Marta Martinez

I thought we lived in one of those suburban cookie-cutter houses that I saw on TV, but actually, we lived in the projects in Diamond Heights. As a six-year-old I didn’t know any different.

One night, we gathered around the table for dinner and I watched my father serve plates of spaghetti from a gigantic vat. When I asked why my dad made so much pasta, he shrugged and said that he just felt like cooking an extra big batch.

The next day started out normal. I went to Buena Vista Elementary with my mom, who also taught there.  During the after-school dance class in the cafeteria/gym, or “gymeteria,” two girls started arguing. It only took a few seconds for the whole gymeteria to fill with the piercing screams of quarreling girls. The teacher brought the two culprits to the front stage for some conflict management.

While the three of them worked out the details of who started it, I heard a slow grumble grow louder and louder, coming from nowhere and everywhere. I looked up and saw hanging lights moving from side to side, like the swings in the yard. It was a sound I could feel. It was an earthquake.

All the girls scattered, screaming. I went into autopilot, duck, cover, hold, duck, cover, hold. I spotted the long cafeteria table and weaved my body over the bench seat and under the table. Just as I got my head below the table I realized, I’m all alone. Where is everyone??? They must be hiding in a better place. I DON’T WANT TO DIE ALONE! I left my safe hiding place to find our teacher, a spandexed, sweatbanded dancer, stuck to the doorway like an 80s starfish, surrounded by a herd of squawking guppies. Even though I was completely exposed, I was sure that dying with the group would be better than dying alone. As soon as I got to them, the shaking stopped and we made our way to the yard.

Eventually, I found my mom amongst the chaos of children. She didn’t come out of the building right away because she was convinced that the rumble was just the janitor dragging trashcans down the stairs.

My mom and I headed home. To wait. At least we knew that my dad and brother were together, but downtown was so far away.

The first thing we did was assess the damage. Our porch had moved a few inches away from the house and a little calavera had fallen off of a bookshelf. Otherwise, everything was just as we left it. I listened to the radio as new stories trickled in with reports of damage. A piece of the Bay Bridge has fallen into the bay… a freeway collapsed… more details to come…

My mom pulled out the address book and hopped on the phone, making quick calls to our family and closest friends to make sure everyone was okay. We couldn’t stay on the line too long. No call waiting.

About an hour passed before we heard the click of the door. They made it. My family was safe.

With the sun setting, no electricity, and strict instructions to not turn on the gas, my dad took stock of our supplies to get us through the night. The giant pot of pasta! My dad was happy to take credit for his uncanny sixth earthquake-sense.

Since we were more than covered for dinner, my uncle and grandmother, my godparents and their baby all came over to share in a candlelight dinner of cold spaghetti. My brother and I kept our ears on the radio, anxiously hoping, awaiting official word that school the next day was canceled.

Valerie Soe

I was working at the China Basin Building south of Market, which is a big ol’ five-story concrete former warehouse. It was the end of the workday and the third game of the Bay Bridge World Series was on the TV in the conference room. Suddenly the building shook violently like a huge hand had picked it up and rattled it around. I could see my boss mouthing “Oh shit” right before the fire doors slammed shut.

After the crazy shaking stopped we all made our way out of the building down the pitch-dark emergency stairwells. I got to my car and turned on the car radio and one of the reporters said he could see the 880 freeway collapse in West Oakland and that there was a hole in the Bay Bridge. When I drove home I could see bricks all over the roadway from buildings that had fallen apart. That was when I knew it wasn’t just your garden-variety earthquake.

David Lawrence

I was at Green Apple Books on Clement. When the quake hit, I was upstairs browsing the stacks. The books *flew* off the shelves in every direction and I thought “Oh fuck, this is IT”. I bolted downstairs and ran out of the store.



Drove back home (I lived in the Haight at the time) and then got on my bike and rode around the city. Power was out and it seemed like the best thing to do. The next day, riding my bike on the closed, empty Embarcadero freeway was one of the best rides and views of the city I’ve ever had.

Stan Heller

I was in a video store when the quake started. I stepped outside to look around and I saw the power lines dancing like rubber bands, I saw the plate glass windows expanding in their frames. I saw the sign over my head twist and make a very uncomfortable sound. And I thought to myself- “Stan, you are the dumbest man in the Universe”. And I turned around and went back inside.

Niki Magtoto

I was taking an art class at Precita Eyes and Mom and I had just walked to the car down the block to pack up art I had just made, so I was skipping down the street like any 6 year old might. Monica, my little sister, was KO’d in a ratty old armchair at my grandparents’ antique store (read: junk shop), Flying Machine Antiques on Church Street.  (At 2, Mony was a big snorer then- don’t tell her I said that. Though she might volunteer that info. Either way, she could sleep through anything, that’s how hard of a sleeper she was.)

As we headed back to the studio, Mom noticed the buildings wobbling a little bit, but it didn’t dawn on her what was happening because she was more concerned with everyone running out of Precita Eyes into the park so she figured some crack head (because it was a super cracky park then) or crazy homeless person had come in and created a scene because neither she nor really felt the ground moving. We walked over to the open field and sat there a while with all the other Precita kids and artists and random park people.

Though Mony was asleep, and the chair she was using as a bed was in the very center of the store (right under a support beam, probably the safest spot in the store), she apparently woke up and said to no one in particular, “Whoa, that was a big one!”

