The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

MR. MacNeil: Good evening. Leading the news this Wednesday, at least 272 people died in the San Francisco earthquake. The shuttle carrying the spacecraft Galileo was launched from Cape Canaveral. East Germany replaced the aging Communist leader, Eric Honecker, with a younger man. We'll have details of other stories after full coverage of the earthquake. Judy Woodruff is in Washington tonight. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: The California earthquake [Focus - Earthquake] dominates our program this evening. We start with an extended report from the scene in and around San Francisco. Then we discuss what caused the quake and what may lie ahead with Robert Wesson of the U.S. Geological Survey. Next, surviving earthquakes. We talk with architect Frederick Krimgold and structural engineer Jameel Ahmad. Finally, a look at federal disaster recovery efforts with Grant Peterson, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.FOCUS - EARTHQUAKE

MR. MacNeil: The San Francisco Bay area was declared a disaster area after the second worst earthquake in numbers killed ever to hit the United States. After shocks continued to be felt through the region as the authorities counted the dead and assessed the damage. The quake measuring 6.9 on the Richter Scale struck Northern California along the San Andreas Fault late yesterday afternoon, its epicenter about 70 miles South of San Francisco. At least 272 people are known killed, 1400 injured. Most of them were on Oakland's Highway, Interstate 880, during rush hour when the quake hit and a one mile stretch of the highway's top level collapsed onto the bottom level, killing at least 250 people, most of them crushed to death in their cars. Rescue workers were able to get a few people out alive shortly after the highway buckled, but officials believe there are no more survivors. The quake also caused the collapse of a section of the Bay Bridge which connects San Francisco and Oakland, killing one person. The bridge was closed all day today for engineers to inspect it. In San Francisco's Marina area, a whole block of apartment buildings was destroyed by fire that was ignited by a gas leak. San Francisco's mayor said it will cost hundreds of millions of dollars to repair the damage throughout the city. Santa Cruz was the closest city to the epicenter. Several buildings there collapsed, including a downtown shopping center, where two people were killed. There was also a problem with possible water contamination because of ruptured sewer lines and residents were told to boil their water. City officials estimated the total damage there at more than $1/4 billion. Despite the quake, electric power was restored to much of the Bay area. Airports, subways, and buses were also operating, but many people stayed home at the urging of city officials. Baseball officials postponed the third game of the World Series for at least another night to determine whether the San Francisco and Oakland Stadiums sustained structural damage. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: Pres. Bush today signed a disaster relief declaration for the seven county area most affected in Northern California. Vice Pres. Quayle, who surveyed the damage today, said the President would likely to fly to the area before the end of the week for an inspection. The declaration authorizes use of federal money in the recovery effort which Mr. Bush said his chief of staff, John Sununu was trying to assure as coordinated and effective as possible. Talking with reporters at the White House today, the President had a message for residents of the quake area.

PRES. BUSH: Our hearts are with them as they face this terrible tragedy and words can't adequately convey our sentiments I know. But I can say that we will take every step and make every effort to help the Bay area in its hour of need.

MS. WOODRUFF: Mr. Bush also today defended the work of the Federal Emergency Management Agency or FEMA which was criticized by some for its efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo. FEMA officials said today they are trying to perform better this time. Associate Director Grant Peterson said the agency will take advantage of some $273 million left over unspent from funds allocated by Congress for the Hugo clean-up.

GRANT PETERSON, Associate Director, FEMA: We have the President's disaster declaration that triggers the authority under the Stafford Act that allows us to access the funds that are available that will mean part of the $1.1 billion that the President acted on so quickly to deal with Hugo and the Congress acted on so quickly. So we do have moneys available for the immediate response in support of the State of California. So we are ready, we have practiced for this event. We came on line very quickly many many hours before the declaration or the request.

MS. WOODRUFF: From abroad, offers of help poured into the White House today, including one from Soviet Pres. Mikhail Gorbachev who received U.S. help after last December's devastating earthquake in Armenia. White House Spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said the assistance of those countries that offered to help would be welcomed.

MR. MacNeil: We devote the rest of the Newshour to the California earthquake. And we begin with a look at the devastation as it unfolded yesterday afternoon and evening for a third generation San Franciscan, reporter Spencer Michels of public station KQED.

MR. MICHELS: All it took was a glance at San Francisco's skyline and the smoke in the air just before dusk to realize that this earthquake was having major effects. For most people the first concern was calling home but since the power had gone out at the moment of the quack phone lines in many offices were dead. At TV station KQED, technicians rigged up a bank of phones that did work. At the building next to the Station, owner Ben Luis was standing outside his damaged appliance store. Can you describe to me what happened during the earthquake?

BEN LUIS: I was sitting in the office, then all of a sudden I heard some noise. Then get little more active, then I see the whole building sway and then the glass all fell apart, then I flew under the desk just to be safe.

