10/4/92
Upon entering any room, I always scan for exits and large windows. I almost subconsciously avoid sitting near large quantities of glass, and get nervous around brick walls. This is a natural consequence of growing up in California, where the earth may turn against us at any moment.
October 18, 1989, dawned cool and clear, the last remnants of summer warming the air. At 5:05 PM, the third game of the World Series was about to start, the great Battle of the Bay, with the San Francisco Giants playing the Oakland A's. That morning I had read, like thousands of other people in the Bay Area, a humor columnist's joke in the San Jose Mercury news that there were so many passions aroused by the Series that it would cause and earthquake before the third game. Not being at all excited by baseball, I had ignored it.
I was watching the evening news on Channel Seven. I had no suspicion that a deeply buried fault in the bedrock of the Santa Cruz Mountains about twenty miles from my house had hit a snag several months before. Tension was building up as the normal north-south movement of the tectonic plates that meet in California almost halted, and at 5:07 PM, it snapped.
The first I was aware of the event was when I heard a low rumbling almost at the edge of my range of hearing. It was rather like a freight train five miles away, or an airplane taking off, or an extraordinary bass speaker. An electric tingle ran up the backs of my hands and up to the back of my neck. Before I could react to the sudden weirdness, the walls started to creak and I felt the first faint tremors. My exact thoughts were, "Oh. Earthquake." I've been through several small earthquakes, and they always end before anyone has time to get to cover. The motion was rolling and almost gentle, and the ceiling lights were swinging. My dog was having a fine old time; she was acting like the ground moves around every day. After several seconds, it felt like it was dying down, and I noticed that the TV was off, which meant that the power was out. I remember sighing, because our substation is rather an antique and is always the first to go out and the last to come back on line. Suddenly, though, I had more to worry about than the electricity. The tremors were back, with a vengeance, vicious up-and-down motions. I dived for cover, which is a good thing because it was suddenly hard even to stay upright on my knees. I ducked under the dining-room table and 'assumed the position': crouched on knees, head ducked, back towards the window, one hand on the vulnerable back on my neck, the other holding onto the table, which was suddenly displaying a disconcerting tendency to run away. I called my dog, attempting to get her under the table with me. The stupid animal finally, after a few nerve-wracking moments, wandered over to try to lick my face. She, at least, was having fun. It's not often that a member of the family gets within face-licking range. About eight seconds had passed.
I watched as one of the glass doors on the stereo cabinet came loose of its magnetic latch, swung open, and broke its hinge. The crash of 25 pounds of smoked glass falling five feet and shattering filled the house.
Plates slid out of the cupboards and fell to the floor, and later we found wine glasses in all corners of the kitchen, miraculously unbroken.
Although I couldn't hear it because of the roaring of the quake, there were several tinkling crashes from my bedroom as my collection of glass unicorns hit the floor.
And around the Bay Area, double-decker freeways and bridges collapsed, buildings slid off their foundations, brick walls crumbled. In Los Gatos, beautiful Victorian houses lost roofs, porches, and chimneys. In Santa Cruz, the Beach Street bridge crumbled, the prosperous business district sustained structural damage, and ancient redwood trees trembled. In Watsonville, nearly half of the residences sustained substantial damage. In San Francisco, bayfill liquefied, houses slewed sideways, and an entire block in the Marina District ignited.
Then, at 11 seconds, the tremors changed yet again. This time they were shear waves, the side-to-side motions that cause the most damage. The walls and structural supports of the house shrieked in protest. One of my friends who was out on the athletic field of a high school watched, fascinated, as the ground rippled towards her.
Then, finally, it died away. I sat frozen for a moment, then programmed reflexes took over. I evacuated the house, stopping only to grab a dog leash, my wallet, and my Walkman, and pausing briefly to smell for gas. The city was startlingly silent. Only the wail of car alarms broke the silence, and then, distant sirens. After a few minutes, the radio came to life, and I listened in fascinated horror to the first reports of damage. Aftershocks rumbled under my feet as I waited for my parents to get home.
Our power did not come back on for three days, and we had to go back to school after one. The quake was a 7.1 on the Richter scale, and in some places, the ground moved about 15 feet north or south. We watched and listened as the reports and stories came in. We listened with pale faces to reports of the pancaked Cypress superstructure, the woman who tried to jump the gap in the Bay Bridge with her car, the efforts to rescue a woman trapped in a brick building. Yet there were funny stories as well--tales of people who were caught in embarrassing places, and the couple who thought that it was all part of a great orgasm. We picked ourselves up, collectively shook off the dust, and went about the business of putting the pieces back together.
Although life returned to a semblance of normality (complete with "I survived the Earthquake" T-shirts), recovery is still not complete. Both Santa Cruz and Watsonville are still rebuilding, and it took the better part of a year to restore power and water to some parts of the Santa Cruz mountains. So now I scan the room for exits and reinforced areas, because, like all Californians I'm laid back but slightly paranoid. Even here in Iowa, I doubt the stability of the ground my feet are on.