The problem was and is that it was designed ONLY to meet the design criteria; nobody was trying to do the best possible. Yes, some things were unknown when it was designed but we need to change our engineering approach or preventable failures will continue to vex us. You only go as far as you're reaching, so instead of reaching for a specific design point reach as far ahead as you can, and things like this will be minimalized.
Two things
1. The 30 for 30 documentary The Day The Series Stopped goes into a lot of detail on this with accounts from firefighters who were there, drivers, and so on.
2. There's plenty of footage from the TV networks about the coverage. Al Michaels has often said he grabbed onto his co hosts legs assuming they were ythe arms of the chairs as well.
3. Faye Vincent, the then commissioner of MLB was looking for alternatives to delay the series. Oakland would power back to win it and never reach those highs again. Sorry, Billy Bean...but that late 80s/early 90s team was lethally good. Eckersley, the Bash Brothers, Dave Stewart...
Non baseball related trivia:
Again, the KGO footage (among othrs) is on TH-cam and hearing the shock in the anchors voices hearing the disaster unfold is amazing. I don't recall if they got to the viaduct at all however, but the entire disaster being covered live is a fascinating, if terrifying, look into how things were in '89.
Former F1 racer Jean Alesi was in California at Laguna Seca for a sportscar race a few days before. He's stated he loved the track and wanted to stay but if he had he'd have been caught up in the disaster and he was horrified how many people died.
EDIT: Okay so...
MLB also didn't really have a choice but to delay the series due to the damage of the city. It's stated that to get from SF to Oakland took 6+ hours due to both the Cypress Street viaduct and the Oakland bridge too, which kind of tied a lot of people's hands. Also worth pointing out EMS/FD were stretched thin with all the damage so they had to prioritize what was most important too
I'm reminded of the '94 Northridge earthquake which exposed the vulnerability of overpasses in southern California. During the 6.7 magnitude earthquake, vast stretches of major arterial freeways, including HWY 5 and 14, were severed as the overpasses crumbled down. In total, seven key freeway bridges collapsed and over 170 more bridges were damaged. Due to the early time of the quake (4:31am) only one death occurred as a result of the collapsed overpasses, a motorcycle police officer. The earthquake also resulted in thousands of aftershocks throughout the following year.
Fantastic video! I was living in Alameda at the time, and had been on the upper deck of the Cypress Structure just an hour hour or so before the earthquake - heading home early to watch the baseball game. As a native Californian, this earthquake was by far the strongest I ever experienced, and the memories and trauma from that day still haunt me to this day...
I remember my mom telling me about this specific "bridge" collapse. The Cypress structure collapse always scared me more than any other bridge incidents. Wonderful video on it! Glad to see something like this still being covered and talked about.
Minor correction. At 11:48 you mention the replacement freeway and show the 980 freeway. The 980 was completed in 1985. The replacement to the Cypress Street Viaduct is the 880 freeway that loops around the Southwest corner of Oakland next to the container terminals. You can still see the alignment of the Cypress viaduct in satellite views as the parkway (Mandela Parkway) West of downtown Oakland.
There is now a four-lane two-way street, divided by a wide median populated with plants and benches. There is a memorial on the south side of Mandela Parkway (Cypress Street was renamed Mandela in Nelson Mandela’s honor) There is a dog hotel on the northern end so there are dog walkers with dogs up and down the nicely planted median during the day.
I went through construction rotation at the Mandela office in the 2000 decade. One or two landscape architects were closing out the plant establishment contract for the median. I was told the project files of the Cypress Structure demolition, including all the California Highway Patrol reports on all of the fatalities, were in that office. I was busy enough/not morbid enough to look for them. Thank you for the research and the video.
I was in Concord, CA east of Oakland at school waiting to be picked up. We were in a temporary building and I remember running outside to the field behind the school buildings and seeing waves moving through the ground. I was 9 at the time.
My mother arrived just a few minutes after the quake, and as we were driving home all the radio stations were off the air for a bit.
My father was working in SF at the time. He made it home safely after midnight by taking the ferry back, and had brought a chunk of his building facade with him. We still have that chunk to this day.
And the mention in this video of someone having an amputation to be freed from the Cypress structure, he was a childhood friend of mine. He lost his leg along with his mother. He still had fun showing off his prosthetic leg when he later returned to school though.
I remember this being "breaking news" for a 5th-grade me. Another excellent presentation, Señor Difficult!
One of my cousins lost her life in the collapse of the Cypress Viaduct. I remember seeing waves in the asphalt street that looked like waves on the surface of the ocean during the earthquake. Our house in Sunnyvale (about 40 miles south of San Francisco) was not damaged but a couple bookcases fell over. For about a week after the earthquake we felt very isolated. When people on the East cost say the would be afraid of earthquakes in California I point out that many more people die from heart attacks while shoveling snow then die in earthquakes.
East Coast people are always really weird about this. They get earthquakes over there too sometimes, and they're completely unprepared for them--I'd much rather be in a place where everything's had to be rebuilt to code or retrofitted for seismic activity.