MR. MICHELS: While Mr. Luis surveyed the damage to his store, a bizarre scene was unfolding across the street where there is an entry ramp to the Bay Bridge. Normally this would be jammed with cars trying to get home to the East Bay. But yesterday instead of going onto the ramp, cars were coming off of it. They were the lucky ones. A few blocks away the violent shock of the quake had toppled a recently remodeled brick building on to several passing cars. It happened in San Francisco's industrial section where bricks rained in to the small street below. At least five people were killed, most of those trapped in cars under tons of rubble. The scene was shocking. It took a while to sink in that a California earthquake had caused this much damaged. Everybody just kept shaking their heads. Across town on the Marina district built on fill land next to San Francisco Bay there were equally horrifying sights. The fire that had been visible from miles away to burn in to the night. It was a large apartment house where fireman suspected a ruptured gas main had caught fire. For a while there was concern the flames would spread as firemen ran out of water and citizens helped run hoses from the Bay to the fire. Scattered throughout this district where homes are expensive and apartment rents high were other scenes of devastation. Some buildings had just collapsed into themselves, burying a floor or two. Structures leaned in to the street totally unsafe for habitation, unsafe even for residents to try to get back in and gather their belongings. Nobody seemed to know last night or even this morning how may dead were trapped inside. But firemen spread very thin at this point in the disaster went from building to building trying to get inside. In some cases neighborhood residents did their work for them looking for anyone who still might be alive. But mostly they found jumbled furniture, buckled walls and occasionally death. As frightening as this earthquake was, as devastating as this scene is just a block or so away people were making light of the whole situation. You're so calm about this?

RESIDENT: What are you going to do. You do your best. We helped the neighbors out, we tried to turn off gas mains or gas lines as much as we could on the block here and it seemed to succeed.

MR. MICHELS: Eventually firemen got the upper hand on the apartment building fire. Hardly any public safety workers got any sleep last night. At first light this morning we could see that some of the devastation had been partially cleaned up. But what was left behind was still frightening and buildings that had partially collapsed last night threatened to collapse completely. Back in the Marina district, despite efforts by police to seal off the area sightseers came in droves to view the damage. Children played among the rubble and their elders soaked it all in, sometimes more calm on the surface than inside.

ELDERLY WOMAN: Why did I come to here from Connecticut. That I wondered last night.

MR. MICHELS: The smell of natural gas still hangs heavy on this city and the fear of more shaking is real. What still is hard to believe is realization that San Francisco has experienced a major disaster and most of us survived it.

MS. WOODRUFF: That report by Spencer Michels. Joining us now to describe the course of the quake and its aftermath is Robert Wesson. He is chief of the Office of Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Engineering Geology of the U.S. Geological Survey. Mr. Wesson, let's go back to basics. What is an earthquake? What happens when we have an earthquake?

ROBERT WESSON, U.S. Geological Survey: Judy, when we have an earthquake we have a slip along a fault or a crack in the earth's crust and the earthquake that we had yesterday there was probably a slip along the San Andreas Fault that was probably between 6 and 10 feet displacement over a distance of about 20 to 30 miles along the fault.

MS. WOODRUFF: Alright. We're looking at a map here that shows both the San Andreas Fault and two other faults. Can you tell us specifically what happened looking at this map?

MR. WESSON: Judy, looking at this map the section of the Pacific Ocean and the part of California south and west, that is to the lower left of the San Andreas Fault is moving northwestward at a rate of about 1 to 1 and 1/2 inches per year on average in contrast to the portion of North America to the east of the fault. Most of that displacement occurs suddenly in earthquakes. We have not had an earthquake on this part of the San Andreas Fault indicated by your epicenter symbol there since 1906. So at one to one and a half inches per year we've stored up about 6 to 10 feet of slip. We believe that the sudden occurrence of that slip is what gave rise to the earthquake yesterday evening.

MS. WOODRUFF: Why did it happen now? Why yesterday afternoon at 5 o'clock California time?

MR. WESSON: Judy, we don't know precisely why earthquakes occur when they do. If we understood why they did then we would be able to do earthquake predictions which we do not have the capability for today.

MS. WOODRUFF: But we knew, you're saying, we knew before this occurred we knew that that area that you just pointed out had not moved as much as one would have expected given the movement underneath the ground over a long period of years?

MR. WESSON: That's right, and we had estimated that over the next 30 years that that section of the San Andreas Fault had about a 30 percent probability of experiencing an earthquake greater than magnitude 6 and 1/2. So we do have some understanding that enables us to make these kind of long-term estimates, but we currently do not have enough understanding or the technology to make any kind of short term prediction that is days, or weeks or even a year, Currently we're limited to this multi year kind of forecasting.

MS. WOODRUFF: How do you do that? What can you observe that tells you as much as you do know?

MR. WESSON: Basically, we make a kind of slip budget just as the sort I outlined a few moments ago. We understand what the input to this system is. This one to one and a half inches per year of slip. We understand what the history of earthquakes are along the fault. And we know how much slip typically occurs in these characteristic earthquakes and then we can project ahead.

MS. WOODRUFF: Now we're looking at a graphic that shows two plates. Explain what means and how that relates to the fault.

MR. WESSON: The red line in our graphic is fundamentally the San Andreas Fault. The part of the graphic indicated by Pacific plate is the part that is moving northwestward well at an inch to an inchand a half a year relative to the North American Plate.

MS. WOODRUFF: What you're saying is you know that it is going to move?

MR. WESSON: It's going to move but we don't know when and we don't always know in how big an earthquake.

MS. WOODRUFF: How does this quake compare to the some of the quakes that some of us are more familiar with? We've certainly read about the big San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the earthquake in Armenia last December. How does this compare to those.?

MR. WESSON: Judy, the earthquake in Armenia was of a comparable magnitude. That is the energy released by the earthquake was about the same. Here we see a graphic that shows basically the ground shaking or the amplitude of the ground shaking in the earthquakes The Armenian earthquake and this earthquake are about the same. The 1906 earthquake had something more than 10 times the ground, the amplitude of ground shaking But actually in terms of the energy released the great San Francisco Earth quake of 1906 was a 100 to several 100 times larger than this earthquake.

