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Paige Loma Prieta Report

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The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was one of the biggest earthquakes California has ever had and people are still talking about it today. I have heard a lot about the earthquake and I know that it occurred on October 17, 1989 at 5:04pm and that it lasted 15 seconds. The earthquake was 6.9 on the Richter scale and was caused by a slip along the San Andreas Fault. People felt the earthquake for miles, from north of San Francisco to far below Santa Cruz. The earthquake killed 63 people, injured 3757 people, left 10,000 people homeless and caused over $6 billion dollars of damage. It was a big one!!

I interviewed my mom for this report, her name is Laura Ryan. At the time of the earthquake her name was Laura Hrubesch, she wasn’t even married yet. She was working for a company named Standard Register and living in Los Altos. She told me she will always remember that day. It was one of the scariest days of her life.

She was getting ready to leave her office in Santa Clara when everything started to shake, roll, and tremble. People ran for the doorways and got underneath their desks and then everything went black! All the electricity had gone out and then there was silence...total silence. People didn’t move, no one new if it was over or if a bigger one was yet to come. My mom said people just waited and waited. Then they found a transistor radio and turned it on to listen to the news. The news made things out to be a lot worse then it was, and everyone in the office was crying. The news said the entire bay bridge had collapsed, the entire Cypress structure had collapsed, and the news went on and on. My mom and all her co-workers were so worried about their families and loved ones and there was no way to reach anyone, cell phones were just becoming available and hardly anyone had one yet. People didn’t leave the office for several hours.

When my mom got back to her condominium she was in shock of the amount of damage. Her big television hutch

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