Category / San Francisco

by loma prieta

UC Berkeley Computer Center

Bob Callaway

I was sitting at the computer desk in my office, working at a Macintosh IIcx.  (Hard to believe now, but the processor speed was only 16 MHz!).  The office was on the second floor of Evans Hall at UC Berkeley, in those days the primary location for campus computer center staff.  Evans Hall is a 10-story concrete monolith.

Mac IIcx 1989

Just after 5:00 pm, the building suddenly jolted sideways.  It was a single, very sharp jolt.  I remained in my chair, hyper-alert for what might follow.  I turned toward my other desk and eyed the safe space below it.  But there was no further shaking. The power remained on.  I thought to myself, “That’s the strongest tremor I’ve ever felt.”  But I resumed work on the task at hand.

A few minutes later, having reached a good stopping point, I got up and went out into the corridor to chat with colleagues about the quake.  Quite a few people were on deck.  Some had heard alarming reports such as “the Bay Bridge fell down.”

Already a couple of colleagues had retrieved a TV set from a programmer’s lair and were setting it up in a corner office.  Soon we were watching the news.

As the scale of the disaster emerged, I knew I couldn’t to go home that night.  I arranged to stay with friends who lived in an Albany high-rise.  I also tried calling a neighbor in San Francisco but couldn’t get through because the phone system was overloaded.

I exchanged email with my niece on the East Coast, letting her know I was OK and asking her to inform my sister and others in the family.  My niece, a techie from an early age, was accustomed to sending Unix email on the Arpanet in the 1980s, as was I.

That night, like so many people, my friends and I sat transfixed in front of the TV set as shocking footage was shown over and over.

The next day I went to work.  The news seemed even worse, with reports of many deaths.   I tried to contact various friends.  I tried again to reach my neighbor, but couldn’t.  I had no idea what had happened to my apartment.  That night I stayed with my friends in Albany again.

Two days after the quake, I drove home to San Francisco via the Richmond and Golden Gate bridges.  As I passed near the Marina, my heart sped up as I remembered the images of collapsed apartments there.  My anxiety was reinforced by a disaster I had experienced in a different apartment building about five years earlier — an arson fire that had made all the tenants homeless one winter morning.

Reaching my building on Pierce St, north of Alamo Square Park, I was hugely relieved to find that it had suffered only minor damage.  In my own apartment, there were small cracks in a couple of walls, and some things had fallen off shelves.  A couple of bookcases had shifted several inches, but hadn’t fallen.  The only lasting damage was a triangular dent in the oak floor where a ceramic teapot had dropped six feet.  The minimal effect was a testament to our location, on bedrock.

Soon I confirmed that none of my friends were harmed either.  It was a bit surreal, that feeling of escape.

The neighbor I’d been trying to reach, who had been at home when the quake hit, gave me her report.  In her usual emphatic manner (blonde Italian from New Jersey), she said the building had vibrated like crazy.  No doubt the effect was amplified by the hundreds of tchotchkes in her apartment.

by loma prieta

Mountain Lake Park

Mayu S.

I was a freshman in high school at George Washington High School. I had left my dad’s house on 14th and California St. to walk my dogs at Mountain Lake Park. I was walking towards park when it hit. I didn’t see any trees swaying or the road buckling. Kind of anti-climactic. I thought “no biggie” so I just kept walking towards the dog run when this lady comes running down the street yelling at me. I don’t remember her exact words but she was hysterical enough to convince me that I should head home pronto.

On the way home all the street lights on Park Presidio Blvd. were out. Uh oh, this might be worse than I thought. When I got home my dad was out on the street talking to our neighbors and handing out candles. When it hit he was tuning into the World Series and got knocked flat on his butt. I helped him pass out candles to our neighbors.

We lived right off of California street so there was always bus and traffic noise but not that night. No school the next day. I rode my Huffy out to the Marina to see the fires and collapsed buildings. Oh that thing about dogs being able to predict earthquakes? Total crap, my dogs didn’t predict it at all.

 

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Marina Green

Karl Brecht

I was 4 years old during the 1989 quake. I remember watching the TV shut off suddenly, and while I shouted “Hey!”, the shaking started. I had never remembered the ground shaking before, I remember the fear I felt; I remember hearing the walls crack open and a siren wailing, and my mother screaming at me but I can’t remember what she said.

When the shaking stopped, my mom turned on the radio in our kitchen after she got us together. She found out that all residents of the Marina district were being evacuated to the Marina Green. I remember crying. My mom had an earthquake kit: she grabbed that along with my one-year-old sister and me, and pushed us out to the Marina Green.

I remember my neighborhood being torn up, and more sirens, lots more sirens. I remember waiting a long time, and my mother crying when my dad finally found us out there on the Green. I remember granola bars, and taking showers in trucks.

Eventually life became normal again, but you don’t forget; you can’t.

