Earthquake of '89:
Local TV Provides Vital Details

VOLUME IX, NUMBER 43        OCTOBER 30, 1989

"Our building took a massive jolt. First, it shuddered and then it did a whiplash motion," said Peter Maroney, News Director of KPIX-TV, San Francisco.
Everything was shaking violently, and then it stopped. At that moment, most of the newsroom people were thankful the building had been prepared for exactly this kind of emergency.

"Plaster fell off the walls. Monitors fell. Tapes were scattered everywhere," said Nancy Cope, Executive Producer, KGO-TV.
The first indication they had of exactly how serious it was was when the Assignment Editor, who had been listening to the scanners, turned around and said, "The top deck of the Bay Bridge went!"

Sections of a freeway had collapsed, too.
"You could see cars burning under there. There were clouds of black smoke. There were people yelling --- and screaming for help," said Ray Jacobs, the Director of News Operations at KTVU-TV, Oakland.
The Nimitz Freeway collapse and the bridge tragedy were in KTVU's backyard. From the station, the news crews could see the bridge section that had fallen. It wasn't long before they were broadcasting a shot from one of their ENG units. In fact, before their emergency generator was up and running, they began their coverage in their parking lot with the ENG gear

Most San Franciscans would remember for the rest of their lives where they were and what they were doing when the quake hit.

Maroney was in his office at KPIX reviewing scripts for an upcoming series.
"I walked out and saw our anchorman Dave McElhatton standing under a doorway with his arms wrapped around the Managing Editor and the Executive Producer in a bear hug. Suddenly, the building stopped shaking. Dave walked five steps, sat down at the update desk, and put on his microphone," said Maroney.
Six minutes later, everything at the station had been switched over to the generator. KPIX broke into programming for live coverage. It would last for the next 30 hours.

"Within a minute-and-a-half of going on live, we had helicopter aerials of the collapse of (freeway) 880," said Maroney. They were in the air when the earthquake happened.
The Oakland Airport is next to the highway, and the KPIX chopper had just gone up to shoot traffic aerials and aerials of the World Series game. "We were there --- right over the collapsed road, and the photographer immediately began shooting it," he said.

Meanwhile, KGO-TV and KRON-TV were knocked off the air when they lost power. It took KGO about 7 minutes to switch to the generator and get back on live. KRON was off for about 28 minutes.

KGO had just finished an hour of pre-World Series local programming. Their anchor, sports anchor, and several crews were at the ballpark.
"When the quake hit, we had those people already set up. And, we had the advantage of the ABC Goodyear Blimp," said Cope.
KGO immediately got anchors in place in the newsroom and at the ball game and went back on using cover video from the blimp.
"We never went to ABC, but we had the advantage of using the blimp shot from them," Cope explained. It provided a good view of what was going on and they quickly dispatched crews to the big fire which destroyed an apartment building in the Marina district.

General Manager Jim Topping had invited all his employees to stay for peanuts and popcorn and to watch the World Series on big screen TV. People had stayed.
"We pressed them into action answering phones and making calls to get information," Cope said.

Photographer Dick Terry of KXTV, Sacramento, was on the Bay Bridge when the quake hit. He recorded the first professional video of people climbing out of their cars and out of the gaping hole. He also got shots of the Coast Guard searching the waters below for cars which might have gone over.
"Terry hooked up with the Oklahoma couple who shot incredible video of a car going into the hole," Maroney explained.
"He got in their car, immediately drove back to the (KPIX) studio, and we put both of their tapes on raw and de-briefed them right at the update desk," he said.
All of this within the first hour and fifteen minutes after the quake.

KGO used that home video as well as video from a surveillance camera inside a bar and one from a convenience store showing what it was like when the quake hit.

The tragedy on the bridge was also quickly captured live by KTVU. One of their ENG units focused on it from their parking lot. They we were able to show where the top level had dropped down.  They showed the cars and a Coast Guard helicopter landing on the bridge.

When the generator kicked on at the Oakland station, the scanners came on filled with heavy traffic about the Interstate collapse. Using the local streets which ran next to the freeway, the KTVU crews were there quickly.

Trapped drivers were screaming. Neighbors grabbed ladders so they could scramble up onto the road.
"Disregarding their personal safety, they were trying to help the victims," Jacobs said.

