Word: franciscos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics were just about to start Game 3 of the 1989 World Series on Oct. 17 when the shaking began. ABC play-by-play announcer Al Michaels managed to tell viewers, "We're having an earth-" before the signal went dead. The temblor was brief - just 15 seconds - but the damage caused by the 6.9-magnitude quake was impressive. It killed 63 people, injured thousands and caused $7 billion worth of damage throughout California's Bay Area, including major destruction to the Oakland Bay Bridge. "It was a good sized shock," says Peter Yanev, chairman...
Looking back 20 years later, however, seismologists say the Bay Area got lucky. The epicenter of the quake was near Loma Prieta peak in Santa Clara County, outside the densely populated urban neighborhoods of San Francisco and Oakland. The destruction missed Silicon Valley - with its tens of billions in economic value - altogether. "If that quake had to happen, that was really the best place," says Yanev. "We were about as lucky as we could get." (See TIME's special report "Where Will the Next Five Big Earthquakes...
Chances are we won't get that lucky again in earthquake-prone San Francisco or in any of the cities around the world that sit on unstable land. According to a 2008 study by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), there's a more than 99% chance that a quake of magnitude 6.7 or higher will hit California over the next 30 years and a nearly 50% chance that a magnitude 7.5 or higher quake will hit the state over the same period. Tokyo, Tehran, Istanbul, Seattle, St. Louis - all are major cities built on land that has experienced massive quakes...
...means more and more people will be living in seismological danger zones. The key to minimizing damage is to prepare for the inevitable. "The Loma Prieta quake was really a wake-up call for this region," says David Schwartz, a USGS geologist and the co-chair of the San Francisco Bay Area Earthquake Alliance. "But we still have a lot to do." (See pictures of Indonesia's devastating earthquake...
Jones, not surprisingly, considers this a highly cynical view. He was present when Milk brought together thousands of young gays in pre-AIDS San Francisco to change that city's politics. Milk was famous for convening human billboards - long stretches of young gay guys holding signs along busy streets. Coming together in Washington, Jones thought, might spark the same kind of fellowship. Young friends convinced him that Facebook could shorten the organizing time for a national march dramatically. The site played another role: young gays who had connected on Facebook even as uncertain high school students now wanted to meet...