Author / loma prieta

by loma prieta

The Cosby Show

Jasmine R

I was sitting in my living room in Millbrae, watching the Cosby Show with my sister. The shaking began and like a movie, we looked at each other and shouted ‘Earthquake!!’ I ran to the doorway and screamed into the garage. My sister ran all over the house.

There wasn’t much damage to our home but we saw our swimming pool making huge waves. Later our parents took us to get pizza in San Bruno and in the parking lot I saw an unused Engelbert Humperdinck concert ticket for that night.

The next day at school a friend said she had been on the toilet during the quake, and I was very grateful that I had not been!

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Facing the Embarcadero

Lydia Steinauer

Stretched out on the living room rug, I was designing my high school senior yearbook page when the television began to shake.

“What’s wrong with the game?” my dad asked, horrified that anything would dare interrupt a world series playoff game between the Oakland A’s and his beloved Giants.

We lived on the 8th floor of an apartment building facing the Embarcadero Center and Ferry Building. We also lived on landfill. Moments after the shaking started, the TV screen went black. We all ran into the hallway and crouched down as the walls bowed and shivered around us. But what I remember most was the sound; it was as though the earth was growling. Why had no one ever told me that earthquakes could be loud?

When we assessed the damage, I was devastated to see that my chocolate Teddy Grahams had gotten soggy from the fish tank’s sloshing water. But I was in disaster mode, and I loved chocolate, so I ate them anyway.

soggy teddy grahams 1989

For months afterwards, the flagpole atop the Ferry Building leaned just a little to the right. Even the Embarcadero Freeway, usually flowing with the constant hum of cars below my window, was silent- an eery reminder that our city had in a matter of seconds been changed forever.

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Picking Apples

Ali Polk

Acacia Street in Salinas, CA. I was 5, it was apple-picking season and I was down the street at my neighbor’s house with my best friend Ashley (who was 6 at the time). We were picking apples, and all of the sudden the ground was rumbling and cracking. The earth shook below us and mini hills were formed from the rolling ground. Then, an apple fell onto my head! I was in tears. I thought I was going to lose my apples.

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Fisher Middle School

Jessica H

My family had tickets to the World Series A’s v. Giants game. For some reason, we had switched them with friends to attend a later game. So we were at home in Los Gatos, adhering to our usual routine. To this day I’m grateful my 1989 quake experience was not at Candlestick. I’m sure it was freaky.

I was a 9 year old at soccer practice on the Fisher Middle School playing field when it hit. The earth started to roll and I was knocked off my feet. My teammates and I laughed as we tried to stand up and “surf” the quake. We were on a huge, open, grassy field. We thought it was good fun. After the earthquake passed, we were hustled by our coach over to the parking lot. Apparently practice was over and our parents would be picking us up early.

fisher middle school 1989

Mom arrived, looking truly shaken. She’d been downtown, taking the precious break from the kids to get her nails done. I’d find out later she had her shoes off, and had to navigate a large amount of broken glass. The brick salon, located in downtown Los Gatos, had a fair bit of damage, as did many of the buildings around it.

My 7 year old brother and I got in the car, not sure why she was so upset. As we drove the 1.5 miles home, we began to understand a little. Being just 9, my memory may be less than accurate, but I think the road pavement was cracked, drivers were behaving erratically, and things seemed confusingly out of place.

When we arrived home, our possessions were strewn everywhere. The chimney was half collapsed. The cat was missing. We’d find him hours later, behind the toilet, soaking wet, although we’ll never be sure why. The backyard pool was ⅔ full. It had turned into a wave, drenching the yard around it. The large armoire in my parents room had fallen over. My mom remarked anyone near it would have been crushed. All the glassware and china was broken.

The part of the quake I remember most was aftershocks. They kept coming for what seemed like forever. You never knew if it would be short, tiny one, or if it was the next big one. A small one meant playing it cool, hanging wherever you were at that moment. But if it seemed like it was a big one, you’d run to the nearest doorway for safety. It was hard to tell when to run. I think we slept in the yard that first night. We wondered if the trees might fall on us, but preferred them to a potentially collapsing house. It was stressful.

