1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake - 1989 World Series

1989 World Series

The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was one of the few times that the onset of an earthquake of such magnitude has occurred during a live network television broadcast, and as a result, the first moments of the earthquake were seen around the world as it happened. The Series was being televised that year by U.S. network ABC. At the moment the quake struck, sportscaster Tim McCarver was narrating taped highlights of the previous Series game. Viewers saw the video signal begin to break up, heard McCarver repeat a sentence as the shaking distracted him, and heard McCarver's colleague Al Michaels exclaim, "I'll tell you what—we're having an earth—." At that moment, the feed from Candlestick Park was lost. The network put up a green ABC Sports graphic as the audio was switched to a telephone link. Michaels cracked, "Well folks, that's the greatest open in the history of television, bar none!" accompanied by the panicked screams of fans who had no idea of the devastation elsewhere. ABC then switched to its "rain delay" backup program, Roseanne, while attempting to restore electricity to its remote equipment. With anchorman Ted Koppel in position in Washington, D.C., ABC News began continuous coverage of the quake about 5:40 pm (Al Michaels, in the process, became a de facto on site reporter for ABC), at the same time as CBS News. NBC News also began continuous coverage, with Tom Brokaw, about an hour later. KGO-TV, an owned and operated station of the American Broadcasting Company, later won a Peabody Award for their news coverage, as did radio station KCBS (AM).

In Los Angeles, also an ABC owned and operated station KABC chose not to air the network feed. It aired its own coverage, anchored by Mark Coogan. However, some network footage was incorporated into its coverage.

Fewer than half of the more than 62,000 fans had reached their seats by the time of the quake, and the load on the structure of the stadium was lower than maximum. There had also been a seismic-strengthening project previously completed on the upper deck concrete windscreen. Fans reported that the stadium moved in an articulated manner as the earthquake wave passed through it, that the light standards swayed by many feet, and that the concrete upper deck windscreen moved in a wave-like manner over a distance of several feet. Electrical power to the stadium was lost, forcing the game to be postponed. The series did not resume for 10 days.

After the shaking subsided, many of the players on both teams immediately searched for and gathered family and friends from the stands before evacuating the facility.

Because of the importance of the World Series as a national sporting event, many members of local, regional and national broadcast media were in attendance, and later broadcasted their observations of the aftermath of the earthquake to viewers around the world. In addition to broadcast news, many photojournalists were present, and a collection of their photos was released as the book Fifteen Seconds: The Great California Earthquake of 1989, which was published soon after the quake to raise money for the victims.

The Goodyear blimp was aloft above the ballpark to provide aerial coverage of the World Series. Blimp pilot John Crayton reported that he felt four bumps during the quake.

CBS Radio Sports broadcast the 1989 World Series nationally with commentators Jack Buck, Johnny Bench and John Rooney. Unlike the television coverage on ABC, CBS Radio was in a commercial break when the earthquake struck. After the earthquake hit, Jack Buck told the listening audience, "I must say about Johnny Bench, folks, if he moved that fast when he played, he would have never hit into a double play. I never saw anybody move that fast in my life."