MS. WOODRUFF: Which is very difficult for most of us to imagine. What happens here? Do you look for more? We've read there will be more after shocks. What do you look for as a geologist.

MR. WESSON: There are two things we are concerned about it. In the short term we are concerned about these after shocks. With an earthquake of this size there will be thousands of after shocks. They'll occur most frequently after the earthquake and then they will gradually decay in frequency as we go through the coming weeks and months. Most of those earthquakes will be much smaller than the main shock. Many of them will not even be felt or felt very locally in that part of the San Andreas Fault where this rupture occurred. But some of those earthquakes will be larger some of them will be felt widely and there is a possibility that some of those earthquakes could be as large as magnitude 6 which could cause additional damage. Particularly to buildings or structures that we damaged during the main shock.

MS. WOODRUFF: We keep hearing today that this isn't the so-called "big one". What does that mean?

MR. WESSON: There's two ways of looking at the big one, One way would be to consider an earthquake like this which was a magnitude 8 and 1/2 which instead of involving fault rupture 20 miles long involve fault rupture 200 miles long. We have had three earthquakes in California since Western settlement there that have been much larger than this earthquake. One is the 1906 Earthquake along the San Andreas. The second is the 1857 earthquake along the Souther part of the San Andreas near Los Angeles and Then in 1952 near Bakersfield we had a magnitude 7.7 earthquake which is also larger than this one.

MS. WOODRUFF: What are you saying that portends for the future?

MR. WESSON: We're saying that California is earthquake country and we have to learn to live with earthquakes in California. And this is a particular problem because of the growth and expansion and development in California. In the past, many of these earthquakes could occur in relatively unsettled regions and not be a problem. But with this earthquake, of course had this earthquake or even a slightly smaller earthquake occurred to San Francisco or Oakland or closer to Los Angeles we could have had an even more serious damage and catastrophe than we had yesterday.

MS. WOODRUFF: You mean because this one was centered south of San Francisco?

MR. WESSON: Yes. Because of the distance from San Francisco.

MS. WOODRUFF: And how much more serious can the next one be. You are saying you can't be a prophet, but you are saying the potential is there for a far more serious quake?

MR. WESSON: Judy, it's hard to make estimates of this kind. But estimates have been made of something approaching worst case scenarios as a basis for planning for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and for the California Office of Emergency Services. Those worst case estimates were really big earthquakes located right in urban areas, suggest that the casualties could be a factor of ten or even larger than the kind of earthquake we saw yesterday.

MS. WOODRUFF: Robert Wesson, we appreciate you being with us. Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Most of the casualties occurred on bridges and has linking Oakland and San Francisco. Our Correspondent Elizabeth Brackett has this report on that part of the destruction.

MS. BRACKETT: Until last night Hiway 880 was the main thoroughfare to the East Bay communities of Oakland and Berkeley. It took the quake just a few seconds to turn in to a deadly concrete sandwich At least 250 people killed in the quake killed in the quake lost their lives when a mile long section of the elevated roadway collapsed under the lower roadway. Emilio Lopez saw the collapse.

EMILIO LOPEZ: As I started walking in the middle of the street two blocks down I saw the sections just start crumbling down. It just toppled.

MS. BRACKETT: Did you see cars getting crushed?

MR. LOPEZ: I heard 'em. You can hear everything and we were just in shock and disbelief just standing there wondering what the hell happened.

MS. BRACKETT: What did you do then?

MR. LOPEZ: Waited, and then everybody started and said let's go help. People started bringing in ladders, forklifts. We stood first out of curiosity and then we started asking for help I just volunteered.

MS. BRACKETT: Did you actually rescue any one?

MR. LOPEZ: I was not alone. Everybody was helping. We were just pulling them out. We were like human ladders.

MS. BRACKETT: So you did get people off the expressway.

MR. LOPEZ: Just a few, just about ten to twenty people.

MS. BRACKETT: Rescue workers who continued to sift through the rubble this afternoon said as many as 50 to 250 vehicles had been crush. Some reduced to a height of six to eight inches. In some cases victims were located when portions of arms or legs were seen protruding from the wreckage. Rescue personal worked through the night and continued searching the area today but said they could no longer hear cries from with in the wreckage. The roadway was built in 1955 and was supposed to be quake proof. A portion was retrofited in the early 70s following damage from earlier and weaker quakes. State officials said they hoped to launch an investigation in to why the road that should have stood up to the quake didn't.

MR. MacNeil: Next we talk about engineering and architecture in the Bay area with two experts. With us in New York, Jameel Ahmad is chairman of the civil engineering department at Cooper Union College in New York. He specializes in the way buildings respond to earthquakes. We're hoping to be joined by Frederick Krimgold, associate dean of the College of Architecture and Urban Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, who has been studying search and rescue efforts in structural collapses since the Mexico earthquake of 1985. He participated in fact finding missions on this year's earthquake in Armenia, and as I say we hope he'll join us from San Francisco. Mr. Ahmad, first of all, how did most of the buildings in San Francisco react to this earthquake?

JAMEEL AHMAD, Structural Engineer: Most of the buildings in San Francisco performed fairly well during this earthquake as evidenced by the fact that the loss of life due to collapse of the buildings was not really significant.

