up next on a second look, living in earthquake country. we remember the moderate quakes that have caused big damage. from long beach in 1933 to colinga 50 years later. and the bay area quakes made worse by the ground below. all ahead on a second look. good evening and welcome to a second look. i'm julie haener. it goes without saying california is earthquake country. we all remember the big ones.

loma prieta 1960 in san francisco. the north ridge quake. but there's some that while not as powerful cause damage and injuries. but don't come to mind as readily. one of those was in colinga back in 1983. the quake hit the area on may second 1983. it did $10 million in damage and injured 94 people. the day after the quake ktvu's randy shandobil visited colinga to see how the city was dealing. >> reporter: most businesses are damaged beyond repair. the burped out colinga inn kept cool with water. debris cleared from the streets with bulldozers. a wall simply fell away. a table and chairs inches away

from oblivion. the downtown buildings and fires kept rescue workers so busy last night that it wasn't until today that they saw the damage. scores of houses are ruined. most gas leaks were capped today but water spewed from broken pipes everywhere. tents are also everywhere as hundreds of people are camping out in front of their homes. they are afraid to go back inside. >> it started going this way and this way. and then it was like it was twisting down. and i better get in a door way or the bathroom. i've always heard that's the safest. so i got to the door way and i'm holding on like this and man i'm going everywhere. instead of steps falling out of the cubert. it's like they were throwing them around. so i felt this is not safe.

so i went into the bathroom. once i got down we had a hard time getting up. because the floor was working so and i took hold of the wall and the wall is going like this. i look into the back bedroom and the back wall of the back bedroom and i was praying. i was scared i was really praying. >> just made it. the lord carried us. my wife come out barefooted and didn't stub her toe or scratched the bottom of her feet so i know the lord was carrying us. he had to be. i hollered for the kids to get out. by the time we got out the house was already bending over and coming in. they had to rush down the field because the house had already settled. >> reporter: dozens of aftershocks kept people up all night. even as the ground moved people talked about rebuilding. >> they'll rebuild it and there'll be a better time let's hope. >> reporter: one year after the 6.7 earthquake there are still aftershocks in colinga. imagine the frustration of the

homeless. at firsts families camped out in tents then later they were moved to government trailer camps. four, five, sometimes six people to a box a year of it. and there's even worse. mccormick barely got out with her house when her house collapsed over her last year. her family has been liveing in a motel for the last six months. they may not sound bad but try 11 months in this small room with five people and no kitchen. >> of course we don't have much privacy. and living this close, you get on each other's nerves. >> reporter: what was the worse for you the past year. what point did you just get the lowest? >> probably christmas. christmas and thanksgiving. stuck in a motel room. and what are we going to eat? where are we going to have thanksgiving dinner. >> i just get real jumpy when the aftershocks hit. >> why do you stay?

>> because my dad has to work here. i tell him i want to move but he doesn't listen to me. >> do you think things are back to normal here? >> no they're not going to be. it's been a year now and everything is still shaking. i don't think they'll stop. >> everything in our lives is totally turned around. we lost our home, all of our furniture, all of our clothes. pots and pans. the whole thing was gone. and yeah we've got a nice new home and i love it. but it's not the old house. and we think about that old house because that was my husband and i's pride and joy. >> reporter: the streets are still deserted. nights for some are still sleepless but colinga will recover physically if not psychologically. >> it'll never be the same. the whole thing will never be the same. we will never be the same again. >> of course the most frightening thing about what happened here in colinga is

that compared to what is going to happen, this is really nothing. this may look like some kind of deserted hell but you have to kind in mind that no one was killed here. though while it may not look like it, colinga is actually a very charmed place. still to come on a second look. the deadly southern california earthquake that changed requirements. map no. yeah! no. the important part is that you're happy now. and i got you this visor. you made a visor! yes! that i'll never wear. ohh.

[ male announcer ] get u-verse tv for just $19 a month for two years with qualifying bundles. rethink possible. your season is here. let's just call it the baking time of year. you need special ingredients. you need the staples for homemade. you need safeway sugar for just a buck eighty-eight. and that magic thing that makes everyone want another only two ninety-nine for challenge butter. and when hands get messy, quite surely they'll say, yum! wow! yay! what a sweeter holiday. safeway. ingredients for life. this is a heated leather seat. this is a secret storage space. this is another. this is 8.4 inches of go-anywhere. this is 20 inches of water-fording talent. this is armor. this is 31 miles per gallon, highway. this is the freedom to keep chasing all the horizons you want. introducing the all-new jeep cherokee.

