CONNECTIONS The EERI Oral History Series Joseph P. Nicoletti Stanley Scott Interviewer CONNECTIONS The EERI Oral History Series Joseph P. Nicoletti CONNECTIONS The EERI Oral History Series Joseph P. Nicoletti Stanley Scott, Interviewer Earthquake Engineering Research Institute Editor: Gail Hynes Shea, Berkeley, California Cover and book design: Laura H. Moger, Moorpark, California Copyright 2006 by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute and the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. No part may be reproduced, quoted, or transmitted in any form without the written permission of the Executive Director of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute or the Director of the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Requests for per- mission to quote for publication should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the oral history subject and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or policies of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute or the University of California. Published by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute 499 14th Street, Suite 320 Oakland, California 94612-1934 Tel: (510) 451-0905Fax: (510) 451-5411 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.eeri.org EERI Publication Number: OHS-14 ISBN (pbk.): 1-932884-24-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Nicoletti, Joseph P. Joseph P. Nicoletti / Stanley Scott, interviewer. p. cm. -- (Connections, the EERI oral history series ; 14) Includes index. ISBN 1-932884-24-6 (alk. paper) 1. Nicoletti, Joseph P.--Interviews. 2. Civil engineers--United States--Interviews. 3. Civil engineering--California--History--Sources. I. Scott, Stanley, 1921-2002. II. Title. TA140.N53A5 2006 624.092--dc22 2006022188 Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 Acknowledgments Funding for production of this volume was primarily provided by a generous donation from the Blume Foundation, established in honor of John A. Blume. Blume’s oral history was published in 1994 as volume two in the Connections series. Additional support was provided by FEMA/U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Science Foundation. v Table of Contents The EERI Oral History Series ........................................................................... ix Foreword ......................................................................................................... xiii Personal Introduction by Sigmund A. Freeman.................................................xv Chapter 1 Early Years and Education.......................................................... 1 Chapter 2 World War II............................................................................... 9 Chapter 3 With the Blume Firm................................................................ 13 Chapter 4 Major Projects Prior to the San Fernando Earthquake ........... 19 Chapter 5 Post-San Fernando Work ......................................................... 33 Chapter 6 Code Development ................................................................... 43 Chapter 7 Hazardous Buildings ................................................................. 53 Chapter 8 Existing Buildings ..................................................................... 61 Chapter 9 Caltrans and Peer Review ......................................................... 71 Chapter 10 East Crossing of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge .......................................... 77 Chapter 11 Some Engineering Personalities............................................... 85 Chapter 12 Personal Reflections.................................................................. 93 Photographs ................................................................................................... 97 Appendix ................................................................................................. 105 Index ................................................................................................. 107 vii The EERI Oral History Series This is the fourteenth volume in the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute’s series, Connections: The EERI Oral History Series. EERI began this series to preserve the recollections of some of those who have had pioneering careers in the field of earth- quake engineering. Significant, even revolutionary, changes have occurred in earth- quake engineering since individuals first began thinking in modern, scientific ways about how to protect construction and society from earthquakes. The Connections series helps document this important history. Connections is a vehicle for transmitting the fascinating accounts of individuals who were present at the beginning of important developments in the field, documenting sometimes little-known facts about this history, and recording their impressions, judg- ments, and experiences from a personal standpoint. These reminiscences are them- selves a vital contribution to our understanding of where our current state of knowledge came from and how the overall goal of reducing earthquake losses has been advanced. The Earthquake Engineering Research Institute, founded in 1949 as a non- profit organization to provide an institutional base for the then-young field of earth- quake engineering, is proud to help tell the story of the development of earthquake engineering through the Connections series. EERI has grown from a few dozen individ- uals in a field that lacked any significant research funding to an organization with nearly 3,000 members. It is still devoted to its original goal of investigating the effects of destructive earthquakes and publishing the results through its reconnaissance report series. EERI brings researchers and practitioners together to exchange information at its annual meetings and, via a now-extensive calendar of conferences and workshops, provides a forum through which individuals and organizations of various disciplinary backgrounds can work together for increased seismic safety. The EERI oral history program was initiated by Stanley Scott (1921-2002). The first nine volumes were published during his lifetime, and manuscripts and interview tran- scripts he left to EERI are resulting in the publication of other volumes for which he is being posthumously credited. In addition, the Oral History Committee is including fur- ix ther interviewees within the program’s scope, following the Committee’s charge to include subjects who: 1.) have made an outstanding career-long contribution to earthquake engineering, 2.) have valuable first-person accounts to offer concerning the history of earthquake engineering, and 3.) whose backgrounds, considering the series as a whole, appropriately span the various disciplines that are included in the field of earthquake engineering. Scott’s work, which he began in 1984, summed to hundreds of hours of taped interview sessions and thousands of pages of transcripts. Were it not for him, valuable facts and recollections would already have been lost. Scott was a research political scientist at the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He was active in developing seismic safety policy for many years, and was a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission from 1975 to 1993. Partly for that work, he received the Alfred E. Alquist Award from the Earthquake Safety Foundation in 1990. Scott received assistance in formulating his oral history plans from Willa Baum, Director of the University of California at Berkeley Regional Oral History Office, a division of the Bancroft Library. An unfunded interview project on earthquake engineering and seismic safety was approved, and Scott was encouraged to proceed. Following his retirement from the University in 1989, Scott continued the oral history project. For a time, some expenses were paid from a small grant from the National Science Foundation, but Scott did most of the work pro bono. This work included not only the obvious effort of preparing for and conducting the interviews themselves, but also the more time-consuming task of transcribing, reviewing, and editing transcripts. The Connections oral history series presents a selection of senior earthquake engineers who were present at the beginning of the modern era of earthquake engineering. The term “earthquake engi- neering” as used here has the same meaning as in the name of EERI—the broadly construed set of disciplines, including geosciences and social sciences as well as engineering itself, that together form a related body of knowledge and collection of individuals that revolve around the subject of earthquakes. The events described in these oral histories span many kinds of activities: research, design projects, public policy and broad social aspects, and education, as well as interesting personal aspects of the subjects’ lives. x Published volumes in Connections: The EERI Oral History Series Henry J. Degenkolb 1994 John A. Blume 1994 Michael V. Pregnoff and John E. Rinne 1996 George W. Housner 1997 William W. Moore 1998 Robert E. Wallace 1999 Nicholas F. Forell 2000 Henry J. Brunnier and Charles De Maria 2001 Egor P. Popov 2001 Clarence R. Allen 2002 Joseph Penzien 2004 Robert