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Civic Center

Michele Laber

I was walking in Civic Center at 5:04pm. The earth became unstable and I felt as if I was surfing cement. Oddly, I was in front of City Hall and the Civic Center Park where all the homeless gathered. They started cheering and clapping which I found surreal. I knew it had been an earthquake but everyone seemed to continue walking to where they were going without saying anything…blank stares as we passed each other.

I walked to my school and the electricity was out. People were panicking. I started to walk home (Tendernob). The corner stores had lines stretching around the corners …people were loading up on supplies.

I will never forget the thickness of the air. It was still and thick. Sirens. Everywhere. Phones didn’t work. No TV.

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Les Misérables

Allen Sawyer

I was meeting my friend Pam on her dinner break; she was stage-managing Les Miz at the Curran Theatre. The show hadn’t opened yet, and they were rehearsing the barricade scene, which meant there was a large pile of “rubble” on the stage.

The adult cast and crew were released but Pam had to stay at the theatre until the two child actors could be picked up by their parents. While we waited, Pam and I went around the stage with flashlights calling out to each other–“This brick’s plastic- it’s part of the set, this brick’s real- it’s earthquake damage…“

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Candlestick Limo Service

Geoff Butterfield

I was in my early twenties when the Earthquake happened, making my living as a limo driver while I attended SFSU. I had a job that day to drive a Hollywood film executive and his grandson to see the World Series game at Candlestick. I dropped them at the ticket gate and told them I would pick them up at that same spot after the game.

20 minutes after I dropped them off, the earthquake hit. I was actually sitting in the back of the limo, watching the pre-game on the TV when it felt like I had been hit by another car. I jumped out of the limo, all fired up to confront whoever had just hit my car and was stunned: all the cars in the lot were bouncing up and down. It was like a low-rider convention!

The game was cancelled and people started to leave. It was still light out and I was actually surprised at how smoothly people seemed to get out of the stadium. Everyone was pretty cool about it, but— I couldn’t find my people! I later learned that the exec had panicked and grabbed the first ride he could get. However, I stayed there until 9:00 that night — I refused to leave until I knew they weren’t there.

I remember driving down 3rd Street that night and thinking it resembled a scene from “Escape from New York”. Lots of tough characters out in the street along with the occasional trash can fire, but all was well. Made it home to Noe Valley without incident and spent the rest of the evening at the Rat & Raven commiserating with the neighbors.

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SOMArts Lot

Johanna Poethig

It was a hot day on the scaffolding at SOMArts on Brannan Street under the freeway. I was peacefully working on my own, adding final touches to my mural, Artifact, on one side of the building overlooking a big empty lot. This was before Toys R Us, Nordstrom Rack and Bed Bath and Beyond built their monstrous shopping palaces on what should have been a new sculpture park in my opinion.

I climbed down and got into my old yellow Volvo. All of a sudden the car began to rock and roll. I thought someone was pushing on it and turned my head quickly to see no one there!

somarts lot 1989

I shot out of the car and ran into the center of the abandoned lot. Jim, the current director, Conrad, and 2 other artists from SOMArts joined me as the ground rolled underneath us. Worried about Chris working in the basement of our apartment building on Oak Street in the Upper Haight, I drove home gingerly avoiding all the bricks and shards of glass that had fallen onto the streets.

That night the aftershocks freaked us out and we wondered if we should camp out on the Panhandle.

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Galería de la Raza

Eduardo Pineda

At Galería de la Raza at 24th Street and Bryant, I don’t remember the sound but clearly remember the floor of Studio 24 rolling like waves at the beach under my feet. The shelves that ran half the length of the store loaded with Mexican glassware and ceramics lifted and dipped with each wave. The drinking glasses, pitchers, candlestick holders, figurines, dishes, and cups, levitated and gently fell back on their respective shelves shifting slightly as they landed. Very little broke, because the earthquake seemingly rolled down Bryant Street. Had it arrived perpendicularly down 24th Street, I‘m sure the shelves would have tipped over and everything would have spilled creating a carpet of sharp glass and clay shards at our feet. I stood hanging on to one of the pillars, Umberto at another. In my nervousness I just babbled calmly about mundane things unrelated to the violent shaking.

When it stopped I called my parents in Chicago from the payphone on the corner to tell them I was okay and asked them to tell Susie I was safe when she called since I called first. This out-of-state call-in procedure was one of the few disaster preparations we had arranged. My mom told me the Bay Bridge was broken. Realizing I wasn’t going to make it home to Berkeley until the next day, I walked the four blocks to Ray’s house in Balmy Alley. Frank and Nora arrived seeking refuge too. I took a romantic photo of them in Ray’s doorway illuminated by car headlights as night arrived early in the Mission; the streetlights and houselights dark without electricity. The car radio told us the Cypress freeway collapsed in Oakland. We opened bottles of Gundlach-Bunschu wine from Sonoma, toasting our good fortune. We made a plan to wake up early if the power was restored to get to the ATM machine before the money ran out. I fell asleep on Ray’s couch.