The neighbors provided the first interviews that KTVU shot there. Emergency medical teams and police arrived.
"We were shooting all this.  We got them pulling people out of there injured --- seriously injured," he told us.
The news team was live when one man came out alive. On tape, there were two children who lived. Their parents, sitting in the front seat, had been killed.

Rescue efforts went on.
"We stayed with the rescue far into the night when they had the lights up. It was incredible --- people crawling under there looking for survivors," Jacobs said.

"If you feel an earthquake in Sacramento, it means something serious has happened somewhere else," said Bob Jordan, News Director of KCRA-TV.
They weren't on a fault line here, so you knew it was bad somewhere else.

When the quake happened, KCRA was live on the air in their 5 o'clock news.
"When it actually hit, we were in a package. We came back live instantly to the studio. The lights were swaying and the set was moving," he told us.

Their first video was from KNBC in Los Angeles. KNBC had a seismograph adjacent to their newsroom. And, KNBC newscasts were up on satellite.
"When we saw what they had, we took that," said Jordan.

KCRA managers also put up their helicopter right away and provided strong aerials to CNN and other NBC affiliates of the fire in the Marina District. The chopper shot tape of the fire and then went up to about 6,000 feet to feed it back line of sight. As the tape played back, the reporter narrated it live.

Like many other California stations, they had staffers in the Bay Area covering the World Series.
"As fate had it, we were over there with our satellite truck. And that saved us many, many hours. There's no way we could have gotten the truck into the city through the normal approaches. Coming from Sacramento, we couldn't have gone by the Bay Bridge or down 880 the other way," he added.

"You need to have phone numbers handy. You need to know how to get to your people. This is fundamental stuff," Jordan said.

Meanwhile, KOVR-TV did well, but News Director Mike Ferring said his station could have been in a tough spot. Their new satellite truck wouldn't be ready for a week. They were in the process of switching helicopters. A new microwave link between KOVR and KGO wasn't installed yet.

However, KOVR was at Candlestick Park with their own people to cover the game and they were able to rely on the ABC blimp video early on. And, in the early evening hours KGO was able to get KOVR a live shot from the KGO newsroom, which helped in providing breaking information.

KOVR did have a permanent microwave in their San Francisco bureau and it was crucial to their coverage.
"The microwave was used continuously. It meant we didn't have to worry about satellite. We could go whenever we wanted to. and didn't have to worry," he said.

One of KCRA's crews was involved in a serious traffic accident in Oakland.
"It was dark. There were no traffic signals. At an intersection, they were broadsided," said Jordan. The station car was demolished, but the crew was not seriously injured.

The whole thing started in Loma Prieta, south of the Bay Area. It's less than a mile from the epicenter of the devastating 1906 earthquake. It's almost directly above the San Andreas fault, believed to be amassing enough pressure to someday release an earthquake far more deadly than this.
The force knocked out the power at the transmitter of KNTV-TV, San Jose. The local electrical power was out, too.

It was newsgathering under pressure. Not only were they hand carrying their fuel, but the power was out back in the newsroom, and at the start, half of their crews were fifty miles away at the World Series.

At 5:04, everyone knew that something horrible had happened, but nobody knew where the damage was.
Moo said, "You have to get out and find it. You can't just call and say, 'Where's the damage?' because everyone's trying to give first aid. The power's out and phones are all tied up because people who are safe are calling home to tell other people they are okay or they're trying to get information."

Fundamental, practical information was one of the things KNTV's viewers needed most.
"There are people down here who are using bathrooms where they haven't been able to flush the toilet for two or three days," said Moo.
The viewers needed to know how to cope when they'd lost all their utilities.
"We can't go out there and help them with their plumbing, but we can give them information," explained Moo.

Part of the broadcaster's job was to explain how to check gas service and, if appropriate, how to turn a gas pilot back on.
Other information was needed. Where people could get help tending a very ill person. Whether schools would be open tomorrow. Where shelters had been established.

Further south --- nearer the epicenter --- people without electricity huddled in drug stores and department stores with generators and they watched the stores' television sets for information.
KSBW-TV serves a market which divides into three sections: Salinas, Monterey, and Santa Cruz. The station people had to cover their diverse base, but still provide information about San Francisco for their viewers.

