Download this exercise below and use your text-editing software to complete it. When you are finished, either e-mail or hand-in the exercise to your instructor.
 Exercise 15.8
(28.0K)
When a powerful earthquake rocked northern California, reporters from throughout the world focused on San Francisco, Oakland and other cities. It was a major disaster and a major story. The initial casualty counts and damage estimates were inaccurate, but reporters could go only with the information they had as the story was breaking. Your assignment is to write a breaking story based on the following information, which is from an Associated Press story. Your deadline is 8 p.m., about three hours after the earthquake struck.
Game No. 3 of the World Series between the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics was scheduled to start at 5:31 p.m. on Tuesday.
At 5:04 p.m. the quake struck.
Tom Mullins, spokesman for the California Office of Emergency Services, said that preliminary figures indicated at least 400 people had been injured throughout the area.
Officials are saying that at least 215 people were killed. That included at least 200 people who were crushed to death in their cars when a mile-long section of Interstate 880 in Oakland collapsed onto the lower level.
A section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed. There was widespread damage to buildings, and fires were ignited by the quake.
Marty Boyer, public information officer for Alameda County, is the person who estimated that at least 200 people were killed in the Interstate 880 collapse.
The quake registered 6.9 on the Richter scale and was on the notorious San Andreas Fault.
There were 60,000 fans at Candlestick Park in San Francisco awaiting the start of the World Series game. They had to be evacuated.
No serious injuries were reported at the stadium.
San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos talked to you and to other reporters. He said that eight people were killed in San Francisco. Five of them were killed when buildings collapsed on cars. Three died in a fire in the Marina section of the city. The Marina blaze was still burning at 8 p.m.
There were no reports of major damage in high-rise buildings.
Eileen Mahoney, Agnos' press secretary, said that 20 people were injured in the Marina fire.
Here is what was happening in some other cities:
A fire was blazing near downtown Berkeley.
Six people were killed in the collapse of part of the City Garden Mall in Santa Cruz. That's according to the California Highway
|
Patrol.
One person died of a heart attack and four people were injured in San Jose, which is 50 miles south of San Francisco. That's according to Willis Jacobs at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.
The 6.9 Richter reading made this the sixth-most-powerful quake to strike California this century. It was the most powerful quake since 1980, when a 7.0 quake was centered in Eureka.
On the basis of the fatality reports you have so far, this quake was the deadliest to hit California since a 6.6 tremor killed 65 people in the San Fernando Valley of southern California on Feb. 9, 1971. That quake did severe damage, too.
As night fell in San Francisco, thousands of office workers, who had no transportation home, mingled with homeless people downtown.
Fire and ambulance sirens howled.
Here are some quotations from people you were able to interview.
Greg Higgins, who was driving north in Watsonville near Santa Cruz when the quake struck: "You could see dozens of huge booms of smoke going into the air. It looked like bombs going off into the city . . . it was complete pandemonium. There were three major fires near us. There was no power in the city at all."
Jeannine Marchanks, who was at the San Francisco Airport when the quake struck: "It was horrible. It got gradually bigger and bigger. Windows started rattling. Things were falling from the ceiling."
In San Francisco, electrically powered trolleys formed little empty holes of light where they stalled, emergency blinkers winking in and out. Car headlights crisscrossed, and pedestrians dodged among them.
People gathered in candle-lit bars and restaurants. On sidewalks downtown, groups of 10 or 20 people stood, listening on large radios to reports of the earthquake.
Buses were jammed, but no one appeared to panic.
|
|
2007 McGraw-Hill Higher Education