MR. MacNeil: It's really only about 20 people who died away from that freeway, isn't it?

MR. AHMAD: That is correct, so one has to look at it in a relative sense, that although there was loss of life, so far as the buildings were concerned, a vast majority, the bulk of the buildings performed in an acceptable fashion.

MR. MacNeil: Now does that demonstrate that they've made a lot of improvements to buildings in building something like earthquake proof buildings, or that we were just lucky the quake wasn't stronger and closer?

MR. AHMAD: I think it indicates that we have made significant progress. Starting with the 1906 earthquake and really starting with the same place, San Francisco, the structural engineering profession has made an attempt to come up with design criteria, with different methods of construction, with quality control of materials.

MR. MacNeil: Excuse me interrupting. This would be an older building, wouldn't it? This would be a turn of the century building?

MR. AHMAD: Yes, these buildings are typical of the older buildings where we did not have reinforcement masonry type construction here. And these are more susceptible to damage by ground motions.

MR. MacNeil: These are steel girder buildings with bricks on the outside.

MR. AHMAD: That is correct. Some of the damage that you see here is really non-structural in the sense that the structural skeleton has stayed intact. But the parts of the materials which are not attached to the structural skeleton have collapsed.

MR. MacNeil: So this is a fairly modern building?

MR. AHMAD: This is not a very old building but again the damage here is to the facade. And I think we need to make better connections really, not have non-structural facades in these buildings in earthquake territories.

MR. MacNeil: There is a little damage to a building under construction.

MR. AHMAD: That is correct. Under construction, the building is not completed. The bracing systems are not in place. So you can expect the building to be more vulnerable during construction than a finished building.

MR. MacNeil: Let's talk about the structures that did really badly and particularly that interstate we saw in Elizabeth Brackett's report a moment ago. What does the interstate 880 collapse tell you? We're looking at some of it here.

MR. AHMAD: There are several things which are noteworthy in the performance of this bridge. First of all --

MR. MacNeil: It really is an amazing sight, that roller coaster look.

MR. AHMAD: It is very tragic. And what it is is you have a very large mass of concrete sitting on top of a slender column structure. So during an earthquake the ground moves rather violently, which means the supporting columns move violently. But the super structure, the concrete deck, does not go along, because it doesn't have time to react because of the inertia. It has a tendency to stay where it is, while so to speak somebody's pulling the rug from underneath it. On the reverse side, you will get a movement, when the thing does start moving, it has inertia, so it's hard to stop it.

MR. MacNeil: Because it has more weight and mass than the legs have.

MR. AHMAD: That is correct. And I think these types of structures which are top heavy, have very skinny type of supports, such as columns, they're vulnerable.

MR. MacNeil: But this one was apparently reinforced as Elizabeth told us after a milder earthquake in the '70s. Does that mean that older two-tier structures like this cannot be adequately earthquake proofed, retrofitted so to speak?

MR. AHMAD: There are several lessons that we can learn from this. No. 1, I think you have to question the wisdom of a two-tier bridge in an earthquake zone. You have to realize, as was pointed out by Robert Wesson before in the program, that we really cannot predict earthquakes, so in a very violent earthquake structures like this are going to fail. Assuming that that might happen, what can we do to minimize loss of life? We should not have a two-tier bridge, because the top section fails, it's going to fall on the bottom section, and it's going to kill people who are trapped there, they cannot go anywhere. So I think from the prevention of loss of life point of view, it is reviewing this particular bridge design, perhaps we should take another look and not have such designs. So that in case of this violent earthquake, in case of failure, our buildings and bridges, they might be non-usable after the event, but they should not, the debris should not collapse and land on people, killing them. That is a thing that we can learn from here.

MR. MacNeil: Just looking at those pictures a moment ago of that sandwich, that awful sandwich, in which there are still presumably many many cars with people in them, you're an expert on rescue in such situations, if there were still any people alive, what is involved in getting them out when you have one huge piece on top of --

MR. AHMAD: It is a very difficult situation. You have the fact that a large mass of concrete has impacted on the people. You have to, in effect, remove that. And you have to have the equipment to remove that. And also you want to make sure --

MR. MacNeil: Does such equipment exist? I mean, bridges aren't constructed with huge pieces put in place like that, are they?

MR. AHMAD: That is correct. Because we have a sectional construction sequence. That's how we put these bridges up.

MR. MacNeil: Are there cranes big enough to lift huge --

MR. AHMAD: There are crane bridges now. But we have to be very careful because we don't know the structural integrity of the remaining deck pieces there. If they try to lift the bridge, it might collapse into smaller pieces, creating further damage. So it is a very difficult situation and although the equipment is there and it can be moved, but it has to be done cautiously, which can take time, thereby creating problems.

MR. MacNeil: We should say again the searchers there say today they have heard no further noises from or cries from inside, and they're assuming there are no more survivors in there. Let's talk about the section of the Bay bridge that collapsed. What does that say? What period bridge is that and what does it say?

MR. AHMAD: That's a localized failure. In other words, that's not as extensive and spread out as the interstate failure that we just saw. So that section of the bridge could be a connection failure, which is localized in a sense, and is a horizontal movement again. The entire structure is moving. There could be clearances questions. There could be a localized failure like a shelf angle not being in place where it's supposed to be. And there are large masses. There are large loads in there. A slight imbalance creates inertial forces which can propagate the failure.

