Today is the 18th anniversary of the 1989 quake!

[XemaSab]

I was in middle school at the time, and I was sitting in the living room in Oakland pretending to do social studies homework when I felt a little rattle. Being a well-trained lass, I got up and went to go stand in the doorway. When I was a few feet from the doorway-- BAM! The whole building started moving VIOLENTLY. I stood there and listened to the timbers framing the house creaking LOUDLY while I watched bookshelves fall over, pictures fall off walls, just TOTAL CHAOS. I remembered seeing pictures from the Armenian quake of bodies buried in the rubble of houses and I thought I was going to die.

I went out on the patio where my mom was and I was totally freaked. We got a radio and listened to it and they said on the radio the Bay Bridge had collapsed and there were other freeways that were destroyed. We were up on a hill and we could see big fires both in San Francisco and Berkeley. My mom had bought a GIANT summer sausage, so had a picnic outside for dinner. We ate off that sausage for days. We were both scared of aftershocks so we slept outside.

Man, that really sucked. :(

Anyone else have a quake story?

[begin_within]

1. I was watching the World Series, and I think it was Al Michaels who said,

"We're having an earthquake." They stopped the game and I think they resumed the series another day. We didn't feel it at all here in San Diego.

[LSK]

11. thats my memory of it

Minus the San Diego part.

[mopinko]

12. my brother was at the game.

lives up in the hills, rarely goes to san fran. but was at the game, walked out, went home, no problem. not much of a story.

[ronnykmarshall]

2. I was at work. Battery St between Jackson and Pacific - SF

I was in the sorter room (check processing machines) and when it hit it sounded like a train going down the hall.

I jumped under a table and road it out. My co-worker (in SF training from Seattle) was holding on to the sorter to keep from falling down. After it stopped, he looked at me and said "Was that a ....?" before he could finish I said "Oh yeah and big one .... welcome to San Francisco".

The next few hours were pretty confusing. We didn't know if we should evacuate or not. Another of my co-workers was listening to her radio walkman and telling us what was going on. She looked like she was going to faint when she told us "they are saying the Bay Bridge collapsed". I had visions of the whole thing down. When I went outside, I could see smoke coming from the Marina.

I asked a SFPD officer what we should do and he suggested that we evacuate.

I was actually pretty calm.

My brother was in the hospital at the time in the last stages of AIDS. I has just visited him before going to work (I worked swing shift). I found a phone and was able to get through to the hospital. His line was busy so I knew he was talking to my mom.

My boss drove me and my supervisor home to The Castro. It took about an hour. As soon as I walked in my apt, my phone was ringing ..... I picked it up and said "well hello Momma!". Yes it was her. She was about ready to lose it because she could not get a hold of me. I then called my dad to let him know that Mike and I were ok.

The next few days were spent working my ass off to get caught up. We had to divert our work to LA for a few days, but when we got limited power back at our data center in SF .... it was HELL. I actually worked a shift over 24 hours.

About a month later, my brother died. I took a few weeks off, then went back to work. In the first or second week of December, I came down with a horrible case of bronchitis. My doctor put me on disability until the middle of January. I was on the verge of a physical and mental breakdown from all the stress of the last months.

[Midlodemocrat]

3. Wow. I didn't know that about your brother.

:hug:

So sorry for your loss.

[ronnykmarshall]

4. Thanks sweetie!

[XemaSab]

7. That's a powerful story

Sorry to hear about your brother. :hug:

[ronnykmarshall]

8. Thanks darlin'

1989 was to say the least a very stressful year for me.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

27. I'm so sorry for the loss of your brother Ronnykmarshall

:hug: :hug: :hug:

[ronnykmarshall]

28. Thank you so much!

:loveya:

[Aristus]

5. I was in the EM club at Fort Knox's tank training school, having a near-beer to

celebrate my birthday. The young kid who sold newspapers at the entrance collared me to buy an issue, and that's how I heard the news.

[Westegg]

6. My aunt was in Oakland,

my girlfriend was in San Francisco, and I was in L.A. Some awful hours unfolded until I could get through to them and learn that they were safe. I remember it as if it were yesterday.

Mmmm... Giant summer sausage!

[Hell Hath No Fury]

9. Holy shit, I completely forgot!

Wow, just got flooded with memories of that day.

