Empress Theatre (California) repainted and the "Empress Theatre" sign was painted into the pediment. Its window panels were uncovered and refurbished, seats from Fox Theatres were salvaged and installed, gypsum decoration was re-gilded, and period-appropriate carpeting was laid. The Empress thrived throughout the decade. 1989 On Tuesday October 17, the Loma Prieta earthquake, measuring 6.9 on the moment magnitude scale, shook the San Francisco Bay Area; the Empress Theatre was not spared. To repair damage from the quake and make the building seismically safe for use was a task so monumental that it caused the theatre to sit vacant and derelict for nearly
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake dust while trapped for an hour inside their collapsed apartment. The Marina district was built on a landfill made of a mixture of sand, dirt, rubble, waste and other materials containing a high percentage of groundwater. Some of the fill was rubble dumped into San Francisco Bay after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, but most was sand and debris laid down in preparation for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, a celebration of San Francisco's ability to rebound after its catastrophe in 1906. After the Exposition, apartment buildings were erected on the landfill. In the 1989 earthquake, the water-saturated unconsolidated mud,