MR. MacNeil: And somebody who was driving on that bridge, I heard him, he was an engineer for one of the television stations in San Francisco, Iheard him say that he looked back in his rear view mirror and the whole thing was waving up and down, which would be -- and can bridges be built to withstand that kind of --

MR. AHMAD: I think we have made --

MR. MacNeil: Or do you just have to say it's inevitable that in a city that needs big bridges, you're going to lose some of them?

MR. AHMAD: No, I think we can do a better job, we can learn. Unfortunately, engineers, the greatest teacher of engineers are disasters like this where we gain the experience regrettably. We cannot predict earthquake, as was pointed out by Robert Wesson. Even if I were to predict the occurrence of an earthquake, I cannot predict the magnitude.

MR. MacNeil: Or when.

MR. AHMAD: Or when. Also the record of earthquakes, most of the major earthquakes in the world have gone unrecorded in the past because we didn't have the instruments. Some of the earthquakes have been so massive that they have destroyed the instruments as well. So we are operating on a basis where we really don't have enough recorded data. And we have to project the ground motion intensity for the future, then have the quality of the construction and of the design standards so that these ground motions can be sustained. It is a very doable job. We learn as we go along, and one of the things I must point out, that we have to have cost effectiveness here. We cannot, we have limited budgets. We can make one bridge that it will withstand a tremendous bridge, but we will not have enough money left over to build so many other bridges, so we need to bring all these transportation systems within the reach of the general public and this means that tremendous amounts of moneys have to be spent which we don't have. So we have to live within that constraint. But I think based on our experience essentially derived from forensic type engineering, which means the failure analysis, we can learn and we can do a better job.

MR. MacNeil: I'm told now that Frederick Krimgold is with us. Mr. Krimgold, do you hear us?

MR. KRIMGOLD: Yeah, I can hear you.

MR. MacNeil: Oh, good. It's Robert MacNeil in New York, and I'm with Jameel Ahmad of the Cooper Union. We've just been talking about the performance of most of the buildings in San Francisco. Would you say that in general terms, architecturally, in engineering terms, the city has come well through this earthquake, or was just lucky? Did you hear me, Mr. Krimgold?

MR. KRIMGOLD: I'm sorry, I can't hear.

MR. MacNeil: Can you hear me now?

MR. KRIMGOLD: Yes.

MR. MacNeil: I was saying, what is your impression, looking out as you are there able to see much of San Francisco, most of the city came well through this earthquake today.

MR. KRIMGOLD: Yes. I would say on the way into town we have had a great deal of difficulty finding this earthquake.

MR. MacNeil: So what does it tell you about the kinds of buildings that did suffer damage as compared with those that came through all right?

MR. KRIMGOLD: Well, we've been very anxious for a long time about a number of unreinforced masonry structures here. But surprisingly a very small number of them suffered serious damage. I know of only one so far which actually collapsed and caused loss of life. And we've seen a certain amount of damage in rather light wood framed structures over in the marina are, buildings of three and four stories, buildings which probably wouldn't have been expected to perform badly but seemed to have trouble and particularly we're, the problem contributing to the fires last night are now under control.

MR. MacNeil: Some people today were attributing some of that to the soft fill soil on which some of those buildings were built.

FREDERICK KRIMGOLD, Architect: Yes. It's something, a lesson probably learned in 1906, where the pattern of damage conformed very closely with the pattern of soft soil. And I think we're seeing that again, that in the case of the on ramps for the bridges and the buildings which have suffered damage, that they also are in areas characterized by soft soil.

MR. MacNeil: Would you agree with Prof. Ahmad that the collapse of the Interstate 880 demonstrates that you simply, it is not feasible to have two-tier highways in earthquake zones?

MR. KRIMGOLD: Well, it certainly suggests that it's not a good idea, if they're designed and constructed as that particular road was. However, as you see in the background here, there are a number of such double decker freeways which did not fail, which would seem to be evidence that it is possible to design such structures to survive.

MR. MacNeil: So the lesson to be drawn from this would not be that right through the fault zones in California, including going down South that you should go and dismantle the upper stories of the, or the upper tiers of freeways that exist?

MR. KRIMGOLD: I think the lesson would be that you should go back and look very carefully at any highway that has a significant similarity as one which failed so catastrophically. I think that one problem that may conceivably lie in the background here is that we tend to think about life line engineering as, that is dealing with network systems and so on, we think about those failures in terms of loss of service, rather than in terms of actual life loss and injury. And we've tended in our modeling and our estimation of casualties to see loss of life as a consequence of building failure almost exclusively. And I think now the great surprise of this event was to see that the far and away most important, most significant loss of life occurred in something which isn't a building.

MR. MacNeil: That's an interesting point. Let me just ask Prof. Ahmad. Would you carry your earlier observation as far as saying that right along the fault lines, which go right down California, and it's a state of freeways, where there are two- tier structures, they should go and think about removing the upper tier?

MR. AHMAD: I would think yes, because we cannot really predict the severity of an earthquake. So you have to look at a criteria that in case the earthquake is so strong and failure does occur, I would look at every major structure and assume that an earthquake has come and gotten it somehow, that it's ready to collapse. Now what kind of loss of life is going to result, and how can I minimize that? That would be the kind of criteria that I would look at, rather than saying, well, let's strengthen them.

MR. MacNeil: Do you agree with Prof. Krimgold that in the past up till now, people in your business have tended to think of loss, potential loss of life, as a consequence of buildings falling down, rather than highways?