Very sorry about your cousin. Even with the quakes, I'll still take living on the West Coast over being out East any day.
i remember that vividly. i was driving in south San fran on the 101 and suddenly had this weird feeling like i should leave the city for a few days . i drove to berkley and paid a surprise visit to a friend and then saw what happened on the tv. it freaked me out.
What is `South San Fran'? What is `Berkley`?
Imagine living there at the time. I went through the quake in Daly City, and the Cypress was the route I used to take to get to City College of SF just a few weeks prior. As a side note, they closed down and demolished the Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle, due to its very very similar engineering to the Cypress stretch.
I live in an area of Canada that can go to -50° in the dead of winter, and I know so many of us watch these horrific events like the collapse, I remember watching coverage of it for hours on TV, or the hurricanes that are catastrophic, and we grumble less going out during our cold snaps!
I remember watching that happen on TV is my mom and I were watching the world series! I remember a camera heading up to some of the stadium lights and commenting that they were swing and then you saw everybody on the field stop and look around and then run!
I love your narration - not overly dramatized, respectful, easy to listen to. And the accent doesn’t hurt either 😉
I lived across the Bay from SF back then. Hiding under the desk at home during the earthquake was one of my earliest childhood memories. It doesn't feel that long ago...
I was living in El Cerrito and attending UCB at the time - I remember this well. I remember driving that and the Embarcadero structure before the quake - spooky in hindsight. I had O-chem lab that afternoon - my TA decided to let us out early (presumably so he could watch the game). I had just gotten home and was heating up dinner when it hit...that would have been an uncomfortable lab to be sure.
I lived 100mi away from the 89 quake and it knocked over a foot of water out of our swimming pool.
I was born the 14th of October, taken home from the hospital on the 17th (which is also my dad's birthday.) My dad would have been commuting from SF to East Bay and going over the bridge during the time of the quake. 😬 Glad to have kept him from going to work that day!
Its plainly difficult to be this early.
I remember when this happened. I was at home playing with toys and my dad was watching the SF Giants. All of a sudden, I looked up and the hanging plants and lights were all swinging in tandem. And I lived 200 miles away and over a huge Sierra Mountain range, in Reno, NV.
every time i look at the cypress street viaduct i'm just reminded of the highways in fallout 4
Since it’s that time period in the game they probably used that as inspiration, nice eye!
I don't even live in the US - but I remember the breaking news coverage of the earthquake, and especially the footage of the collapsed viaduct decks. Absolutely horrific.
Two of my buddies and I went down to that structure on the evening of that earthquake, thinking that maybe we could help in some way. The emergency crews did not want any civilians to assist, which is unstandable. But the image close up of that failed structure, with smoke pouring out of from between the first and second levels will haunt me forever. On the Main Street level, triage crews worked under huge emergency lighting. It was quite surreal.
My uncle was at this game and while my dad and I tuned in to watch on tv and were hoping to catch Rick in the audience, the quake hit. To this day, Rick has a chunk of Candlestick Park (along with ticket stubs and some other World Series goodies) in a display box that's kept in his office.
Drove by that 'Nimitz Freeway' a year before the EQ.... it Was surprising that the structure fell down.............Well, Not that surprised.
I think because of that EQ that happened AND the collapse of a bridge, I now have a phobia (slight fear) of collapsing bridges!
😥
I remember this, one of the earliest things I do remember. Was living in Fairfield at the time I was barely 5, remember all the hanging planters in the kitchen shaking.
Good morning John 😊
I was 2 at the time and lived in the area. My mom rushed home to make sure my dad and I were there still because he didn't answer the phone.
We were asleep on the couch and had been the entire time. To this day we both fall asleep really easily and wake up hard.
Two corrections: *Candlestick Park, *CalTrans.
Great episode, I remember, as a Californian, just beginning my sophomore year in college all the way on the east cost when I saw the news on the dining hall TV.
This makes me grateful that I live in a country that rarely has any natural disasters. I never think whilst driving on a bridge or tunnel that it might suddenly collapse. Stay blessed and diligent.
Earthquakes (of notable size) are a very rare occurrence. California is a massive state, larger than most countries. So being so large there is more to go wrong.
Example: California is nearly double the size of England.
What country u from
This looks brutal and I only saw title card
I remember leaving work just after the game started, and intending to watch it from home. I got home, turned on the TV, and thought "What the hell?"
I find your videos as fascinating as I do informative and I'd just like to thank you for your hard work in producing this content for us.
I was in high school when this happened. I lived about 120 miles east of SF and we could feel the quake. I was absolutely terrified to drive on the Bay bridge for years after that. Horrifying. RIP.
I sure wish my dad was still alive, he would have loved this description of what happened to cause the collapse.
Watching the news reports/security footage from earthquakes is as chilling as they are fascinating. The footage from this earthquake in particular has always given me chills for reasons I can't explain. The images of the viaduct collapse are especially horrifying.
I was right there, stationed in the navy at Alameda. I still have photos of that collapsed freeway.
