Traders on the Pacific Stock Exchange worked in the dark Wednesday, and banks and brokerages were thrown into disarray after a killer earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay Area, the financial center of the West Coast.
The heart of San Francisco's downtown financial district was strewn with rubble and glass from the devastating quake, measuring 6.9 or 7.0 on the Richter scale, that struck at 5:04 p.m. PDT Tuesday, knocking out power and telephones, and collapsing buildings and roadways.
Stock brokerages and bank branches did not open in the areas hardest hit by the second-worst earthquake in U.S. history, and government officials implored workers to stay home.
Many banks and brokerages said they transferred data processing operations to locations outside the areas hit by the quake so customers would have access to their accounts.
The death toll from the second-worst earthquake in U.S. history exceeded 270 and preliminary damage estimates totaled $1 billion.
Equities trading on the Pacific Stock Exchange was moved to Los Angeles, with traders in the candlelit San Francisco PSE office issuing orders over the telephone. Options trading was suspended.
'It's been very hard to do business,' said Richard Czapleski, a specialist on the PSE trading floor. 'You're depending on someone else to be your eyes and ears.'
Volume on the exchange was about one-fifth the normal level.
Montgomery Securities Inc., a large brokerage house based in San Francisco, could not place orders on Wall Street's trading floors due to power outages, said Bob Steiner, a floor clerk on the New York Stock Exchange.
'Our business is virtually at a standstill,' he said. 'We are getting some clients calling here directly, but we have a limited amount of order flows.'
Cynthia Kasabian, a spokeswoman for San Francisco-based Bank of America, said only branches 'that were safe to open' would serve customers Wednesday.
She said branches would stay closed 'primarily in the financial district and Marina district' of San Francisco, where fires broke out and buildings caved in after the quake struck.
Most of Bank of America's automated teller machines in the region were back in service Wednesday after being blacked out by the quake, she added.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve System said the Fedwire, the central bank's funds and securities transfer service, was operating throughout the United States Wednesday. The Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco was operating on emergency power.
A disaster recovery plan was put into effect at San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank, which did not open all of its Bay Area branches Wednesday, said Dick Clapp, a senior vice president based in New York.
'We've moved a lot of the operations out of the city (of San Francisco),' he said, adding that the bank's electronic systems were back up and running.
'Checks are being processed,' he said. 'The only thing that's not operative is the manual operations such as lock-box processing.'
The U.S. Postal Service, which could not process mail because of power outages immediately after the earthquake, re-established most services Wednesday, said Diane Todd, a spokeswoman in New York.
'Some adjustments will have to made in areas and streets that are off-limits,'she said. 'But we have been calling employees in to work.'
Charles Schwab & Co., the nation's largest discount brokerage firm based in San Francisco whose computer operations were disrupted for about four hours by the earthquake, said customers' trading orders were being processed by a back-up processing facility in New York.
PaineWebber Inc. said its 13 regional brokerage firms in the San Francisco area could not receive electronic stock quotations or send trading orders.
'Each of those offices has been assigned to work with another one outside the area that can accept trading orders over the phone,' said Beverly Trabert, a spokeswoman in New York.