MR. AHMAD: I agree with that. I think the profession has tended to study buildings and bridges and infrastructures such as water supply lines, gas mains, sewer lines, water supply tunnels, for example, in New York City. Those structures have just as much potential, as a matter of fact, could be more widespread, because a building is an isolated structure, but a gas main can be much more widespread. I think that it is correct that we have perhaps not looked at the infrastructure engineering in the same light as in building engineering.

MR. MacNeil: Infrastructure meaning bridges, tunnels, and canals.

MR. AHMAD: Yes. Sewer lines.

MR. MacNeil: Sewer lines.

MR. AHMAD: Canals, the dams, things of that sort.

MR. MacNeil: Prof. Krimgold, I'm sorry we couldn't get to you earlier, but thank you very much for joining us from San Francisco, and Prof. Ahmad in New York. Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: As we reported, the Bush administration's response to the earthquake is coordinated by, FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Correspondent Kwame Holman has more on the federal relief effort.

PRES. BUSH: [Last Night] We're beginning to get a lot of information in here and obviously the federal government will do everything it possibly can to help.

MR. HOLMAN: Pres. Bush wasted little time declaring the shaken San Francisco Bay region a federal disaster area. Time also was critical for this man, the coordinator of the federal disaster relief effort. Grant Peterson of the Federal Emergency Management Agency this morning said FEMA workers responded to the earthquake immediately.

GRANT PETERSON, FEMA: We did activate our emergency support team last night immediately upon notification which was less than 20 minutes after the event.

MR. HOLMAN: FEMA has the authority to provide people with grants of up to $10,000 each to take care of their immediate needs, provide money for temporary housing, money for the uninsured to make home repairs or even to rebuild totally, and to provide money to state and local governments to aid in rebuilding roads and utilities. But Peterson made clear that by design, FEMA is not the first to respond.

MR. PETERSON: The local government is and when that level of response is saturated, the local government goes to the state most appropriately. And only when state and local government resources are overwhelmed to the extent that their combined efforts, combined efforts, cannot meet the needs of the catastrophic event, only then does a governor request a Presidential declaration.

MR. HOLMAN: If FEMA's Grant Peterson appears a little sensitive to criticism, he may be. After Hurricane Hugo struck South Carolina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was criticized by some for failing to respond quickly enough to the disaster. Some of that criticism came from here on Capitol Hill.

SEN. ERNEST HOLLINGS, [D] South Carolina: FEMA, that famous Federal Emergency Management Administration and this administration, the White House are dragging their feet, stonewalling, bureaucracy.

MR. HOLMAN: Many of Sen. Ernest Hollings' constituents who suffered through Hurricane Hugo complained that much needed equipment like power generators and mobile homes languished in storage, while local officials waited FEMA's approval to release it.

SEN. HOLLINGS: They're held up by FEMA whose having news conferences saying they're third in line and people don't understand and we're emotional and we don't understand.

MR. HOLMAN: This morning FEMA's Peterson was asked about that kind of criticism.

MR. PETERSON: We are not the first responders. Too, it is the state that has the prioritization of resources and who we look to for that resources. And I would just say that -- I won't say that.

MR. HOLMAN: But Pres. Bush who visited FEMA headquarters this morning made a point of defending the agency.

PRES. BUSH: I thought the response to Hugo was very good. And this gives me an opportunity, the appropriate place, to say that I'm very grateful to the men and women of FEMA for what they did in Hugo, whether it was on the mainland, or whether itwas in the Virgin Islands or Puerto Rico, I guess you can never avoid all criticism, but FEMA then responded very promptly, and I can assure you they're responding very very promptly now. I think they took a bad hit.

MR. HOLMAN: Late this afternoon, FEMA officials briefed members of the House of Representatives from California. Afterwards, they too had good things to say about the swiftness of the agency's response to the earthquake.

REP. DAVID DREIER, [R] California: I am very impressed with the virtual instantaneous response which we've seen from all of the coordinating agencies. And it really is phenomenal with the governor of the state being in Europe and opening a trade mission, trade center for the state, and with people being spread throughout, and of course, with the World Series going on, it's very impressive to see what Grant Peterson and the people who are associated with FEMA have done here.

REP. VIC FAZIO, [D] California: I think generally the members in attendance have been giving high marks to FEMA and the other agencies involved at this time, and we reserve judgment because it's obviously very early.

MR. HOLMAN: But South Carolina Democrat Robin Tallon has had experience with FEMA.

REP. ROBIN TALLON, [D] South Carolina: In the case in South Carolina with Hugo, they were not in there fast enough because the agreements between the state and the federal government were not signed, nobody understood exactly what was going on. We need to throw that out. We need a czar in there running things with executive authority, the authority of the President to commit federal resources, and forget about -- and these people in California and in South Carolina have paid taxes all their life, and when you sit there with generators 10 miles away where they're desperately needed and you can't bring them into operation, you realize that you have a bottle neck and something's not being addressed properly.

MS. WOODRUFF: With us now is Grant Peterson, the Associate Director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. He joins us from FEMA headquarters in Washington. Mr. Peterson, we obviously have called you hear to talk about California. But to begin with, in response to these criticisms that we hear from those who dealt with your agency, with the disaster that South Carolina faced after Hurricane Hugo, is there some justification to those criticisms that your agency moved in too slowly and that some needed items like generators in mobile homes didn't get there as fast as they should have?

