1. From the San Francisco Business Times:
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/print-edition/2014/10/17/pacific-stock-
exchange-was-saved-in-loma-prieta.html
Guest opinion
How the stock exchange was saved
Dale Carlson Oct 17, 2014
The Loma Prieta earthquake that shook San Francisco 25 years ago this month didn’t physically
damage the Pacific Stock Exchange, but the citywide loss of power was a serious threat to the
exchange and to public investors. To keep our options floor open, we organized an
unprecedented airlift to move the operation out of state.
Like other San Francisco businesses, our historic headquarters at 301 Pine Street went dark
when PG&E shut down the grids, a precaution against leaking gas explosions. And like most
others, we had no backup generator. At the time, the Pacific Stock Exchange was a regional
stock exchange with equity trading floors in San Francisco and Los Angeles, as well as the
nation’s third largest options market.
The stocks and bonds we listed were largely unaffected. On Wednesday morning, we simply
directed trading activity to our equities floor in Los Angeles or to one of the other stock
exchanges east of the Mississippi.
For our San Francisco options trading, it was a different story.
We were the only exchange in the country trading options on hundreds of blue chip stocks like
Compaq, Southern California Edison and McDonnell Douglas. Those options simply didn’t
trade – anywhere – if we were closed. With options set to expire on Friday (a “triple witching”
Friday, no less), the financial calamity would be enormous if we didn’t reopen our markets, fast.
We’d heard from colleagues at the other exchanges the night of Loma Prieta.
“Are you okay?” they asked. “Is anyone hurt or missing? Is there anything we can do to help?”
We had an answer ready.
“Well, yes, as a matter of fact there is,” we said. “We need some space on your floor. We need
you to reprogram your systems to recognize our option symbols.
“And we’ll see you tomorrow.”
We chartered a plane, rounded up 160 traders and staff and flew it out of Oakland at 9 p.m.
Wednesday night. It landed at O’Hare, where Pacific traders boarded buses and headed for the
Chicago Board Options Exchange.

2. The plane went on to Newark, where buses ferried our team to the American and New York
Stock Exchanges in Lower Manhattan.
Helicopters flew the balance of our people to Philadelphia and its stock exchange.
By noon Thursday, eastern time – just 40 hours after the quake – we’d opened four satellite
floors across the country and all our options were again trading.
Traders on the American gave us a rousing ovation. The NYSE had a crew of carpenters and
electricians build a new trading floor for us overnight. Union carpenters and union electricians.
They never sent us a bill.
On any given day, exchanges are fiercely competitive. In times of crisis, however, competitive
interests were put aside in the interest of protecting public investors. That was the case for us in
1989. That was the case after Sept. 11, 2001: Just blocks away from the World Trade Center, the
American’s trading floor was unusable for several weeks. Philly welcomed Amex members with
open arms until repairs were completed.
The exchanges remain competitive, though they’re all much better prepared for disaster, with
robust recovery plans and redundant power supplies. Today, transactions that would have been
handled by the Pacific Exchange are on the electronic communication network NYSE Arca, the
successor of the company that acquired the exchange in 2005. Now that sophisticated electronic
systems dominate trading activity, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see anything quite so dramatic as the
Airlift of 1989.
Dale Carlson was vice president of the Pacific Exchange from 1987-2005.