Oakland, California Oakland to consistently be listed as one of America's most crime-ridden cities. In 1980 Oakland's black population reached its 20th-century peak at approximately 47% of the overall city population. The 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred on October 17, 1989. The rupture was related to the San Andreas fault system and affected the entire San Francisco Bay Area with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX ("Violent"). Many structures in Oakland were badly damaged including the double-decker portion of Interstate 880 that collapsed. The eastern span of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge also sustained damage and was closed to traffic for one
1989 Loma Prieta earthquake included ground floor garages, which engineers refer to as a soft story building. In Santa Cruz, the Pacific Garden Mall was severely damaged, with falling debris killing three people, half of the six earthquake deaths in Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties. Some 31 buildings were damaged enough to warrant demolition, seven of which had been listed in the Santa Cruz Historic Building Survey. The four oldest were built in 1894, the five oldest withstood the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Immediately, a number of civilians began to free victims from the rubble of Ford's Department Store and the Santa Cruz Coffee