GRANT PETERSON, Federal Emergency Management Agency: Well, we responded to every single request that the state made of us in a very timely manner and the Governor, Gov. Campbell of South Carolina, certainly has stated that. And I feel that some of the statements were unfortunate at the present time and I wouldn't mind seeing a few more statements on the record, such as statements of the senior Senator Pat Moynihan of New York, his statements, eloquent statements on the floor, and Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina's eloquent statements on the floor. And I would just say that this is something that needs to be put behind us because we have over 2000 people that are working out there diligently 14 to 16 hours a day and one or two criticisms in a time of high stress does not a consensus make.

MS. WOODRUFF: Do you feel that your agency did all that it could in the aftermath of Hurricane Hugo?

MR. PETERSON: Absolutely. We have had some lessons learned and that's very appropriate to say. This is the single most catastrophic event that has hit this nation in this century. I'd just like to put it in a little bit of perspective if I might. The average disaster that we deal with in a year is four to five thousand applicants and around $10 million. Right now we're dealing with 260,000 applicants in four disaster areas and $1 billion in destruction. And that's before the earthquake hit. And I think when we were on the ground in the Virgin Islands 14 hours before a declaration was requested, and when we were in the emergency operation centers in South Carolina with Gov. Campbell during, before and after the hurricane and for someone to say we were not present or on the scene, they may have ben several hundred miles away and needed to be on the scene, themselves, I might say.

MS. WOODRUFF: All right. If Hurricane Hugo was the worst disaster of the century, as far as your agency was concerned, how does the California quake that's just occurred fit on that scale?

MR. PETERSON: This is certainly something that we have practiced for, and we have said all along and California has said all along, that this is a situation that is not an if but a when it will happen, and California needs to be applauded as a state because they singularly are the most prepared states in the United States to deal with this issue, and you're seeing that in their response capabilities tonight. We had an exercise called Response 1989 last August 17th, where we had the 25 agencies that we coordinate respond to a simulated 7.5 magnitude earthquake in the Hayward Fault and the California emergency management team came up and we had a lot of lessons learned from that.

MS. WOODRUFF: Does that mean that there's less of a need for FEMA in the aftermath of this earthquake?

MR. PETERSON: What that means is that there is a very specific role for FEMA in any disaster, and that is when state and local government resources have reached the point where they feel they may not be able to deal with the issue that then and only then the governor requests for the President to come in.

MS. WOODRUFF: How does someone know when that point is reached?

MR. PETERSON: The governor certainly knows it. His state emergency managers certainly know it, and in all five cases, the governors have acted very timely, as timely as they certainly could. And this President has been the most responsive President in time to those declarations in a matter of hours, and we should be very proud of that.

MS. WOODRUFF: What exactly, tell us what exactly is FEMA and its people doing right now in relation to the San Francisco earthquake.

MR. PETERSON: In San Francisco right now, first off, we started working last night within 20 minutes of the event, had an emergency support team up, we called the 25 agencies in, had them in the headquarters. We established communications with the California emergency operations center in Sacramento, and had a complete briefing prior to midnight on the effects and what our potential role may be. We have a disaster field office on the Presidio that is linked up directly with the 6th Army and the state and the 6th Army and FEMA are jointly doing disaster surveys right now to see where we might need to apply funds.

MS. WOODRUFF: So are surveys then the extent of what your people are doing at this point?

MR. PETERSON: Absolutely not. We also additionally, Judy, have the back-up team in Sacramento working hand in hand with the state and we are also now identifying housing for disaster application centers. We're putting in over 100 toll free lines that are going to come up tomorrow for people to get onthe phone that need assistance. So that we can begin to take applications just as readily as we possibly can in support of the needy in the San Francisco area.

MS. WOODRUFF: How many people do you have on the ground now in California?

MR. PETERSON: That's an easy one or an easier one for us to say than South Carolina because we have a regional headquarters in San Francisco. We have 10 regions and one of them is in San Francisco at the Presidio, so we have a couple of hundred people on site there that are normally there. That's going to help us considerably in our ability to gear up quickly.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is that enough? Is that number of people enough to deal with what has happened there?

MR. PETERSON: No, it is not. And we already are doing additional training. We have 2000 people involved in this disaster in Hugo alone. We have trained up another thirty to fifty here just in the last two days at the headquarters area, they will be going out there, we're looking at our other nine regions and have people already tasked to come in the San Francisco area in support of this disaster. So no, 200 is not enough and we're sending in more people now and started doing that last night very early, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: How much money do you think we're talking about that's going to be needed in terms of federal assistance? Can you even give an estimate at this point, or is it just too early for that?

MR. PETERSON: It really is too early and we've been working with the state. And that's why these surveys are so important. What the state started identifying, you know, where will the moneys need to be spent and what are the resources that we need to be relying on now to bring a speedy and prompt recovery in support of the state as the states tasked us. So that's a very important aspect and we want to try and get a grip as rapidly as we can on what these costs may be. And it is too early to say what those costs are. The state can't say it yet, nor can the local governments, Judy.

MS. WOODRUFF: When would you be able to know? I mean, is that something that takes weeks or what?

MR. PETERSON: Well, we don't have weeks in this case because there are some other time lines, so we are going to be working very diligently throughout this week with the state to try to come up with some estimates. And they will be rough as the estimates for Hugo were rough. And that's just part of trying to get a real tight focus on the damage of an earthquake, takes months, not days.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is it a disadvantage for your agency, Mr. Peterson, that this earthquake has occurred just a month after the major Hurricane Hugo?