To this day, if I feel a certain kind of shaking or hear a rumbling noise, I tense up. Did you know you can hear an earthquake coming? It rolls toward you, ominous and imminent.

by loma prieta

Panhandle Garage

Chris Brown

I was working in the garage on the bottom floor of our dilapidated three-story apartment building on Oak St. between Schrader and Cole, at the end of the Panhandle. This is the acceleration spot for traffic coming out of Golden Gate Park heading east towards downtown, a continuous glide through the timed traffic lights. The wave of cars created its own breeze, usually circulating the cool foggy air, but on this day it was still and hot. So I had the door open while I worked inside my piano repair and electronic music shop at the back of dingy three cars-in-a-row capacity garage.

First car in was my ‘65 manual transmission Ford Econoline, the working piano-tuner’s vehicle that I used to navigate my SF neighborhood customers. Second car was the landlord’s brand-new Mercedes sedan draped in a car-cover, that was never moved and never driven. It represented his attitude towards all his property, especially the apartment building — leave everything exactly as you acquired it, never using it, so you’ll never need to maintain, much less repair it. Behind the Mercedes, my shop space began with a workbench made from a salvaged door covered with 1/8″ plywood, my drill-press and table-saw, and disassembled pianos in repair. Behind that, a makeshift drummer’s room, made from 2×4’s and sheetrock covered with green and yellowish carpet fragments.

Panhandle Garage 1989

Its ceiling was about 7 feet, and the room itself about 10×18, packed with an upright piano, a small table for electronics construction and composing, small loudspeakers hanging from the walls, and an collection of homemade electroacoustic instruments made from stainless steel, plastics, recycled piano parts, and wood. A jury-rigged lampcord power system draped over the walls to a set of 3 bare incandescent bulbs and a single fluorescent light fixture. Behind the room was a narrow, lightless storage space, separated by a wall from the last part of the garage which contained the three water heaters for the building, and three more old water heaters that had been decommissioned, but never disposed of.

This was my lair between 1981 and 1998, where I made my living and made my art.

I was sitting at the electronics table soldering, enjoying the afternoon, when the quake hit. Suddenly the whole garage-tunnel was moving, even the walls were wobbling radically from side to side, like 15 degrees or so, and my general impression was that everything solid was becoming liquid. The lights went out and soot started raining down from the garage ceiling as I staggered first towards the doorway of the drummer’s room, then thought to myself quickly that if the apartment building collapsed, I would be dead meat in this dusty-old tomb. My little studio would be crushed like a matchbox.

My next flash of brilliance was to run towards the Mercedes to lie underneath it, because surely its German steel and Michellin tires would protect me better. As I lurched in that direction, the first quake subsided, and so I never got down on the dingy floor but kept going all the way out of the garage. There I realized that I was probably still in danger from things that might fall off the roof, as I stood in the very spot where 8 years before a roofer had fallen to his death on the sidewalk.

I ran quickly across Oak St. into the Panhandle where only the tough old eucalyptus trees might be dangerous. Dazed Haight-Ashbury residents started to join up on the grassy strip. The ground wasn’t moving, but alarms were starting to go off. A fire would soon begin between Shrader and Stanyan St., and I thought I’d hazard a trip up to my 2nd floor apartment to check for damage and turn off the gas.

I was up in the apartment when the first strong aftershock hit, but like riding a wave, I felt way safer with only one floor of the building above me. After it stopped I picked up the phone and was surprised to get a dial tone. I phoned my mother in Chicago and quickly told her I was ok.

After that, the phones went dead for a few days.

by loma prieta

SOMA to Wyoming

Lisa Heller

I was living in Noe Valley and working South of Market for a bathrobe manufacturer. I had flown back from NYC that morning and the cab driver told me to cancel my flight because there was going to be an earthquake.

I had just arrived from the airport at the office and checked in with my colleagues. I asked my friend Lois if we could leave early because I was exhausted from my trip. As I walked back into my office the earth began to shake. I had never been in an earthquake before. And before the words “earthquake” could even come out of my mouth I was under my desk. The wall of windows surrounding my office had imploded. After it was over I was running through the sewing shop telling everyone to get out of the brick building we were in. As we approached the steps some of them had shifted and it was scary walking down them.

SOMA desk 1989

Once we were out of the building I remember seeing the blacktop of the street ripple like a wave. I had never seen anything like it before in my life. We drove back to Noe Valley and all of the traffic lights were out. It was unwritten that each intersection became a four way stop. We could see the flames in the Marina and I was in tears.