My sister was visiting from Texas and we spent the day down in Santa Cruz (!) -- as we were leaving for the afternoon we actually drove by the downtown shopping area and looked at the clock and then at each other -- we opted against stopping because I had to be at work that night and we needed to get back to SF. (That shopping area was later completely destroyed by the quake.)

The quake hit while we were driving across one of those long, coastal spans that are 100 feet up from the shoreline. I was driving and felt the car being "shoved" hard into the next lane of traffic -- it kept happening and I was struggling to keep the car in my own lane. I am used to coastal winds that will move your car around a lot, so I though we were just getting some hardcore wind bursts. We had the radio off so we had no idea what was happening.

For the next fifteen minutes we kept seeing cars pulling over to the side of the highway -- I wondered out loud how could so many people be having car/tire problems at one time! :D It wasn't until we reached the statue of Fr. Serra along 280 and the traffic was stopped dead that we heard from a car next to us there had been an earthquake.

For the rest of the drive in we listened to the reports coming in on the radio. When we heard the emergency broadcast system alert and an announcer come on and say, "This is not a test!", we looked at each other and were like, 'oh shit!'

When we got home the house was in fairly good shape -- a tiny bit of structural shifting and a bunch of stuff down in the living room. My house is wood on bedrock and bolted to the foundation, so I think we can ride stuff like this out fairly well.

The only time I panicked was when I went outside and looked north towards the Marina and saw the smoke from the fire. As a San Franciscan I know that it was not the quake that devastated the City but the many fires that engulfed much of the City -- the sight of that smoke just chilled me.

I think it was harder on people outside the area than those of us who were in it. Both my Mom and a close friend were out of state for the quake and had only the TV news reports to go by -- of course, those reports made it sound like the entire City was collapsed and in flames. :eyes: They were freaked out beyond believe -- they thought they had possibly lost familty and homes.

The next few days were pretty unnerving for us -- lots of aftershocks at all hours, never knowing if we were going to have an even larger quake.

Just this past year I went to the 100th anniversary celebration of the 1906 quake -- I loved hearing the stories from the remaining survivors. They got the "Big One" -- we only got the "Kinda Big One". :D

[Shine]

21. I was in Santa Cruz that day

see post #20. :hi:

We were basically cut off for days from the rest of the world. I remember thinking how bizarre it was to be in the center of a major catastrophe. It was surreal and unforgettable.

[Oeditpus Rex]

10. Dad and I were watching the Series pre-game

After about four seconds of shaking, something told me it wasn't a typical quake — maybe because the teevee went off or the sliding glass door seemed like it was about to burst. Whatever, for the first time, I ran outside during a quake. I dropped to my hands and knees in the back yard and watched the house as it swayed like Berber Ivory Jell-O.

Dad hadn't budged from his chair, and he was okay (he was 78 at the time), so I went out and shut off the gas and water mains — though, as it turned out, we didn't have water because the power was off, and the neighborhood well down the street didn't have a back-up generator. (It was about 30 hours before we had power, and therefore water. I'd stored a few gallons, though.)

I was a ham radio operator at the time, so I got on my mobile radio in my truck to get some news. Within about half an hour, it was reported and then confirmed that the Bay Bridge had "collapsed." That's when I finally thought, "Oh, shit. This is The Big One." But, of course, the bridge hadn't actually collapsed, just one section of it. And it wasn't The Big One.

We had a barbecue pit in the back yard that my dad had built before I was born, and it became our kitchen. I made burgers and beans on it, and coffee, and we spent the next 30 hours listening to battery-powered radios and wondering how bad it was. One guy died in Salinas; he was a sign painter or something, and the quake knocked him off a scaffold.

We were lucky; it was a lot worse in places like Watsonville and Santa Cruz, not very far from us but much closer to the epicenter, and Hollister, where I live now, which is right on a branch fault of the San Andreas. And, of course, it was much, much worse in parts of San Francisco. (One of the great ironies, I thought, was that Bob Welch, who was pitching for Oakland in the Series, lost his house in the Marina.)

