It was the 1989 “Bay Bridge” World Series.
At 5:04 p.m. in Candlestick Park, thousands of people were gathered to see the San Francisco Giants play the Oakland Athletics in Game 3 -- but it was suddenly interrupted. An earthquake shook the stadium during ABC's live broadcast.
The epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake was in the Santa Cruz Mountains, about 16 kilometers northeast of Santa Cruz and 30 kilometers south of San Jose.
Damage from the roughly 15-second quake was widespread due to the direction of the movement and the deep soil conditions. "Damage was heaviest in Santa Cruz and Watsonville, where downtown commercial structures collapsed," according to an analysis by the Public Policy Institute of California (or PPIC).
The earthquake killed 63 people and injured more than 3,000. An estimated $7.4 billion in direct damage (and about $2.6 billion in uninsured property damage and secondary economic impacts) was caused by the quake.
Thanks to the game at Candlestick, commute traffic was exceptionally light. Many credit the timing of the World Series for saving hundreds of lives that would've been driving on the collapsed Interstate 880 in Oakland.In Oakland, two sections of the Cypress freeway and a portion of the Bay Bridge collapsed. The upper decks of the Central and the Embarcadero freeways in San Francisco collapsed. The Embarcadero freeway was later demolished and the Cypress freeway was rerouted. Residential buildings were hit the hardest by the Loma Prieta earthquake, accounting for 75 percent of damage. PPIC: "The worst residential damage was concentrated in six neighborhoods in four cities: the Sixth Street corridor, South of Market, and Tenderloin and Marina districts in San Francisco; downtown Oakland; the Santa Cruz Pacific Garden Mall, with four singleroom-occupancy (SRO) hotels; and the downtown Watsonville core."