The rest of the afternoon and into the evening I remember being fascinated by the idea that if a power line was down we were supposed to jump on a car, and worrying about how Dad would get home from the UPS building.  For the next 6 years I knew I’d be judged by the kind of granola bar in my earthquake kit. Them green Natures Valley bars were highly coveted even tho they are dry as shit.

Nicole Hsiang

On October 17^th, 1989, I was just a month shy of turning 6 years old and in the first grade at Live Oak School in the Castro.

This was just another day of after school day care for me where we normally make arts and crafts and play in the school yard. At the moment of the earthquake, the activity of the day happened to be making pomander balls,  which is an orange with cloves stuck in all around it.  I probably didn’t understand entirely the purpose of making a pomander ball but I do remember being very focused on piercing the orange skin with each clove. This is when the room started shaking. All of us kids went under the table and I held on to one of the table’s legs.

Then I remember asking my teacher what happened and he said, “There was an earthquake. We have go downstairs now.” I held his hand and we joined a sea of kids rapidly moving down the stairs. At this point I registered that something out of ordinary had happened, something of emergency-level importance.  This is when I got scared and started crying, from the sight of all the people rushing out the building.

Pretty quickly after we exited the building and walked next door to Eureka Valley Playground, I saw my dad walking towards me on the grass to pick me up. We got into his car and drove home.

When we got home, the sun was starting to set. The house seemed normal at first. In the bathroom however, items had fallen from a shelf above the toilet, and had cracked the toilet seat. There was soapy liquid all over the floor. I exclaimed to my dad that the toilet seat had broken and he came over to see. There was no electricity and soon the house got dark.  We used flashlights and lit candles.

At home, I remember that my dad and I were waiting for my mom to call for what seemed like a long time. We didn’t know where she was.  Eventually she called. I don’t remember what happened next, but she got home and we were finally all together.

The last thing I remember, is the three of us getting into my parents bed together, and I was sleeping in the middle between them. There was a candle lit on top of the dresser for a little while, and when I woke up the next morning the candle had been blown out.

Bob Hsiang

As per usual, I drove over to the Castro district to pick up Nicole, who was in 2nd grade that day, nothing out of the ordinary. First I went over to the post office on 18th Street to purchase some stamps or to mail out some letters. While in line, the quake hit – it was quite a jolt as I witnessed power lines on the street swaying, the building itself was made unstable and it rocked for a long time.

After the temblor stopped, I left the post office and quickly walked over to Live Oak School to see if the structure and the students were okay. Apparently the staff had already ushered out the kids to the yard outside. I finally found Nicole and took her back home while the car radio reported the earthquake from field reporters. The first thing I heard was the Cypress Freeway in Oakland had collapsed! Then another report came in about the Bay Bridge also failing. Soon enough, other reports described the damage and fires in the Marina district and other parts of the city.

While driving home I looked for damage along Church Street. I saw a chimney that had fallen, I believe. Also the stop lights were out, obviously power was out in many areas. Traffic was very slow as drivers attempted to cross intersections by hand signals. When we finally got home I remember hoping the damage to our house wasn’t too severe. I breathed a sigh of relief as it was still standing at least. Entering the house, I quickly looked around and noticed a few things had fallen but nothing serious. A loudspeaker fell off its stand, something broke in the bathroom, I think it was the toilet seat. In general the house survived pretty intact.

I was then concerned about Nancy since it was hard to reach her, no cellphones then. After some time, she called from Walter Landor’s house, and I was relieved and somewhat jealous that she was actually enjoying her stay there with food and drink. The power was still out and it was getting dark outside. The Bay Bridge World Series was halted, of course as I remember my god brother and his son, (Denis and Derek) were at the game. Reports continued to describe how badly affected the Bay Bridge and Cypress Freeway were as I felt terrible that people must have perished. Luckily only a section of the Bridge failed, not the entire structure!  We arranged for me to drive over and pick Nancy up. Again traffic was tricky, still no lights in operation. Finally got her back home and we made do until power was restored. It wasn’t until then that we saw the CNN and local tv coverage of the devastation, it was pretty surreal watching those news video reports of the Freeway collapsed, the Bridge failure and the Marina fires and sunken buildings. We had just experienced a 6.8 quake – It then dawned on us how lucky we were not be in those particular areas. I later found out a red brick building a block away from my studio on Bluxome Street also partially collapsed where a pedestrian was killed by falling bricks. My own studio was spared, however the brick building was tagged unsafe. You could put your fist through one of the cracks of the walls. Consequently I moved from that studio to another space in the Mission.

Relatives from the East Coast were relieved that we were not harmed as they were watching the media report visually arresting images of the Bridge and Cypress Freeway. The media kept on repeating the same footage over and over, just like on 9/11 when the tragedies was compounded by this non-stop coverage.

After a few days things got back to normal as I began understanding more about the unsafe ground and the soil composition that much of San Francisco is built upon, especially South of Market, the Marina, some of the Mission as well. A process called liquefaction occurs during an earthquake, making the sand-like ground underneath many of the buildings unstable and allows the foundations to sink or become unhinged. This is particularly true in the expensive Marina area. Being in a working class neighborhood like Excelsior has some benefits, I suppose.