1933 Long Beach earthquake
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The Long Beach earthquake of 1933 took place March 10, 1933 at 5:55 pm Pacific Time, registering 6.3 on the Richter scale and causing widespread damage to buildings throughout Southern California. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach on the Newport-Inglewood Fault. Forty million dollars property damage resulted, and 115 lives were lost. Many of these fatalities occurred as people ran out of buildings and were hit by falling debris.
The major damage occurred in the thickly settled district from Long Beach to the industrial section south of Los Angeles, where unfavorable geological conditions (made land, water-soaked alluvium) combined with poor structural work to increase the damage. At Long Beach, buildings collapsed, tanks fell through roofs, and houses displaced on foundations. School buildings were among those structures most generally and severely damaged.
The earthquake eliminated all doubts regarding the need for earthquake resistant design for structures in California. So many school buildings were damaged that, the Field Act was passed by the California State Legislature on April 10, 1933. The Field Act mandated that school buildings must be earthquake-resistant. If the earthquake had occurred during school hours, the death toll would have been much higher.
