Engineering Memory of the Month

Recalling the earthquake

When the magnitude 6.9 “Loma Prieta” earthquake shook Stanford for about 10 seconds on October 17, 1989, Haresh Shah was chairman of the department of Civil Engineering, chairman of the university's risk committee, and the teacher of an earthquake engineering class. For all three of those reasons, he was on call to help lead the initial campus structural safety inspections immediately after the quake (he's pictured above climbing over a fallen cabinet in the Durand building). Now a professor emeritus, he recently shared some memories of the immediate aftermath. They are excerpted below.

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The earthquake occurred at about 5 p.m., and I was sitting in my office, which is in the first basement of Terman Engineering Center, and I was concerned about the Terman building, especially the wing where the dean was sitting.  I had written quite a bit about what to do during an earthquake, and one of the things that I always preached was that you should go under a table.  Now, here an earthquake begins at a few minutes past five o’clock, and instead of going under a table I go to the window to look at the dean’s wing. My engineering instincts took over my personal safety instincts, and I was looking at that building to see how it was shaking, and it was shaking like mad.  Fortunately it stopped. I think it was nine seconds or so, and the dean’s wing did not collapse.

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The risk committee was made up of the police chief, myself, the provost of the university, which was Jim Ross, and a couple of other faculty members, who had to assemble at the police station as soon as the earthquake occurred. We started immediately doing a triage. Everything looked, externally, like it was fine, but we didn’t know. It’s a big campus. We didn’t know if anyone was hurt. We decided that what we needed to do first was to look at the high-rise buildings where the students live.

The police asked all the students to come out.  We assembled outside on the grass, and one floor by one floor, we looked at all the buildings.  In one incidence I was going through one of the floors— maybe of one of the high floors— and a phone was ringing off the hook, so I decided I had better pick up the phone.  On the other end were some parents, shouting, “Where is my…daughter?” Or son?  I forget now what it was. “We are from Chicago and we just heard there was a big earthquake and Stanford University may have damage…” I said, “Look, right now it has just happened. I am trying to go through all the buildings, but it looks like no one is injured.  If anything has happened, we’ll let you know.” They were so panicky. I will never forget the voice of the lady on the other end.  She was just petrified about what had happened.  Anyway, we went through all the floors of all the buildings.  By that time it was night, about 8:30 or 9:00 o’clock, and we found no one who was hurt. The buildings looked okay, but we told everyone that “we need to do more inspection, which we will do tomorrow, so tonight you must all stay outside.” The students all agreed and they stayed outside all night. We began a systematic evaluation on the next day.

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Overall, it was an experience that I will never forget.  I worked like Hell.  My students learned a lot, all the graduate students put into action, so we had the best classroom you could ever get.in terms of  how the buildings should perform and how they performed, and how to determine their damage, and ought they be occupied or should be condemned. To this day all the students come back to campus to tell me how much they learned. 

We are interested in your nostalgic photos and the stories they tell. If you'd like to share them with the Stanford Engineering community, e-mail them to David Orenstein.

– October 2009

Alumni comments

Interesting to read Haresh Shah's memory of Loma Prieta: I was on the 5th floor of the Terman building he was worried about, and from the inside, I can verify that it was "shaking like mad." It was a lively building, and for weeks and months afterward, I had a hard time sitting in that 5th floor lobby because vibrations from the building's mechanical equipment, and foot traffic, constantly had me thinking I was feeling another aftershock.

Coming "home" from class, I found my wife and I had been temporarily evicted from our apartment in Hoskins. Unlike at least one of the other high-rises, it was deemed safe for habitation, but not until the next day. I braved the truly motivating fire alarm claxon and strobe light (well designed!) long enough to fetch some camping gear, and we drove our minivan over to the Arboretum and parked somewhere among the Eucalyptus to spend the night.

Tom von Alten, MSE 1990

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My name is To this day I have very vivid memories of the Loma Prieta earthquake. At the time, I was in my last year of the co-terminal program in Mechanical Engineering with an emphasis in Design. That particular afternoon, I was in a classroom on the top floor (4th if I recall correctly) of the Terman Engineering Center. The particular classroom was a very large room used by design classes, since it had large individual tables (ideal for drafting) and loose chairs (as opposed to typical classrooms with chalkboards (!) and fixed desks). The course was the first quarter of the three-quarter Design series (ME210 could it be?) and Larry Leifer was the professor.

Halfway through the class, I felt my chair move as if someone had kicked it from behind. I turned around and was ready to frown at a classmate, when I felt the floor move up and down very quickly (vertical displacement). This was the cue for all students, teaching assistants and the professor (approximately 50 of us) to rush to one of the two door frames in the room. As we were doing that, the building started to sway (horizontal displacement). All of us held tight to one another under the door frames while some of the light fixtures fell. The entire thing lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed like a long time.

Once the building stopped moving, Prof. Leifer asked if everyone was ok. Once he confirmed we were fine, we organized ourselves in a line and quickly, but calmly walked down the stairs. There were red dots in a few locations outside the building indicating they were safe spots on which to wait. While we stood there for a few more minutes, I remember at least one more aftershock.

As I rode my bicycle home that evening, I did not see too much damage, but most houses were in the dark. The phone lines at home did not work either. Somehow I managed to sleep well that night. I was glad to have been in the Engineering building of all of places when a “big one” happened.

 Stelleo Tolda (BS ME ´89, MS ME ´90, MBA ´99)

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I was a graduate student in materials science at the time of the Loma Prieta quake. I left campus before 5pm and was biking home, approaching the traffic light at Serra and El Camino, when the quake hit. I grew up in Southern California and had been through many earthquakes, so once I realized that was what it was I wasn't alarmed. Since I was wearing a helmet I figured I was well protected in case something landed on my head. The traffic lights were out, but I eventually made my way across El Camino to my off-campus apartment.

It was only after I got a call from my mom, who had turned on the TV to watch the World Series, that I had any idea how severe the quake was. Nothing in my apartment was damaged, but it was a bit eerie with the power off all evening, watching the chandelier swaying back and forth during aftershocks, and I was glad to have a roommate to keep me company. When I returned to my office in the Peterson building on campus the next day I found that the bookshelf behind my desk had toppled over and landed on the desk. Good thing I left early that day!

Julia Freer Goldstein, MS '90

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