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Sudden Destruction!—How Have They Coped?Awake!—1990 | February 22
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A More Sudden Destruction
On October 17, a month after Hugo touched land, northern California was shaken by an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale. Bridges crashed, buildings toppled, and thousands either ran screaming from their homes or were paralyzed with fear as the ground rolled and shook for 15 or more seconds. More than a hundred thousand homes were damaged, and from several hundred to a thousand were destroyed. A week after the quake, some ten thousand residents of Santa Cruz County were still unable to drive to their homes because of landslides that blocked roads.
Death and destruction would have been much greater had builders not adhered to codes mandating quake-resistant construction. The 1988 quake in Armenia, for example, was less powerful but killed 25,000. Yet, apparently fewer than 70 died in the California quake, many of them when the upper roadway of a mile-long section of highway Interstate 880 collapsed onto cars on the lower roadway.
Never in U.S. history has a natural disaster been so costly. The following week, government legislation provided for over three thousand million dollars in relief. However, much more will be needed to rebuild. The president of the Personal Insurance Federation of California said that a total damage estimate for the earthquake of ten thousand million dollars “would be reasonable.”
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Sudden Destruction!—How Have They Coped?Awake!—1990 | February 22
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[Maps on page 15]
(For fully formatted text, see publication)
CALIFORNIA
Oakland
San Francisco
Los Gatos
Santa Cruz
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