Oh — I'd quit drinking about three weeks earlier. It was a helluva way to sober up. :)

[Hell Hath No Fury]

14. Hollister?!?!?

Geez, you live in a hotbed of earthquake acitvity!!! "Hollister and quakes", kind of like "bacon and eggs". :D

[Oeditpus Rex]

15. Tell me about it

The Calaveras Fault, a major branch of the San Andreas, runs right through the center of town. There's a bunch of twisted curbs and sidewalks from quakes in the old areas of town, like this one on Seventh Street between West and Powell, right smack on the fault:

[MonkeyFunk]

13. I lived on the peninsula at the time

and my brother lived in SF - in the Marina.

I was vacationing in Italy. One morning, we got up and the hotel clerk told us there'd been an earthquake in SF. I ran down to the train station to buy the International Herald Tribune, but along the way, I saw all the Italian papers. My Italian was good enough to understand the headlines: "Killer Quake hits San Francisco!" "Hundreds Dead in Quake" etc. etc.

I got the Tribune and raced back to the hotel, where we all pored over it. It was all early reports. Yes, they said the Bay Bridge had collapsed. They said there were massive fires in SF, and showed pictures of the Marina district burning. They talked about widespread damage across the whole Bay Area. Made it sound just awful.

I called my parents, who said they'd already spoken with my brother, and he was fine. A few days later, I was able to get through to my house-sitter, and she said everything was just dandy. But it was a harrowing couple of days, that's for sure.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

16. My parents were visiting San Francisco only a few days before...

They were pleased to have decided to return as planned, rather than extending their visit.

[Der Blaue Engel]

17. I had been suffering from the worst headache of my life all day

It got progressively worse as the afternoon wore on, until I finally couldn't work anymore, so I went home early. (Usually, I worked until 7:00.) I was walking up Sutter Street at about Taylor when I thought I was fainting. The ground had swayed under me. I reached for a light post and it moved away from me. Then the sidewalk began to ripple toward me in waves and the hard rocking shake started, and bricks began popping out of the wall of the building in front of me into the street.

At this point, I thought I was going a little mad. I was a newbie to the City and had no idea what was happening. I'd been there for a few smaller quakes, but they didn't act like this, they were more of a side-to-side “porch swing” shake.

Workers in the garage under the building with the popping bricks came running out screaming that there was an explosion. (See? They didn't know what was going on either. Now I don't feel so bad.) Then the quake subsided and people were milling about, not quite knowing what to do. I decided this "explosion" was over, no one seemed to be injured, so I shrugged and started walking up the hill again. The longer I walked, the weirder things got. People were gathering and talking excitedly in front of neighborhood bars, but I was on the other side of the street and couldn't figure out what they were talking about. Then I realized there was a distinct lack of other sounds. It took me a minute to realize all of the electricity around me was out. You get used to the hum of cables and the electric bus lines, and random machinery. It finally dawned on me after a few blocks of no traffic whatsoever on this busy street: Hey! We've just had a massive earthquake.

The next thing I realized was that my headache had disappeared the instant the ground had begun to shake. (I still call it my Earthquake Headache, and I'm convinced it had something to do with a build-up of magnetic energy or some undetectable "pressure" that precedes a quake. The faults are under pressure, so it stands to reason it would affect the atmosphere in some way.) :shrug:

As I headed toward Van Ness and the block that I lived on, people started joining me, pilgrims from the financial district walking in the middle of the street in their business suits and heels in the weirdest, quietest parade ever. When I got to my building, everyone was out front. No one was sure if we should go back in. Just about all of us in that building were from someplace else and didn't know what to do or what to expect.

My boyfriend showed up and I told him I was worried about the cats and I wanted to go upstairs anyway, even though everyone was advising against it. We walked up the five flights (we were kind of used to the old gated elevator getting stuck at the top, so this was nothing new) and opened the door to our apartment to find every single item that we owned smashed in the middle of the floor: dishes, furniture, television, appliances, pictures from the wall. I am very grateful we weren't home when it happened.

But then I began to panic because we couldn't find the kitties. (They were just babies, five months old.) I thought for sure they were dead underneath all of our stuff and I made my boyfriend lift up the heavy pieces and check because I couldn't bear to look. They seemed to be nowhere. We finally heard mewing from the kitchen, but we still couldn’t see them. It turns out they were under the stovetop. They must have climbed in through the back of the gas stove and squeezed themselves into the inch and a half of space between the burners. Poor little things were scared out of their wits.

