The Eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge opens at 10:15 pm at a cost of $6.4 billion, after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake damaged the old span.

The eastern span replacement of the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge was a construction project to replace a seismically unsound portion of the Bay Bridge with a new self-anchored suspension bridge (SAS) and a pair of viaducts. The bridge is in the U.S. state of California and crosses the San Francisco Bay between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. The span replacement took place between 2002 and 2013, and is the most expensive public works project in California history, with a final price tag of $6.5 billion, a 2,500% increase from the original estimate of $250 million, which was an initial estimate for a seismic retrofit of the span, not the full span replacement ultimately completed. Originally scheduled to open in 2007, several problems delayed the opening until September 2, 2013. With a width of 258.33 ft (78.74 m), comprising 10 general-purpose lanes, it is the world's widest bridge according to Guinness World Records.

On October 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m. PST, the Loma Prieta earthquake occurred at the Central Coast of California. The shock was centered in The Forest of Nisene Marks State Park in Santa Cruz County, approximately 10 mi (16 km) northeast of Santa Cruz on a section of the San Andreas Fault System and was named for the nearby Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains. With an M_w magnitude of 6.9 and a maximum Modified Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), the shock was responsible for 63 deaths and 3,757 injuries. The Loma Prieta segment of the San Andreas Fault System had been relatively inactive since the 1906 San Francisco earthquake until two moderate foreshocks occurred in June 1988 and again in August 1989.