Diary of a Catastrophic Earthquake

I wrote to Kirsten Anderberg, a writer in California who covers a wide variety of issues, including earthquakes, after seeing her page on Loma Prieta with the above title. You can read about her here. I thought much of the story she told on her page would fit nicely here, so I asked for permission to reprint. She kindly said yes, and here’s her story:

At 5:04 pm, on October 17, 1989, I had just come from college classes, and was on my way to pick up my 5 year old son from his after school childcare. I decided to drop by Branceforte Library in the city of Santa Cruz to pick up a few books to read to my son, and as I stood in the library, I began to hear an odd noise. It sounded like a plane was going to crash into the building. I thought maybe it was a train heading for the building, but then realized there were no tracks going “into” the library building. Everyone around me appeared to stop moving as they listened. Then I noticed little puffs of dust coming out from in between the bricks of the library walls. Then, it hit. The floor began to shift dramatically, and I assumed it was an earthquake, and ran for the door.

As I ran for the library’s front door to exit the building, I saw most of the people were getting under tables. As I ran, there was a strange undertow on the floor. Although I was trying to move my feet towards the door, which was to the east, my feet kept being pulled back to the west, behind me. It was odd, and the only thing I can really compare it to is the undertow I have felt in rip tides on Pacific Coast beaches. That is the only other time I have tried to walk one way, and had my feet pulled another. I also remember stepping high, over the first 6 inches on the floor, to sort of step out of that weird pulling field. It felt magnetic or gravitational: it was a pulling sensation, although very subtle, and it seemed you could step “above” it. My feet were only pulled when close to or touching the floor; I was out of that pulling field when my feet were up a few inches off the floor. It seemed the pulling energy was flowing across the surface of the floor.

As I made it through the library’s front door, the ground was shifting violently beneath me and standing, walking, was a little hard. I ran out of the library to see telephone poles whipping back and forth like rubber, as the electrical wires above snapped and fell, still live, onto the sidewalks around us. Cars that were driving stopped in the middle of the street, askew, with doors open, asking what was going on. They say the quake lasted 15 seconds, but it seemed much longer, as if in slow motion.

As people began to discuss what had just happened, I ran as fast as I could towards my son’s childcare, which was about 2 blocks away. When I got there, the teachers and kids were all huddled under tables, and the teachers looked white as ghosts. They were there with approximately 30 kids, and this was their first earthquake experience. Just as my son came out from under the table to go home with me, another serious quake hit, an aftershock, and we all ran to go under the tables again, but then it stopped. I grabbed my son’s hand (he had turned 5 years old the week prior) and began to walk briskly home, as it was the evening, and it was getting dark, and I had no idea what was going on, the condition of our home after this quake, etc.

As my son and I walked home, every single house we passed had its chimney down. They had all fallen either in solid blocks onto driveways and lawns (if they were reinforced), or they had fallen as piles of bricks scattered around a house and its roof (if it was unreinforced). Almost all of the plate glass windows were shattered from the houses we passed as well. We were hearing rumors on the street on our way home that all of the bridges that connect east and west Santa Cruz, over the San Lorenzo River, that goes to the sea, were broken and impassible. People were standing on their lawns, mystified, asking us as we scurried by, “What was that?” Some asked if it was a nuclear blast or a bomb. I said I thought it was an earthquake.

Behind the Lens

When the Loma Prieta quake happened, Chip Scheuer was in downtown Santa Cruz as a photographer for the Watsonville Register-Pajaronian. He took pictures of the damage and rescue efforts in the hours following the quake (view some of them at his website), and went on to spend the next 14 years, 1990 to 2004, as a news videographer for Santa Cruz TV stations KCBA and KION. He’s now an independent photographer and videographer. On the eve of the 20th anniversary, he contributed the following story to the Good Times Santa Cruz website, and he’s offered to allow me to reprint it here:

The ground was still shaking as I ran toward a mushroom cloud of black smoke billowing from a home engulfed in flames on Myrtle Street across from the Santa Cruz High School pool. One of the residents was fleeing the inferno and I photographed him as firefighters battled the intense flames.  Approaching Pacific Avenue, I couldn’t believe the devastation. Santa Cruz looked like a bad Japanese science fiction movie—as if a drunken Godzilla had stumbled through the center of town.

