SACRAMENTO — The first World Series game this year was reportedly a great one, complete with five hours of extra-inning ball play and an inside-the-park home run. I missed it, but the beginning of every World Series game always reminds me of 1989. Just as the first pitch was about to be thrown to start Game 3, the television screens went blank.
That’s when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco, which was hosting the Giants v. Athletics series. The magnitude 6.9 earthquake caused massive damage throughout the Bay Area, killing 63 people and causing more than 3,700 injuries. It was a devastating event – made more harrowing because it was televised nationally.
The temblor destroyed a portion of the upper deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which was made functional again within a month. But transportation officials found the bridge to be in need of a long-overdue reconstruction of the west span and the building of a new east span. The Bay Bridge project was begun shortly thereafter and completed 24 years later amid cost overruns and recriminations.
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