KSBW was live until 12:30 a.m., and again the next day from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. They switched to the NBC coverage when they felt it was important.
"Photographers were all told to edit in the camera and we ran video raw," she said.
The first video was from near the station. It included people pushing a cracked chimney over so it wouldn't fall on the house.

Early on, the news crew invited the viewers to join the broadcast.
"We opened our phonelines and we told people, 'give us a call ---tell us what you're seeing in your area.'" Laurent said.
The callers could describe what they were doing when it hit, what had happened to them, and what they saw in their immediate neighborhoods. Typical: "The road in front of my house is all broken up. I couldn't get out of here if I wanted to."
Laurent said, "We sort of became a talkradio TV station until we could get information back from our own reporters." The callers were alternated with early video and information.
"We broke it up. We didn't want to have ten calls in a row," she explained.
The viewers were helpful.
As the calls increased, it became clearer and clearer which areas had been hit --- and which had escaped. The news team quickly understood Santa Cruz was in trouble. However, there were no calls reporting of structural mishaps over on the Monterey peninsula. In Salinas, the problems were few.

Their bureau in Santa Cruz was live quickly. The reporter communicated how hard that section had been hit by simply showing what had happened in their own office.
"She just stood there with her microphone and she said, 'this is where we kept our video tapes and as you an see the whole cabinet has fallen down.' She would just point out the damage in the bureau. It really brought it home," said Laurent.

Her advice, looking back?
"We needed not to be afraid to keep repeating information," said Laurent.
It was, of course, a delicate balancing act.
You don't want to drive away the person who has been watching steadily for sometime. "A typical producer wants new information, and won't re-run things. You want fresh, new stuff," she said.
But, new viewers were constantly joining the audience, too.

In the initial stages of coverage, Maroney called together everyone in the dimly lit KPIX newsroom for a brief organizational meeting. The Managing Editor would run the newsgathering end --- the desk and the crews. The Executive Producer would handle writing, producing and information flow.

In addition, KPIX had a News Editor, whose job was to write the first block of the show. He was next to the update desk.
Reporters would come back to the station, sit down at the update desk and tell what they had seen. Tape was played unedited with reporters narrating it.

They moved people around on motorcycles to get through the congested streets.

At midnight, KPIX switched anchor teams. One team worked from midnight to 5 a.m. Another went from 5 a.m. until noon, and then, noon until midnight. All personnel were divided into two 12-hour shifts. KPIX had 18 cameras in the field and 14 reporters.

To give you an idea of the scope of local coverage, during the emergency, KPIX switched to seven different live locations:
--- Oakland. The collapse of 880.
--- The Marina. The scene of the big fire.
--- San Jose.
--- Santa Cruz. Near the epicenter.
--- Watsonville. Near the epicenter.
--- Roving Van.
--- Helicopter.

"In a situation like this, our first concern was to make sure our own people were safe," said Cope. Next, their goal was to get good information to the audience.

KGO lost the wire services when the power went out, but the NewStar computer system came back up with the generator. Using the electronic mail function, KTRK in Houston sent KGO the wire copy which was coming in about the quake.

About a year earlier at KPIX, Maroney had prepared in case a big earthquake struck. He gave each department a list of things which needed to be resolved --- everything from where to have food and water to always making sure the generator tanks were full.
"We even looked at how we would get on the air if our building were totally destroyed," he said.
They developed a massive plan which included phone trees for calling in staffers and phone numbers for every county. They knew they would need to reach key people ranging from who would make the decision on whether the water was drinkable, to how to reach the local gas/electric/ school/road authority in the area.
Maroney explained, "We have a book four inches thick which includes maps of the fault lines, where emergency shelters would be set up, and where the mayors would go in each town to set up their emergency headquarters," he said.
"We brought out that book, put it at the assignment desk and it paid off," he said.

The earthquake book also contained Civil Defense information which had been prepared by Bay Area officials. The material was in the form of scripts, and the anchors read the information between stories. "It told people what they should do the first five minutes after the quake, the first ten minutes, and what you should be doing after two hours," Maroney said.
That information was put in front of the anchors and whenever they didn't have anything else to go to, they would read that.
KPIX had also installed three telephone hotlines which important sources could call. "We can put them right on the air with those lines," said Maroney.

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