Peering through a cloud of redbrick dust it was obvious my hometown had been virtually destroyed by the powerful quake. Buildings had collapsed into the street burying cars and destroying trees, kiosks, and lamp posts. Terrified people were spilling out onto the street, comforting each other as best they could while rescue operations began.

Entering the pile of rubble that had only moments before been Ford’s Department Store right across the street from the old Good Times building, I encountered a desperate, grisly scene. Rescue workers were frantically digging out the victims—the tossed debris and still-falling bricks sounded like wind chimes clinking. That sound still makes me cringe. I spent the rest of the evening recording the havoc with my Nikons on Pacific Avenue, finally crashing at a friend’s house. I had been living at the St. George Hotel and never spent another night there. It was condemned that night.

As a photojournalist, unfortunately my biggest victories are other people’s worst nightmares, that is the nature of my work. The Loma Prieta Earthquake was the only time I have photographed my own disaster, losing most of my things but gaining a lot more compassion for the victims of other events I have since covered. Santa Cruz has always been a very nurturing, supportive environment for me and it was heartbreaking to see her hurt so badly. It still bothers me. It is hard to believe the earthquake occurred 20 years ago this week. It seems like yesterday and the space occupied by the old Roasting Company is still a hole in the ground. The earthquake ripped the heart and soul out of downtown but it united us in a vision for the community. I still love Santa Cruz but I miss the grassy knolls on Pacific Avenue where I used to sit and eat French bread, brie and strawberries. The Cooper House is gone so are most of the benches and planters, but Santa Cruz lives on.

Loma Prieta story

I was in choir practice at my church, Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, and we were getting started on the Christmas season songs. There was a Boy Scout meeting in the room directly above us and they were rough-and-tumbling around like boys do… and we had sent someone up there two times to tell them to knock it off and settle down because they were a big distraction for us. So the earthquake started to hit, and at first we were all giving dirty looks to the ceiling because we thought, at first, that it was the Boy Scouts again. Then the windows started rattling terribly, we started moving around in our chairs and the piano began to shuffle across the room. At that point, we were all pretty sure that it wasn’t the Boy Scouts but an actual earthquake. It only lasted 15 seconds, and after the ground was done shaking so violently, we calmly filed outside and continued our practice because, after all, we were all California kids and we had plenty of earthquake practice by then. That was a pretty interesting day and I thought it was very exciting.

By Bekki Sterling

I decided October 17, 1989 was a good day to visit Santa Cruz!

I live in the east bay but on October 17, 1989 I decided it would be a great day to visit my sister in Santa Cruz. Her daughter was going to turn 7 on October 19th and I thought it would be fun to go shopping with my sister and get her a birthday gift. I had 4 boys of my own. My husband had the day off from work so he agreed to watch the boys while I drove down to Santa Cruz to go shopping. I didn’t want to make things too hard for my husband so I took my youngest son with me. He was going to turn 3 that November. He was always happy and was easy to take places.

I picked up my sister at her house on the west side of Santa Cruz. I really wanted to go shopping downtown in all the interesting stores that only exist in Santa Cruz. She wanted to go to the Capitola Mall though, so I relented and we went to the mall. I didn’t get to visit my sister a lot but when I did I would normally stay until about 5 PM before I headed for home. On this day her daughter was in daycare and she had agreed to go and help out at the day care center at 3:30. I was vaguely annoyed about this because it didn’t leave us much time for shopping. We left the mall and I drove my sister back home and dropped her off at nearly 3:30.

I decided to head downtown and do a little shopping on my own. Downtown is where I wanted to go in the first place and it might be a while before I would have another chance. I liked to park around the corner and down two blocks from the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company. I would have time to put my son in his stroller and walk up one side of the street and down the other and then maybe stop for juice and coffee at the Coffee Roasting Company. I was headed downtown and only a few blocks away when I turned around to look at my son. He had his head back, his mouth open and he was SOUND asleep. He was in the kind of sleep little kids go into where it’s a bad idea to wake them up and expect them to be happy about it. I was annoyed and could not decide whether to risk waking him or to just give up on my plans altogether. I really wanted to shop in the downtown area. At the last second I suddenly decided it was too much to ask of a tired 2 year old and I turned and got on the freeway and headed for home.