I was off-duty playing indoor racquet ball when it hit and I ran outside. The landscape was hard to describe. Unlike what you might imagine, it wasn't just earth shaking. The surface of the earth was moving in waves, like the surface of the water. And the cars parked outside in the parking lot were bouncing up and down. Truly surreal.
Side note: in grade school I did a science fair display on this bridge failure and the similar/different one that happened in Japan. I worked with dad to make a basic shake table (a flat cart that rolled in a single direction with a small sand pit to hold things in place) and wooden bridge cut-outs. You could easily see the difference in lateral and longitudinal forces at even the small scale demonstration.
I was a kid in Richmond when this happened. It was my brother’s 4th bday that day.. I’m told we kids slept thru the quake, and I don’t really remember the quake itself. I remember the power being out and watching smoke clouds rise up from different areas on the horizon. Driving around Richmond and Oakland afterward was terrifying, and the up close view of the broken viaduct haunted me for a long time. Not something you forget..
I’m one of the first 500 hundred. Great video as usual .
My late aunt was involved in this very collapse. I didn't know about any of it. She didn't ever talk about it, so when she came to visit me in 2017, I accidentally traumatized her again by driving over the deception pass bridge. She was huddled down so far into her seat that she almost disappeared into the space under the glove box, hands over her head and shaking. She told me once she recovered to never take her over a bridge again, and I felt /so bad/. I had no idea, otherwise I would have found a ferry route instead!
A day I will never forget. I was working in Palo Alto and lived in San Jose, but I had travelled that viaduct too many times to count. Every time I went north, I felt uneasy until I broke out of the double-deck portion - the oppressive shadow and imagined weight of the upper deck bearing down in my imagination as I drove. As I made my way home the night of the quake (in what was itself a surreal trip on a county "express" bus that took four hours) and the details of what had happened slowly trickled in, the horror of the situation only grew... and remained for many days afterwards.
Was in San Jose foothills at the time. Watched the asphalt roll like waves in the street. And windows in buildings looked like jello jiggling around. Wildest earthquake I've ever experienced. Felt terrible for the people that died, not far from where I was.
The thing I really enjoy and appreciate about your videos/documentaries are the depth and knowledge you present about each topic.
I know I am going to get the full story that is easily understandable and something that is actually enjoyable to watch while I learn.
I remember when the Northridge quake happened in the 90s, I was around 9 or 10 years old at the time. They shut down the schools, and there were aftershocks for days. It was a very scary time. My parents worked at The Gas Company, and they were flooded with work and calls due to the quakes. I remember being woken up at night to a huge earthquake by my Dad. It was terrifying. We ended up with a crack down our wall by the front door. Wild times, man.
My roommate during Loma Prieta moved down to LA shortly thereafter... only to get caught up in Northridge a few months later. I couldn't help but laugh at his bad luck when he called me a couple days later. 😋
I had just moved from the Bay Area to Oregon. I was watching the World Series, then got up for a moment, when I came back the game was no longer on. When I tried to call friends, I couldn't get through to anyone still living in the Bay Area. We were all nurses in critical care. When I finally got ahold of them they had terrible memories.
actually it was designed with structural at the time, according to interviews with the designer the intention was for the freeway to flex if overloaded trucks were driven on it. It was just flexing that caused eventual failure due to the upper freeway resonating
My mother and I drove that route both directions the day prior to the Loma Prieta quake. I was in my friend’s backyard in the South Bay on 10/17/89. That is a pretty big moment in my memory/life.
I commuted on this structure for over 10yrs. As I recall, just prior to the quake, there was a traffic accident south of the double deck viaduct section which impeded northbound or lower deck traffic substantially. Had this impedement not happened there would have been many more vehicles on the lower deck at this rush hour time. I was amazed that there weren't hundreds more casualties. The northbound traffic impedement saved many lives.
I just want to say that I love that you make your videos cc share-alike, I release my code under similar open-source licences and it feels good watching your videos while i write it :)
Thanks for sharing!
A lot of the raw, live footage from the news crews was horrifying. Everyone was watching it, including kids. They apologized, and cut away frequently... But I still remember seeing two crushed cars in the viaduct. The entire hood of one car was visible, but from the windshield area back - the car was only 3" tall. The camera crew apologized, and cut back to studio...but not before showing a gigantic pool of blood.
Somehow, the headlights were still on.
I'll never forget that.
At school the next day, one of my classmates broke into tears and said her aunt had died on the Bay Bridge.
Waiting days to hear the status of people out there, with no telephone service in the area was a nightmare. A lot of people went into town for the baseball game, at least it was comforting to see the stadium had not collapsed on TV. People in the stadium thought it was a very minor event until they went outside. (A testament to good engineering.)
I think what is most sad about this - is the Kobe earthquake in Japan. They had a viaduct collapse also. I wish they had taken action to remove it before their quake.
I've watched raw footage videos on TH-cam. It's extremely mild. It's too gorey to show the full extent of it. But it must be out there somewhere in archives. Just believe me when I tell you... It was way worse, what we saw on live TV, than the stuff you find today.
I like how you used a TV from the 1980s. Brought back memories, lol.