1989 Loma Prieta earthquake significant issue, especially in the heavily damaged Marina District of San Francisco, but its effects were also seen in the East Bay, and near the shore of Monterey Bay, where a non-destructive tsunami was also observed. Due to the sports coverage of the 1989 World Series, it became the first major earthquake in the United States that was broadcast live on national television (and is sometimes referred to as the "World Series earthquake" as a result). Rush-hour traffic on the Bay Area freeways was lighter than normal because the game was about to begin, and this may have prevented a
San Francisco Bay during earthquakes, and most of the major damage close to the Bay in the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 occurred to structures on these areas. The Marina District of San Francisco, hard hit by the 1989 earthquake, was built on fill that had been placed there for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, although liquefaction did not occur on a large scale. In the 1990s, San Francisco International Airport proposed filling in hundreds more acres to extend its overcrowded international runways in exchange for purchasing other parts of the bay and converting them back to wetlands. The idea was, and remains, controversial.