Old Journals

October 18, 1989

Ten minutes before three a.m. I woke up and lay in bed, foggy and apprehensive. Waiting for the shaking to start.

Then it shook – or rolled, or rumbled – and I lay there with my heart racing, not sure if I’d dreamt it. I got up and turned on the TV and waited for them to say something about an earthquake, and when they didn’t I went back to bed.

I couldn’t get back to sleep. Fifteen minutes later, the next one hit. That one gave the building a good shake. Now I’m sitting out here in the living room in front of the TV, listening to the audio from KCBS and the calls coming in to confirm the times and magnitudes: 4.2 at 2:53, 5.0 at 3:14.

The weirdest thing is the way you feel them before they hit. It’s like when you’ve been on a boat all day, and you go to sleep that night and as you’re drifting off you feel the pitching and rolling just as if you were still on the water.

**

The big one hit yesterday, just after 5 pm. I was home, at my Mac. When the shaking started I got up and stood in the doorway until the CD I’d been listening to (¡Oye Listen! Compacto Caliente) started to skip. The power went out. The SPA Karateka plaque fell. The bookcases moved away from the wall. CDs cascaded onto the floor. Car alarms and other alarms started going off down in the street. I couldn’t believe it when I heard later on the radio that it had only lasted 15 seconds.

It stopped and I stood there dazed. The window opposite mine went up and the building manager’s face peered out. We looked at each other until he went away. There was smoke and sirens and people were pouring out into the streets. I felt an overwhelming urge to get outside. As I passed the hall table I stepped around Tomi’s huge mirror, lying shattered on the floor. I hadn’t heard it fall.

I took the stairs down. Huge cracks had appeared in all the walls, including over my doorway, and there was plaster on the carpet.

Downstairs, I met the manager and two girls I’d never seen before. The tall blond one (from 201) put her hand on my shoulder and said “Are you OK? You look terrible!” Soon there was a little group gathered in front of the building. In ten minutes I’d met more of my neighbors than in fifteen months of living here.

The blond girl had a Walkman and passed on information as it came in. We didn’t know how bad it was or when it had struck. For all we knew, LA had been leveled and we’d just felt the tail end of it. The numbers started coming in: 5.5, 5.6, 5.9. The baseball game was called. The traffic flow picked up – back to normal rush hour. The car alarms and smoke alarms stopped and everything was quiet. Only there was this strange dark cloud on the horizon over Oakland.

I went upstairs and checked the damage. The phone and power were still out. I rejoined the people outside. Bob (the manager) and Larry (the owner) were making a quick inspection of the building. I wondered where Tomi was. She’d been supposed to meet Rob Finkelstein in Menlo Park to watch the game on TV. I looked around and there she was, coming down the sidewalk. I’d never been so happy to see someone.

We sat in her car and listened to the radio. When we heard that some buildings had fallen down south of Market, and a 50-foot section of the Bay Bridge had collapsed, it finally started to sink in that we were in the middle of a major event. By now they were calling it 6.9 or 7.0.

I took Tomi upstairs and showed her the damage. She was impressed. It seemed like it would be a good idea to get out of the city, but the radio was telling everyone to stay put, and the prospect of getting stuck in a mass exodus of bumper-to-bumper traffic was not appealing. In the end we decided to risk it. I felt very disloyal, walking out the front door past my fellow neighbors with a suitcase. “Gettin’ out of town, huh?” said Larry the building owner, with the contempt of a true San Franciscan. “Smart.”

That drive was scary. All the signal lights were out, and rush-hour traffic through the Presidio was heavier than usual. I didn’t know if Tomi had gone ahead or was waiting behind; I cursed myself for having let us get separated. It seemed like a real possibility that traffic would grind to a complete halt (was the bridge even open?) and we’d have to abandon our cars. If that happened, we’d never find each other. As I came over the hill I saw fires burning in the Marina.

Then, with relief, I saw Tomi had pulled over on Lyon St. Once we got on the Golden Gate Bridge it was smooth sailing. We went to her house in Mill Valley and sat watching the TV news coverage as the incredible footage started coming in. Me with a growing sense of loss at having left the city, wishing I’d stayed to be part of it. But it was good to have power and food. We went to the movies, in the earthquake-proof Sequoia Twin.

Posted on Oct 18, 1989 in Old Journals | 1 comment