5:04 Oct 17, 1989

To old-timers in the San Francisco Bay area, every World Series brings back memories of the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. Those of you who lived through it remember the time and date like it was yesterday.

A still warm day, much like today, what we jokingly call "earthquake" weather. I was washing the car...the dogs lounging in the drive...steaks marinating ...in a hurry to finish in time to watch the game.

Suddenly the car began to bounce off the ground like a rubber ball. I couldn't fathom what was happening...then I heard a low rumble and turned to see a two foot high "wave" rolling up the concrete driveway towards me. I just stood there dumbfounded, hose running. I managed to grab the car door handle as it hit and kept my footing... watching 60' stone pines sway from side to side...the garage doors twisted off the tracks with a metal shriek and it was gone. Dogs barking, alarms going off in the neighborhood...people streamed into the street. Stunned...but not panicky.

I dashed into the garage and turned off the gas...the power flickered...no dial tone...flipped on the TV...no cable. I grabbed the dog leashes and quickly walked to the neighborhood emergency meeting point...a small band of us went from house to house...list in hand. Everyone was okay in our sector.

When I returned home the power was back on...still no dial tone. Started the car but the car phone was down too... I was on my own. I hoped my family wasn't freaking out...but no way to contact them.

I grilled a steak...opened a bottle of wine... fetched the small portable TV from the guest room...pulled up the rabbit ears and sat there for hours in the dark watching...dogs and cats glued to me on the sofa (the Spousal Unit was away on business) watching ...shivering with every aftershock...too wired to sleep.

My peninsula neighborhood near Stanford University was lucky, being on bedrock, only a few fallen chimneys, trashed shelves, jammed doors and facade damage. Our house sustained very little damage other than the garage doors and cracked plaster.

This is not the first strong earthquake I've experienced...but it is one I recall viscerally...maybe because the real-time media coverage made it larger than life...even for those of us in the midst of it ...we could see the horrendous damage in Oakland...the Marina fires...the Bay Bridge...the images the world saw from the Goodyear Blimp magnified the impact. Usually disaster victims are cut off from the media coverage...we witnessed the earthquake in a new way. Our local TV coverage was spotty...many without backup generators...but KGO and news anchor Pete Wilson remained on-air for three days non-stop...a calm, steadying voice...balancing the network images with neighborhood reports, instructions and a little reality...99% of us were safe. Collectively, we held our breath and waited as the earth continued to move for days.

On some primal level, we're still waiting.

Postscript: I worked in Emeryville and had a rotating four day on, three day off schedule in '89.... I would have been here any given day at 5:04PM...heading for the Bay Bridge and home...Oct 17, 1989 was not my day to die.

A funny aside: Whenever we leave the dogs on their own overnight we turn on a radio in the garage near their beds...tuning in a talk station as it keeps them company. A year after the quake we went away overnight and forgot about the date. We returned home Sunday evening to a pair of very freaked out dogs...the radio station replayed the tapes from the quake all day. Now the "dog" radio is tuned to classical FM.

Posted by feste at October 17, 2003 07:56 PM | TrackBack