- Author
- Lew, H. S.
- Title
- Introduction.
- Coporate
- National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- Department of the Interior, Reston, VA
- Report
- NIST SP 778; ICCSSC TR11, January 1990, 201 p.
- Distribution
- Available from Government Printing Office
- Book or Conf
- Performance of Structures During the Loma Prieta Earthquake of October 17, 1990, Lew, H. S., Editors, 1/1-2 p., 1990
- Keywords
- earthquakes | building codes | fire safety | damage | bridges (structures) | highways | structural engineering | housing | geology | lifelines | seismic | specifications | viaducts
- Abstract
- At 5:04 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time, on October 17, 1989, an earthquake with a surface-wave magnitude of 7.1 occurred with its epicenter located about 10 mines (15 km) northeast of Santa Cruz and 60 miles (95 km) south-southeast of San Francisco, California. Accorning to the U. S. Geological Survey, the earthquake ruptured a segment of the San Francisco, California. According to the U. S. Geological Survey, the earthquake ruptured a segment of the San Andreas fault below the Santa Cruz Mountains. The hypocenter was about 11 miles (18 km) beneath the Earth's surface, and the rupture propagated about 25 miles (40 km) both northwest and southeast within a 10-second period. The earthquake was felt over an area of 400,000 square miles (1,000,000 sq km), from Los Angeles to the south, Oregon to the north, and western Nevada to the east. This earthquake, named the Loma Prieta earthquake, was the largest on the San Andreas fault since the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 (M = 8.3) when a 275-mile (440-km) stretch of the fault ruptures.