♪ welcome back to a second look. tonight remembering california's earthquakes. in 1933 one of the worse quakes in the state's history hit the area around long beach in los angeles county. at 6.4 it's magnitude was fairly moderate. but at the time many buildings were built on landfills

landfills. the earthquake did $45 million in damage. many of the buildings that collapsed were schools. the destruction in long beach and compton led to the passage of the field act. the organization that leads construction standards. the structure collapses led to new structures. the concrete was not properly reenforced and when the loma prieta earthquake hit much of it collapsed. 42 people died. scientists say it was the lose soil below that led to its downfall. on the anniversary of the quake in 2007. david stevenson looked at how that collapse changed state building codes. oakland fire department asis tapbtd chief mark hoffman was one of the first firefighters to arrive on the scene 18 years ago when the loma prieta quake collapsed a

section of the freeway -- department assistant chief mark hoffman. >> reporter: but when he talks about it he rather talk about the kindness of residents. >> surviving the victims and helping the first responders. >> reporter: the 6.9 magnitude quake killed 62 people. federal and state officials spent today reassessing the bay area's readiness. >> this is beginning to breakthrough the asphalt. >> reporter: analysts with the geological service today toured the hayward falls widely expected to be the downfall of the next quake. >> it's being physically pulled apart. >> reporter: the anniversary offered entrepreneurs their chance to show their wares. this company is showing what a 5.8 earthquake would be here in

the bay area. >> here we go. >> reporter: state officials say loma prieta prompted tougher codes before the next big quake rocks the area. >> we're expecting there's about a 67% chance of loma prieta sized earthquake on one of the major faults in the bay area. >> the 89 quake also spurred the california geological service to begin mapping out bay area neighborhoods with weak soil. that are likely to collapse during a big quake. >> if your property falls within one of those zones and you want to develop the property or sale the property you have to identify the hazard. if you want to build on the property you have to mitigate the hazard. >> landfill was also at the root of the hazard. a month after that quake bob mackenzie brought us that report. >> reporter: when san francisco decided to stage a great opposition in 1915, a piece of shoreline was filled and

leveled and the glorious but temporary buildings of the world's fair erected. that piece of filled land became the neighborhood we now call the marina. when last month's earthquake struck, the marina was highly damaged that's because the soil became a kind of quick sand. much of san francisco's financial district is also built on landfill. but the damage there was much less. high rise buildings in the area are set in pilings that go down to bedrock or hard soil beneath the sill. the tragic in the marina has given landfill a bad name. bay area is wondering if it's a

good idea to own a home on landfill. part of the harbor bay isles was built to become the marina. >> building on fill is okay. so long as foundation engineers and construction engineers know that it's fill and as long as they know what the characteristics of the fill are so they can accommodate it. >> reporter: so homes will not need pilings down to bedrock. but a big building may need pylons. when we arrived the crew had drilled to 50 feet without finding bedrock. finally they hit some hard

stop. they finally found it. >> there it is. >> what is it? >> it's rock and bedrock. >> reporter: they will reck -- recommend the land be compacted. >> if it moves it will slide in one piece. >> if the building were to move the idea is to have the building move as a unit rather than in different pieces in different directions at different rates of speed we don't want that. >> when we come back on a second look. the bay area earthquake that did a lot of damage even though it wasn't that strong. and the lesson it offered as to where not to build a home. remembering the massive quake that hit the north in the 1980s. [ male announcer ] december is

customer appreciation month at subway. we're saying thanks with two of your favorite six inch subs. the six-inch cold cut combo, or the six-inch meatball marinara, built fresh from the bread up for just $2 each all december long. subway. eat fresh.

customer appreciation month at subway. we're saying thanks with two of your favorite six inch subs. the six-inch cold cut combo, or the six-inch meatball marinara, built fresh from the bread up for just $2 each all december long. subway. eat fresh. tonight on a second look,

california earthquakes that few might remember hit the bay area. but it was significant as a reminder of the danger along the san andres fault. >> reporter: when the sun rose it showed a community self- satisfied. new houses stood in posttestimony after the postwar boom. so confident were developers that they built many right on top of the san andres fault. were in the complacent comfort of the 50s even earthquakes seemed a thing of the past. there hadn 't been a significant movement since the big one in 1906. and more than a half century later that quake had begun to take on an unreality. a mythic story grandparents

told children. so when the ground shook a bit at 8:38 that march morning in 1937 few gave it a second notice. and the magnitude 2.7 hardly got a second thought. in fact, many had it out of their mind. >> yeah sitting on the bench. and having lunch and thinking everything was okay. >> reporter: the time was 11:44 a.m. >> then it started shaking and i remember seeing the schoolyard roll. just as if it had a rolling pin under it. windows were banging on the building and of course the building was moving around too. at the time of the earthquake there were a few windows open. as the earthquake shook those windows just kept banging in

and out. it was really frightening. not ever having been in an earthquake before. or even talking about them before that. what marlene found so frightening was an earthquake on the fault. centered right smack under daily city and nearly the same place seismologists now believe the 1906 quake may have been centered. so why don't more people remember the 1957 earthquake? >> the magnitude 5.3 the difference between that and loma prieta is factor of 800. so we have would have to have 80 # of these striking at the same time. the damage was set at $1 million at a time when you could buy a house for 2, $2,000. this is the west lake

