BAY AREA QUAKE : Engineer Admits Exaggerating L.A. Quake Dangers

A top Caltrans engineer said Wednesday that he was exaggerating in an effort to win funding when he wrote in 1987 that a severe earthquake in the Los Angeles area could topple many bridges, killing more than 100 people.

The memo written by James E. Roberts, chief of the department’s structures division, did not contemplate the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland or other structures of that kind, which are supported by multiple concrete columns.

Instead, the report discussed the vulnerability of more than 700 single-column structures that Roberts said were thought to be weak on the basis of evidence gathered after the October, 1987, Whittier earthquake. Roberts wrote that several bridges and elevated highways could fail in a repeat of the 1933 Long Beach quake, which had a 6.3 magnitude.

“Fatalities directly attributable to bridge collapses could amount to as many as 100 or possibly more,” Roberts wrote in the Nov. 25, 1987, memo to Caltrans chief engineer William E. Schaefer.

Gov. George Deukmejian has said since the Oct. 17 Bay Area quake that he would close any structure that engineers believe could collapse in a severe earthquake. Roberts on Wednesday was asked why, if he believes certain highway structures could collapse, he has not recommended closing them until they are strengthened.

In response, Roberts said he exaggerated the danger because he was fiercely competing against other Caltrans programs to win money for the second phase of his project to strengthen bridges and highways against earthquakes. Roberts said he actually believes that many structures could suffer serious damage but none would collapse.

“How long would Phase 2 have sat around if I hadn’t written the letter?” Roberts asked. “I might have overreacted here, but I’m trying to get the money. I have my priorities, and traffic people with their safety project have theirs and I’m fighting for mine.”

Roberts said emphatically that no engineer on the Caltrans staff knows of any bridge or elevated highway that would fall in an earthquake.

“None of my people will identify a bridge for me based on their analysis that will collapse,” he said.

Roberts’ boss, Transportation Director Robert K. Best, said the prediction of 100 deaths was part of a budget-related “program analysis” as opposed to a “bridge analysis” based on hard engineering data.