So we had the kitties (yay!) and went back downstairs with them in a carrier, brought down candles and matches, some warm jackets, and a couple of blankets. It was starting to get dark now, and I mean really dark. You can't imagine seeing the entire Financial District just disappear into blackness unless you've seen it yourself. Someone had a boombox now and we heard all the horror stories: Bay Bridge collapsed, Marina District on fire, Cypress structure collapsed, hundreds dead. The weird festive mood that had been building turned into fear and worry (and a little bit of guilt).

The building manager was in Vegas at the time and our landlord just happened to be (a/the?) fire chief and couldn't be reached, because he was fighting fires in the Marina. Someone decided to break down the door to the gas to turn it off (which the landlord later evicted him for and tried to sue!), and someone else went upstairs and brought down steaks and burgers from their fridges and a hibachi and we all ate in the courtyard in a bizarre picnic by candlelight. By 10:00, most of the tenants had decided to go stay with family or friends, because we had still heard nothing from the landlord and with the aftershocks we scared silly. Chris and I had only been here since July and didn't know anyone, so we stayed. We had a slumber party in the entryway with two other couples, passed a joint, and tried to sleep.

The next two or three days were equally surreal with no electricity in most of the City, and no way to get cash to buy food or water from the few places that were open. The Grub Stake served anyone who wandered in cold cuts, bread and beer.

Wow, that was actually kind of intense to write out. I don’t think I’ve ever written about it before. Guess this one goes in my journal. :)

edited for excessive use of "new to the City"

[XemaSab]

24. Good story... wierd stuff

It's funny reading all these stories how many similarities there are... like there's different phases of "oh shit" that most of us went through, but it's all sort of the same triggers and same reactions in a way. :hug:

[ronnykmarshall]

29. The Grub Stake!

Wow! Talk about memories.

Great place. I remember that too.

[mulsh]

18. I was on the top floor of an 18 story building on Spear St. SF.

This building had teflon pads in its foundation to resist earth quakes. I felt the initial shock while I was in my office door way. The receptionist was walking in my office as the building started shaking so I grabbed her and fell under the large oak table which served as my desk. As 3 floor to ceiling law book fell in the center of the room I was thinking "If I die at least I die with a beautiful Vietnamese woman." When the shaking was over she told me she was more frightened than during the bombing of Saigon.

After the building stopped shaking our boss instructed every one in the mortgage/real estate division to complete what ever deals they were working on with a close dead line. Turned out he was right three days later when the office reopened for clean up there were a couple of people waiting in the lobby to complete their deals. two of them sued the company.
I worked in the lawyer's office. the lawyer and I walked down 18 flights onto the streets where thousands of well dressed people were saying things like " they really should turn the power back on."

I wandered over to friend's office through the rubble on California street but her office had gone home. I hooked up with a very scared woman who had just started working in SF that day. She had moved to Berkeley the Friday before from Houston. together we made our way down to the ferrys and back to the east bay.

[Bennyboy]

19. I was at Candlestick Park waiting for the World Series game.

Sec 23, Row 15, seat 1-4. Extremely strange sensation, kind of a swaying. Whole thing was over in about 5 seconds. The light towers swayed and the stadium kind of felt like "The Wave".

The one thing, there was no fear. Everyone was knew just what to do, no one panicked....

later it turned out that sections of that section were the only ones to have chunks falling out.

It was a very surreal night. everyone was afraid to do anything. We were not sure what to do and kind of just hung around the parking lot for the longest time.... Finally we figured we could take the GG Bridge back to Sac. Weird. Long trip, listening to the reports on the radio about the damage....

The funny thing is...My parents had a friend named "Preach" Perry. He was the number one engineer for Cal-Trans when he retired. He knew all about every bridge and roadway in CA. Sometimes my parents and myself along with Preach would go to A's games at the Coliseum. Whenever we would go over the part of the Cypress Fwy that fell, he would comment "They did not put enough mud jacks under this section". And tell us that was why it was like a washboard and was a very rough ride.