I was worried about my brother that was working on the other side and would have had to cross the Bay Bridge when I heard it collapsed. I arrived home to find all of my dishes and glassware on the floor. All of my neighbors began gathering outside of my neighbor Tom’s apartment building. One of the neighbors pulled his car onto the sidewalk and had his radio on. Fortunately my landline was working (we had no cell phones in those days) and I called my family in the east to let them know I was ok. They let me know that they had also heard from my brother who lived six blocks north of me. I was relieved.

Tom and I gathered water and flashlights and walked down the street turning off all of the gas valves and checking on the elderly on our block – giving them the flashlights and water and turning on radios if they had them. The rest of us gathered in the middle of the block and stayed close together. We brought out wine and the contents of our refrigerators to have a block party and listen to the news.

As the sun set, the fire in the Marina lit up the sky. We were all pretty quiet, scared, relieved and dealing with all of the aftershocks. At about midnight the power was restored in our neighborhood and the gas company came by to say that they would be around in the morning to turn on our gas.

Within a month of the earthquake, I quit my job and moved back to Wyoming. It is a day I will never forget and one of the reasons why I will never return to California to live.

by loma prieta

Banana Republic

Sun Lee

I had moved here from Hawaii, fresh out of high school just a couple months prior, and was working at the original Banana Republic store on Grant Avenue (this was when they were still true to their roots and their clothing catered to the safari adventurer/international photojournalist/exotic traveler demographic). Even the interior of the store had a jungle theme decor and there was a giraffe whose feet rested on the subterranean level (the women’s dept), but was tall enough that you could see his neck and head emerge through the stairwell opening on the main street level (men’s dept).

My shift was due to start in a few minutes. I dashed downstairs to the employees-only bathroom located near the stockroom, passing the breakroom on my way. I was washing my hands when the ground started to shake and I reached out and held onto the walls and heard something metal fall to the concrete floor just outside the bathroom. It did not immediately occur to me that it was an earthquake; I had never experienced an earthquake in Hawaii. I thought perhaps a heavy truck had passed through overhead on Grant Avenue was the cause of the shaking.

When the shaking stopped, I headed out to the sales floor and saw that the breakroom, which had been full when I first passed it, was now empty. I walked out on to the women’s dept. and noticed that it was completely deserted. I looked around in bewilderment and a gal who did our window displays came running down the stairs and told me that “Sun, that was an earthquake and you need to get your ass upstairs and out on to the street in case this building collapses!”

My older sister, Yvonne, was visiting from Hawaii (and was staying with me), found me on Grant Ave. staring up at the nearby buildings. Turns out she walking up the stairs exiting the Montgomery BART station when the earthquake struck and she was pretty freaked out. She wanted to get on to the first flight back to HI. We met up with my then-roommate, Karen, who worked at the GAP around the corner from Banana Republic. The three of us walked back to our studio apartment at 8th & Market. Strangely enough, our apartment showed no signs of any earthquake damage — not a thing anything knocked over… just nothing. However, a neighbor of ours down the hallway reported that their apartment had a crack in the wall that had not been there before and they had stuff that was knocked over.

We lost power, but we had a battery-powered radio and that’s how we heard the news that there were fires in the Marina, that a lot of apartment buildings in the Marina had collapsed. We heard about the partial collapse of the Bay Bridge. We heard sirens all through the night. Some friends stopped by with flashlights and we piled into their car looking for some place with electricity, so we could eat. It was eerie to see large swaths of the city during a blackout. I remember the rest of that night as being of in a kind of a daze.

My family in Hawaii was frantic to try to get a hold of us to see if Yvonne and I were OK; they said later that news reports made it sound like that the city of San Francisco had either sunk into the Bay or had gone up in flames. I do remember feeling fortunate that my sister, roommate, and I were unharmed, and I also clearly remember begging my sister to wait out the rest of her visit as planned, instead of cutting her stay short and flying back to Hawaii.

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Marin Hot Tub

Katherine Pitta

I was just starting my freshman year of high school in the fall of 1989. I was at home, alone, doing about the most stereotypical thing that someone from Marin County could be doing.

I was lounging in my parents’ hot tub.

I am no stranger to quakes at all, since Stinson Beach is right in the San Andreas Fault zone. That day was strange and surreal though.

