Residents in the San Francisco Bay Area are cleaning up and assessing the damage today after a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit the region just south of Napa at 3:20 a.m. Sunday. It was the largest shaker since the magnitude 6.9 Loma Prieta earthquake on October 17, 1989.
The local stations broke in early, starting continuing coverage by getting viewers up to date on what happened. Most of the stations started with quick phoners with local residents and reporters living nearest the epicenter. Later in the morning, live shots and video started coming in showing the mess caused by the quake.
First with anchors on the air was ABC owned KGO which started running a crawl at 4:00 a.m. over infomercials, until Matt Keller broke in at 4:22 a.m. He was later joined by Kristen Sze and Cheryl Jennnings.
NBC owned station KNTV came on next at 4:33 a.m. Sam Brock tossed to a phoner with meteorologist Jeff Ranieri talking about the quake and expected damage.
CBS owned KPIX was first with a crawl, starting it about 15 minutes after the quake reportedly hit. At 4:40 a.m., anchor Anne Makovec could be seen on air, but not heard. The station came back a few minutes later with the problem fixed. At 5:00 a.m. the station took the network’s coverage anchored by Don Dahler, but broke back in with local coverage a little more than a minute later. Makovec was later joined on set by meteorologist Paul Deanno.
Newly owned FOX station KTVU, had an early start to its Mornings on 2 show. The station broke in at 5:00 a.m. with Claudine Wong and Mike Mibach in the studio. They were joined by meteorologist Mark Tamayo.