Societal Response

Professional Paper 1553 describes how people and organizations responded to the earthquake and how the earthquake impacted people and society. The investigations evaluate the tools available to the research community to measure the nature, extent, and causes of damage and losses. They describe human behavior during and immediately after the earthquake and how citizens participated in emergency response. They review the challenges confronted by police and fire departments and disruptions to transbay transportations systems. And they survey the challenges of post-earthquake recovery. Some significant findings were:

• Loma Prieta provided the first test of ATC-20, the red, yellow, and green tagging of buildings. It successful application has led to widespread use in other disasters including the September 11, 2001, New York City terrorist incident.

• Most people responded calmly and without panic to the earthquake and acted to get themselves to a safe location.

• Actions by people to help alleviate emergency conditions were proportional to the level of need at the community level.

• Some solutions caused problems of their own. The police perimeter around the Cypress Viaduct isolated businesses from their customers leading to a loss of business and the evacuation of employees from those businesses hindered the movement of supplies to the disaster scene.

• Emergency transbay ferry service was established 6 days after the earthquake, but required constant revision of service contracts and schedules.

• The Loma Prieta earthquake produced minimal disruption to the regional economy. The total economic disruption resulted in maximum losses to the Gross Regional Product of $725 million in 1 month and $2.9 billion in 2 months, but 80% of the loss was recovered during the first 6 months of 1990. Approximately 7,100 workers were laid off.

This set of publications consists of the following Chapters:

• Professional Paper 1553-A
  Loss Estimation and Procedures
  Susan K. Tubbesing, Editor

• Professional Paper 1553-B
  Public Response
  Patricia A. Bolton, Editor

• Professional Paper 1553-C
  Fire, Police, Transportation and Hazardous Materials
  Craig Van Anne and Charles Scawthorn, Editor

• Professional Paper 1553-D
  Recovery, Mitigation, and Reconstruction
  Joanne M. Nigg, Editor

Professional Paper 1550, Earthquake Occurrence , Coordinators: William H. Bakun and William H. Prescott

Professional Paper 1551, Strong Ground Motion and Ground Failure, Coordinator: Thomas L. Holzer

Professional Paper 1552, Performance of the Built Environment, Coordinator, Thomas L. Holzer