[Shine]

20. I was living in Santa Cruz, within 5 miles of the epicenter

I'll NEVER forget the moment I realized it wasn't just another little earthquake we Californians are used to feeling all the time, but instead, THE REAL THING. That realization is indelibly imprinted on my cellular memory forever. :scared:

I was 25 yrs old and living in a rickety old Victorian-style rental house at the time with another housemate and together we ran out of the kitchen, holding hands. Everything was in slooooow-motion, like some sort of bad science fiction movie. It lasted 15 seconds. That's a loooong time, trust me, when the earth is moving.

We came back into the house and it was a complete wreck. The glass window right next to my futon bed had shattered, falling into the bed. Everything came off the walls. The house sustained some mild damage, nothing too bad. We didn't have power for days and slept outside for the first few nights. I was totally freaked out and for weeks and months afterwards suffered a mild version of PTSD. I would get an adrenaline rush whenever the buses drove by and rumbled the house. We lived right on a bus line, so it happened a lot, unfortunately. I was always checking out the emergency exits whenever I went to a theater or restaurant, so I'd know how to get out quickly, if needed. That way of thinking lasted a long time, as I recall.

Santa Cruz was basically cut off from the rest of the world for a few days. People died in buildings along the Pacific Garden Mall, which was totally devastated from the quake. It was heartbreaking to watch them tear down the old Cooper House, which had been a long-time historical part of the community.

It took years and years for Santa Cruz to fully bounce back. I was selling display print advertising at the time for a local newsweekly that got a lot of its ad revenue from the downtown merchants. After the quake, though, the newsweekly I worked for went out of business b/c there wasn't enough ad revenue. The economic ripples of the quake lasted for years.

On the other hand, people really came together and helped each other during the crisis. It always is inspiring to me to see how ordinary people can rise to heroic heights in times of emergency. Even the smallest light burns brightly in the dark.

Exactly three years after the quake, MrShine proposed to me and I happily accepted. 15 yrs ago today. Life goes on.... :)

[Auggie]

22. When the quake struck I was working in 2 Embarcadero Center

getting ready to head home to Russian Hill to watch the World Series. Since our offices were on the second floor the swaying motion wasn't too bad, though some large shelving and bookcases were nearly knocked over. From our offices we saw a portion of the Golden State Bank facade on Front Street fall down (the building was later razed and replaced by a McDonald's). We were evacuated down the emergency stairwell since the elevators were out, and I walked home because Muni was not running.

From the roof of my apartment building on Russian Hill I could see smoke rising from the Marina district. The Goodyear Blimp that was covering the World Series had made it's way over to investigate and hovered for several minutes right above us. The sun was setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge and it must have gotten gorgeous pictures. It was a rare, warm day and the wind was nonexistent, which helped keep the Marina fire from spreading. My apartment building, though over 60 years old, was wood frame and built on bedrock and fared very well.

Our electricity and gas were out until Friday afternoon. We had water, fortunately. And our building had solar hot water heating, so we could still take hot showers!

[XemaSab]

25. Interesting you should mention the weather...

I remember it being very warm and hazy... classic, classic earthquake weather.

[NV Whino]

23. I felt it up here in the Napa Valley

My house is on bedrock so the sensation was a boom and a jolt. I knew immediately what it was and that if I felt it was big and close. I ran outside. Then I ran back inside to turn off the computer. Then I ran outside again. When there were not more big jolts I turned on the radio to see where the quake was. Then I started calling, first to my hairstylist in San Francisco. Amazingly I reached him at his house. I said, "I think I need to reschedule, Duncan." He said he thought it might be a good idea--understatement of the year. LOL He gave me a report of what he had seen and experienced then I called my mother in L.A. to let her know I was all right. Geez, the priorities we have in an emergency. A little later no one could get through anywhere on the phone lines, not even back east.

Two days before the earthquake I had been in San Francisco at a pro choice march that marched down market street. How lucky we were that the quake didn't happen on that Sunday.

[RFKHumphreyObama]

26. 1989 was a bad year for earthquakes

It was also the year that we had the worst earthquake in Australian history in the town of Newcastle. I wasn't there at the time but moved there two years later and lived there for the next decade and the after-effects were still evident long after it happened. It was the first earthquake in Australin history in which lives were lost

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Newcastle_earthquake
It was nowhere on the scale of the 1989 US earthquake or many other major earthquakes but it was a big event here