It took just 15 seconds of 6.9-magnitude terror to spur California to unprecedented action in 1989. Local bond issues were passed, money was found for freeway retrofits and new seismic safety laws were enacted with uncommon speed. Today, that legacy continues to unfold, along with initiatives that followed the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. But it's an imperfect legacy.
Many schools statewide are still at risk a decade later.
Hospitals are just beginning to confront their unsafe structures. There is no statewide inventory of unsafe buildings. Parts of the Bay Area could be without water for weeks after a quake because some utilities have yet to strengthen pipelines. A major earthquake along the San Andreas or Hayward faults, which fork through either side of the bay like a broken wishbone, is expected by experts to cause thousands of casualties, do billions of dollars in damage to buildings, disrupt water supplies and close roads and freeways. The calamitous 1995 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, and recent quakes in Turkey and Taiwan, produced images of sudden destruction expected to be repeated in the Bay Area.