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The seaside resort city of Santa Cruz, only nine miles from the quake's epicenter deep under a hill called Loma Prieta, took a heavy hit. Much of a six-block stretch along Front Street and Pacific Avenue was reduced to rubble. A year later, 50-year-old masonry storefronts are still propped up with braces, but there are no stores behind them. At the Pacific Garden Mall, where three people died, only a handful of stores have reopened in temporary tentlike structures. The landmark St. George Hotel appears to be damaged beyond repair. "The impact here has been terrible," says Santa Cruz Mayor Mardi Wormhoudt, who estimates damage in the city at $155 million.
Downtown San Francisco has been largely repaired, but some luxury hotels and many restaurants report that the tourist business has not yet fully recovered. "The fear factor is gone," proclaims Tapan Munroe, chief economist for Pacific Gas & Electric. Not everyone agrees. In the past year more than 7,000 aftershocks, ranging up to 5.4 on the Richter scale, have been recorded on the northern segment of the San Andreas fault, where the quake struck. Last April, on the 84th anniversary of the Great Quake of 1906, which killed an estimated 2,500 people, a series of nine temblors occurred near the the town of Watsonville, which was severely damaged last October.
The Loma Prieta quake, says geophysicist Peter Ward of the U.S. Geological Survey, "might be viewed as a warning shot. We may be headed into a period of much higher seismic activity." Last July the USGS issued a "probabilities report" estimating a 1-in-3 chance that another quake equal in strength to Loma Prieta could strike the Bay Area. At a conference of 1,000 earthquake experts who are convening this week to mark the anniversary, participants will be reminded that a 7.5 quake is expected at some indeterminate future date along the Hayward fault, which runs through a more populous area than the better-known San Andreas fault does. Its consequences, experts say, could dwarf Loma Prieta's. Millions of residents in the Bay Area are obviously aware of these dangers. But apparently mesmerized by the benign climate and laid- back life-style they enjoy, most seem more than willing to take the risk of staying put.