Cypress Structure

Miguel Farias

I was a courier, driving the bay area, for the Fuji lab in Anaheim. My route started at SFO and ended at OAK.

On that afternoon, I was driving home after delivering the processing orders at the airport. I took the normal route back up 880 through the maze to reconnect with 80. I was on the Cypress Street overpass, on the bottom level. I didn’t have a clock built in to the car so I carried around a travel clock. As i was sitting there, not moving in bumper to bumper traffic, I looked at the clock, it said 4:45. It took like 15 minutes to complete the drive through the maze and I as I approached the Richmond San Rafael bridge, the earthquake struck. It felt like I had a flat tire. cars were pulling over, all around me, but i kept driving.

cypress structure 1989

When I got home, my mom and my sister informed me that there had been a big earthquake. I turned on the TV and the first images I saw were the Cypress Structure flattened and the newscaster was guessing 40-60 cars had been crushed under the fallen overpass. My knees buckled and I felt faint. I fell back on the couch and almost threw up. I couldn’t believe what i was seeing. It was so heavy.