So, anyway, I was there, lounging in the hot tub. I remember distinctly my rabbits in their hutches making warning “thump” sounds, and then the neighborhood dogs howling.

And then it hit. I always have joked as an adult that I felt like I was an olive being sloshed around in a martini glass, and that’s not far from the truth. I was jostled about, not too hard, but enough to scare me. I remember looking up at the house, and seeing the houses move up and down.

marin martini olives 1989

I remember jumping out after the rolling was over, and running inside. I was at home alone, my mom having driven over the Hill to Mill Valley to get groceries, my brother was at work, and my dad was also at work in SF.

I turned on the TV (the power didn’t get knocked out where we were) and just sitting down and watching all the TV coverage… seeing the World Series interrupted, the anchorwoman crying (I can’t remember who that was now) and all the other stuff. Of course I picked up the phone and started frantically trying to call people, anyone, to find out if my family was OK. All the lines were jammed.

It was a really weird and scary feeling for me, being all alone, only a fast busy signal for company, wondering what had happened to them.

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Menlo Park Safeway

Caitlin Crisan (Davis)

Walking through the aisles of Safeway as a hungry, slightly overweight 5 year old can be exciting, intimidating and overwhelming in any circumstance. My mother, begrudgingly dragging me along on her weekly grocery trip was shopping with a mission – keep squeeze-its and fruit-by-the-foot away from daughter’s mouth, get in and out as quickly as possible. Finally reaching the front of the seemingly never ending checkout line, the building began to rumble. A store filled with tall shelves of jars, boxes, cans and fruit is not an ideal place to be when the big one hits. Items fell in heaps around shoppers while carts rolled on their own through frozen food sections and into the deli counter. I, of course, immediately looked to the candy displays tempting me as bars fell to the floor. Surely no one would notice a missing pack of Big League Chew or a Caramello bar amid this chaos.

As the power shut off and the checkout computers died, shoppers abandoned their carts and ran outside to the open parking lot to safety. However, my mother, always the rational, time-manager, could not fathom leaving behind all the hard work she had done. Finally, she successfully made it through the grocery store with her chunky toddler and now she has to leave a full basket behind? The thought of going through this grocery charade again made her head spin. She wagered with the checker – can I pay in cash? How about Traveler’s Check? TWA Credit Card? Diner’s Club?

The true challenge came after being ushered out of the store. Her chic 1987 Mazda 626 with red cloth interior was in the now-unlit basement parking garage. With a slow-moving daughter in tow and the shopping bags she managed to talk her way into taking with her, navigating the garage was a seemingly impossible proposition. Before the true Silicon Valley boom, Menlo Park was a charming white-picket-fence neighborhood of warm, successful middle class families driving Volvo station wagons with kids facing the car behind them in what was always referred to as “the way, way back”. There were no tech bros busy checking Tinder or executives flying down El Camino in their Teslas. An equally frantic mother of two found herself in the same pickle as my mother and they concocted a plan to free their autos. I was placated for the moment with a push pop, while my mother’s new friend watched over the children and my mom rescued the cars from below with the help of a keychain flashlight.

Years later, my mother still bumps into her at that very same Safeway, now renovated with an organic nut bar and olive cart, and plenty of Teslas in the parking lot and tech bros on Tinder.

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Lake Merritt

Monisha Bajaj

On October 17, 1989 I was in the 8th grade and at a soccer game we were playing in one of the grassy areas around Lake Merritt. In the running and jumping of the game, I didn’t realize it was an earthquake until I saw this huge art deco apartment building across the street from where we were—the Bellevue-Staten building—swaying and then feeling the ground moving under my feet.

We moved to the center of the park area and watched as loose bricks from the apartment building started crashing down into the windshields of parked cars on the street below. We could hear the glass breaking loudly since this was before car alarms that would drown such sounds out. My friends and I just huddled close and waited it out.

Lake Merritt

The coaches had no way of communicating with our parents (no cell phones back then!) and it was after 10pm that night by the time we got back to our school given all the traffic. Many parents were waiting in the parking lot, nervously chatting and so relieved when we finally showed up.

As news broke the next day, one of my classmate’s cousins was one of the people crushed when the Bay Bridge broke and we heard of many other harsh stories from the quake. I was thankful that the inconvenience of being stranded by the Lake was the only hardship I faced that day.