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MUNI Misadventure

Karla Milosevich

I was working a temp job on the 12th floor of a downtown office on Spear Street, and had just gotten off work. I caught the 14 Mission bus to go to the café on Valencia Street where my sister worked, but accidentally boarded the express one, which was headed towards Daly City. I couldn’t get off before the freeway so I was standing in the crowded bus, holding the rail over my head, looking out the window and lamenting how much longer it was going to take me to get home.

We were stopped, waiting for a light, and then the bus kind of rolled and it sounded like metal on metal, I figured we were having an accident on the side I couldn’t see. It seemed like a car was scraping against the bus. But then I could also see a guy who had been asleep in his car– he woke up and was all startled. I was wondering about the connection because his car wasn’t touching the bus, then people started saying “Earthquake”, “That was an earthquake!”

We sat there for a few minutes, then got on the freeway anyway, business as usual. I got off as soon as I could, in the way outer Mission. Around then, all the buses stopped running, so there was no way to get back. This was before cell phones, so I started walking to the Mission. As it happened, this guy I know, Dave Cohen, happened to be driving by and gave me a ride home. That was pretty lucky! That’s when I started to hear about how much damage there was.

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Home Alone

Dorothy Santos

It was a normal day at school and friends greeted me happy birthday. My friend Wendy, her cousin Cherry, and I were waiting patiently for my Dad to pick us up and take us back to our house. He dropped us off and left quickly to pick up my Mom from work. At the time, she worked in downtown San Francisco. Dad mentioned coming home right away in the hopes of setting our minds at ease that we would be okay. Naturally, he instructed us to not cook anything for fear of burning down the house and not to open the door to strangers.

Although it was my birthday, we didn’t have anything special planned for the evening. Wendy’s parents were going to pick her and Cherry up later on in the evening. They were more than happy to stay for a casual birthday dinner with me, my parents, and grandparents. It was a no frills kind of night and I didn’t particularly like the idea of going out for dinner since I loved my grandpa’s pancit and a birthday cake from one of my favorite bakeries in the Mission, Dianda’s.

Wendy, Cherry, and I waited patiently. Since the San Francisco Giants were playing in the World Series, we decided to watch the game. It started to rumble. I could see the house and whatever was in view looked as it were being plucked like a flower from the ground. Before the Big One, I never felt an earthquake of that magnitude. I felt small ones. Those little quakes made me think of the Jolly Green Giant moving around softly in his sleep. It would cause a minor shake, but nothing too terrifying or worrisome. This particular night was different. The land was angry and moved the same way my mother shook me when she was furious with my sharp tongue. It lasted relatively long and the mahogany chair was far too heavy to move away from the desk. We panicked. Then it stopped. Our eyes were big and we looked at each other. Cherry mentioned feeling similar earthquakes in the Philippines. It was good to know she wasn’t too terribly shaken (no pun intended).

But we lost power. We couldn’t communicate with anyone and had to wait patiently. We sat on the stairs looking outside to keep on the lookout for any of our family members. An hour of waiting felt incredibly long and the anxiety of wondering where our parents were after the earthquake drove us to the darker and morbid parts of our imaginations. We cried. Finally, my grandfather came home. He wasn’t the most communicative man. His silence and settling in after a long day of cleaning after students at Cogswell College was comforting somehow. My parents got home after my grandpa’s arrival. Wendy’s parents came shortly after them. They left straight away, understandably.

My grandpa was chopping and cooking. Despite the gas range working, we didn’t have electricity. In hindsight, my grandfather probably shouldn’t have cooked. Then again, nothing ever stopped him from doing what he wanted to do. It was still daylight so he cooked with a bit more urgency than usual. By the evening, we gathered up all the candles my mom and grandmother collected that were reserved for burning on Sundays in religious observance. It was a candlelight birthday dinner listening to the small magenta colored transistor radio my father bought me from Radio Shack. It came in particularly handy that evening.

Home Alone

Home Alone

My 12th birthday was one of the most memorable ones. But 2 years later, the Oakland fires happened during my 14th birthday party. I started to have a complex of starting natural disasters. So much of the movie Amelie resonated with me when I thought back to my childhood. But I grew up and realized there were no correlations, just coincidences. I remember wishing for no school the following day. No such luck.

Specific place: Bayview District (apparently, my parent’s place has the strongest, stable rock in San Francisco)

Thoughts, emotions, or associations: Watching the news and seeing the destruction across the city. Houses in the Marina District were uprooted from their foundation. The worst sight of all the images mediated through the TV screen – the split Bay Bridge. The lone car that plunged into the split made made it difficult for me to go over the Bay Bridge without panicking, for years.