palicades. when the earth moved in 1957 a lot of these homes showed obvious signs of damage. half of the 580 houses build along the cliffs bore the evidence of the quake. huge cracks in the stucco, sidewalks pulled apart. uc berkeley earthquake researchers kyle stinbrugey took these pictures of this house. with a crack along the garage and between the first and second stories. 44 years later that same house still shows some signs of the earthquake. cracks right there on the gradual just below the mail slot. some say houses should never have been built along these coastal cliffs right on top of one of the most active homes. to homes along west line drive that have had to be demolished in recent years because the ground gave way beneath them. they set a top acliff 700 feet high. a cliff that in wet weather

became a landslide. >> that landslide moved in 1906 yet they built houses on the very top of the landslide in the 50s. >> jason: now hundreds of houses along a 15-mile stretch of coastline sit atop of a development that engineers say is a disaster. was it a lesson not learned in the 1950s earthquake? >> it should have been more of a quake up call than it was. the saddest thing is it caused major damage and they continued development in that area. >> reporter: ilene says she was so shook up that she hardly spoke for a month. >> the nones talked about the end of the world and death and dying and separation of parents. so when it happened that was my first thought. is this the end of the world. >> reporter: it wasn't of course. but perhaps marlene was in the

right place to survive the shaking. remember the name of the school st. emitius. st.emitius is the patron saint against earthquakes. we'll be right back.

when a magnitude 7.1 earthquake violently shook california's north coast in 1992 people there had no idea that in the next 24 hours they would have two aftershocks nearly as strong. the first quake had done enough damage to put it in the history books among california's most destructive. here is diane dweyers report from that first day before there was even more

destruction. >> standing in the doorway did not work. i went around the corner and hugged it like i would hug a baby to try not to get moved. it was throwing me around violently. >> reporter: it probably suffered some of the most serious damage. these stairs used to lead up to the front door. and the house used to have a basement. not anymore. >> when i drove up the first thing that occurred to me is that the stairs were not where they were supposed to be. but what occurred to me is that the stairs were where they were supposed to be but the house wasn't. >> reporter: it's in the national register of historic places. inside scattered dishes and memories are on the floor. and the foundation broke through the beautiful wood floor. this fish tank was inside the house it doesn't even have a scratch. just about a mile down the road

is the small downtown of fern dale. it's only one block long but officials say 80% of the businesses on main street suffered some kind of damage. the entire brick facade of this local grocery store tumbled to the ground when the quake hit. >> we were having our best west celebration. there were quite a few people on the street. the parade had just ended. we were commenting to one another what a beautiful day it was. then the shake started. first it started to roll then it became very violent. of course there's a little bit of panic that ensued after that. >> reporter: when that series of earthquakes hit humble county in 1992 it was especially hard on some of the smaller communities and squeezed by the decline in the timber industry. one of those towns was scoshia which lost its commercial center not from a quake but from a fire that followed.

here is craig heaps report from april 1992. >> the people of scotia thought they had made it through the worse. yesterday morning's earth quake. then another earthquake at midnight. it broke gas lines and the tiny shopper center went up in flames. pacific lumber company owns scotia and all the buildings in it. six stores burned down in the shadow of the company mill. volunteer firemen from all over the area fought the blaze and broke out flames but ammunition and propane tanks. by daylight, the raoupbs were still smoldering -- the ruins were still smoldering. and the owners were talking about rebuilding. >> we will survive and rebuild. >> reporter: these are hard times for the people of scotia. earthquake damage forced many

of them out of the town. >> this makes you feel real small. real small. >> across the eel river and rio dell. the mayor call it is town simply a disaster. >> people don't know what to expect now. most of these people are just out in a daze. i think yesterday morning when the first one hit at 9:06 it was probably 1,000 people out here helping everybody put things back together. >> people here have been without water since the middle of the night. not the first earthquake, not the second earthquake but the third at 4:00 in the morning. knocked this house right off its foundation. the families living in the yard. >> the house shook so severely it needed a brand new foundation. and the first jolt just took it. >> many are living in shelters. >> people are out on the

streets. the homes have been lost and businesses. and that's it for this week's seconds look. i'm julie haener. thank you for watching.

robert: ecuador. its name derived from that horizontal line dividing the northern and southern hemispheres. the country's indigenous culture alone makes it a worthwhile trip. but ecuador has also embraced the fairly modern concept of sustainable eco-tourism and adventure travel. join us, as we travel by bus through ecuador. experiencing its ancient culture and colonial history. while weaving in a good bit of fun along the way. robert: travel. for some, it's a luxurious escape. or maybe, an adrenaline-filled adventure. but if you're like me, it's a precious opportunity to discover and to give back. it's time to get real. it's time to get raw. it's time, for raw travel.