MR. PETERSON: That certainly is a fair question and we've said all along that when you have four and now five major disasters, any one of which, any one of which, except for possibly North Carolina, by itself is larger than the combined total annual cost of disasters in this nation a year, you bet we've got a lot of action going on out there. This earthquake was something we're all saying is something we could have got along without. But we had some preplanning for that and the fact that we preplanned for Hurricane Jerry, ran some resources up that were able to transfer to San Francisco, because the Hurricane Jerry did not materialize in the way it could have.

MS. WOODRUFF: Is your agency equipped to handled the disasters that you -- I guess the bottom line is is FEMA equipped? Do you have the resources that you need? Do you have the budget from the federal government that you need to do the job?

MR. PETERSON: You have to draw a line and say to what level should an agency be able to respond to in the budgetary climate that we're dealing with. And I know that Congress has wrestled with that. We have said very openly that if Hurricane Hugo would have come into South Carolina and moved right up the East Coast and picked another five states, we would have been in serious trouble. And that's being very candid and very honest. Because there was time lag between the hurricane and the earthquake we've been able to gear up and we're handling this level of multiple catastrophic events, it's kind of like taking five real good hooks from a boxer, but we're up and running and we've got resources out there and it's working.

MS. WOODRUFF: When you refer to the four previous disasters, you're referring to the four that are all associated with Hurricane Hugo, is that correct?

MR. PETERSON: That's true, and I could mention the others that we had in operation this year that we don't need to go into now.

MS. WOODRUFF: Just one other thing. Americans who are listening to this program who want to help in some way, what do you advise them to do?

MR. PETERSON: There are a couple of things we can do. And the first is the Red Cross is going to publish a number. And the Red Cross has been tremendous in providing resources in these same disasters. We're not the only one that have had to dig real deep in the resource pot, I mean, the Salvation Army, Red Cross, even SBA. They're going to publish a number tomorrow, a toll free number. And we're also going to publish a number for those who wish to volunteer things. And it will be toll free and the Red Cross needs financial assistance. And we are going to categorize items that can be volunteered. We will have that number available tomorrow. And that allows us the opportunity to match volunteer and donated items with possible needs identified with the state.

MS. WOODRUFF: Grant Peterson, we appreciate your being with us.

MR. PETERSON: Thank you, ma'am. NEWS SUMMARY

MR. MacNeil: Now we look at some of the other stories in the news today. The space shuttle Atlantis finally left the ground at 12:53 PM Eastern time following a weather delay yesterday and attempts by anti-nuclear groups to stop the launch. This evening the five man crew deploys the controversial Galileo space probe which will begin a six year journey to Jupiter. Galileo is powered by nuclear plutonium. Anti-nuclear activists feared a launch accident would scatter radiation throughout the Cape Canaveral area. But today's liftoff occurred without a hitch. In foreign news, the 77 year old East German Communist leader Erich Honecker stepped down today following weeks of pro democracy demonstrations and the emigration of tens of thousands of East Germans to the West. We have a report narrated by Louise Bates of Worldwide Television News.

MS. BATES: Erich Honecker ruled East Germany for 18 years, the hardliner who ran one of the tightest dictatorships in the Eastern bloc. For a long time he was the Soviet Union's most trust ally. But by the time Pres. Gorbachev joined him to celebrate East Germany's 40th anniversary earlier this month, the world knew that he and Moscow were out of step. East Germans heard Honecker had resigned for health reasons. But there seems little doubt the party leadership decided it was time for a change, even if only a cosmetic one, to try to head off the burgeoning democracy movement. Whether that change is anything more than cosmetic depends now on 52 year old Egon Krentz. He's the youngest member of the ruling politburo seen here in Beijing earlier this month representing East Germany at China's National Day celebrations. Back home, there's nothing in Krentz's reputation which promises or even suggests the prospect of radical change. He's an orthodox hardliner but he said the party's decision to appoint him would initiate a new course. And he spoke of the work ahead as a complicated time. That's about as close as he could have come to acknowledging current reality in East Germany without himself becoming part of a whirlwind that's sweeping the country.

MR. MacNeil: There were also changes in Hungary today. The parliament overwhelmingly approved constitutional amendments designed to change the Communist state into a multiparty democracy. The vote came a week after the dissolution of Hungary's Communist Party. It was another day of violence in Colombia's drug war. A journalist was killed by two gunmen on motorcycles in the City of Medillin. And in the capital city of Bogota, a bomb exploded outside the congress building. Reports said the bomb was concealed in a briefcase and went off prematurely, severely injuring the man who carried it. He was accompanied by three other people who disappeared after the explosion. And in this country, the stock market advanced slightly today with the Dow Jones Average closing up almost 5 points. In other economic news, housing starts fell 5.2 percent in September, the lowest level of construction since October 1982. RECAP

MS. WOODRUFF: Once again the main story of this Wednesday was the Northern California earthquake. There are at least 272 people believed dead. Another 1400 people were injured. Most of the deaths occurred on Oakland's two-tiered Highway 880 which collapsed when the quake hit. Pres. Bush declared seven counties disaster areas, opening the way for federal aid. Good night, Robin.

MR. MacNeil: Good night, Judy. That's the Newshour tonight. And we'll be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night.