It isn't just the sensationalized pictures that had everyone in the country thinking San Francisco was destroyed. Some in the media flat said so!

My dad was watching CBS news that night. A reporter stood at the water's edge in Sausalito, with the camera looking off into the dark San Francisco Bay (the power was out all over the Bay Area). He said "You used to be able to see San Francisco from here; but tonight, there is no San Francisco."

Of course that panicked my Dad - especially since he couldn't call in to us to find out the real facts, and we couldn't call out of state to him either for about four days.

The media is disgusting! - - See BS on CBS!

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Every foot of the NWP was carefully inspected by the F.R.A., finding very serious and hazardous track and signal conditions to be widespread - every few hundred yards for the whole distance from Eureka to the Bay Area. That, and their apparent refusal to institute training programs for the meager maintenance staff, prompted the FEDs to forcibly shut them down - at least according the FRA's shutdown order.

Most of the work now being done is to correct the FRA's exceptions in order to obtain an FRA operating certificate. Of course, Mother Nature has not been kind either, and has added to the list of repairs needed in some places. The FRA reports did note that poor and improper maintenance procedures made the track much more vulnerable to washout. This had to greatly exascerbate the damage caused when bad weather did come over the years.

Several such orders and reports, giving a fairly good detail history of the NWP's problem, can be found, posted on the FRA website.

OPB