San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge

This guide to the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge follows the moment on October 17, 1989, when the Loma Prieta earthquake tore open a section of the upper deck and a driver's car went into the gap left behind, and the reporter who happened to be crossing the span at that exact moment. It reaches back to the bridge's opening in 1936, months before its more famous neighbor, when it was the costliest bridge ever built and its tunnel through Yerba Buena Island the largest of its kind. Twenty-four workers died building it.