In the wake of the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, Caltrans commissioned an oral history project to document the personal and professional experiences of Caltrans employees who worked to restore the State's damaged transportation system.
At the time of the earthquake, Ann Hansen was the Deputy District Director in charge of Operations for Caltrans in the District 4 office in San Francisco. In this interview she describes her personal earthquake experience and then managing the Command Center at the 150 Oak Street location. Caltrans, District 4 received the Institute of Transportation Engineers award for Transportation Excellence for the work that she and her staff did to respond immediately to facilitate the flow of traffic through the damaged highway system and to plan, design and implement measures which reduced travel time and inconvenience to the public while the repairs were being made. Ann Hansen was one of the first women engineers to work for the California Department of Public Works, Division of Highways in 1951, later to become Caltrans and in her career worked in transportation planning, highway design and construction and traffic safety and operations. She also was the first woman to graduate from the Institute of Traffic and Transportation at UC Berkeley in 1974.
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