I had probably been home for 15 or 20 minutes at 5:04. My 4 year old son was in his bedroom in the back of the house having a nap. I thought the rest of them were all out in the front yard. I was in the kitchen doing dishes. The house began to creak terribly and I knew it was an earthquake. I closed the upper cabinet with the dishes but the cabinet door immediately swung back open and hit my hand. I took two steps toward the room where my son was sleeping but the house was shaking so violently now I could not walk and was hanging on to the edge of the sink. I realized I was not going to make it all the way back to his room and there was nothing I could do. I moved over and opened the door going out to the garage so I could stand in the doorway but the water heater was right on the other side and was shaking violently and then the door swung out and back and HIT me pretty hard hurting my arm. I closed the door and wedged myself into the corner of the kitchen by the door. I had a had time deciding if the earthquake had stopped or not. I felt like I was shaking inside and things were still moving. My ceiling fans in my living room were swinging back and forth.

At the worst it had felt like the house was really going to come down on me and my son and there was nothing I could do. Now, it stopped and I could not believe the dishes were still in the cabinets and the china cabinet had not fallen over, in fact, just about everything seemed ok. I rushed back to my son in the back bedroom to find him still sleeping but his aquarium was missing about 4 inches of water and the carpet was soaked. Everybody outside knew we had an earthquake but didn’t think it was as bad as it was. I was sure it must have been centered right under us! I turned on the TV but found we had no power. Then we had power but still no TV. Then within 30 minutes we did have TV and they were showing the Bay Bridge. When they said it was centered closer to Santa Cruz I began calling my sister. All I could get were recordings stating not to use the phone lines. Still, I wanted to know if my sister was OK.

News reports began to state Santa Cruz was the hardest hit and they had no info coming out of Santa Cruz and were flying over it with helicopters. I was very scared my sister and her family might have been hurt. I kept calling. About 10 PM I called again and suddenly she answered, “Hello?” I realized I could not talk but finally was able to say her name. She said “Oh hi, guess what? We had a big earthquake here and I don’t have any power!” I realized she had no idea the magnitude of this earthquake. I began to fill her in and told her to make sure she had batteries and water. It was weeks before we were able to visit my sister again. When we finally were able to go and see her we still had to take highway 9 to get there. Her house had some bad cracks inside and the chimney was cracked. It never did get fixed. She was renting the house.

I think about that day every time there are stories about earthquakes. I remember as clearly as if it were yesterday turning around and seeing my little son so sound asleep in the back seat. I wonder, what if he had been awake? How different that day would have been.

By Nancy in Fremont

P.S. Nancy adds this story about her sister and niece’s experience at day care:

She went to work at the day care place at 3:30 in Santa Cruz.  She was still there at 5:04.   She was outside at recess with all the kids.  Her daughter, who was going to turn 7 on the 19th, was alone in one of the classrooms.   Her daughter was a bit of a problem child and had made a mess in the book area of the classroom.   The teacher in her room told her she could not come outside until she cleaned it up.   She was cleaning it up when the earthquake started.  I think the little book area was in a corner of the room.   There was a 3 or 4 foot tall book shelf on one wall and a mirror on the other.   The mirror and possibly the windows broke and the book shelf fell over on top of my niece.   My sister ran to look for her as soon as the earthquake was over and when she ran into the classroom there was her daughter with books on top of her and things broken around her.   She was ok but she was crying and said “Mommy!   I DID NOT do this!!”

Barefoot and Pregnant Pauses

I was in my late 20’s at the time of the earthquake and was walking home from my job at a cafe on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley with my incredibly fly girlfriend, Wendy. (Yes, young-ins, “fly” was briefly an adjective in the late 80’s and a good thing to be.) The quake hit when we were a few steps from the southeast corner of Haste and Ellsworth Streets. The thing that made that day otherwise noteworthy is that my feet had felt hot all day, so I decided to walk barefoot, which was the only time I’d ever done so in Berkeley.

The ground absolutely heaved and I couldn’t find the sky because instinct had kicked in and I had dropped to a four-point stance with one knee and hand on the ground to keep from being thrown down. Palm trees were slapping loudly against houses and the overhead (literally) electric lines were turning nearly circular paths like jump-ropes. That seemed like a bad thing — I remember one line arcing slightly where it spliced into a transformer — so I sprinted out into the intersection.

By that time the main action was over and Wendy and I just sort of gaped at each other and mumbled things like “wow”. She was no less impressed as a native than I was as a fairly recent import to the Bay Area. I decided to put my shoes on at that point fearing shards of glass, although I don’t recall seeing windows blown out of houses. And even though a fair number of car alarms were going off, I do recall there was also a certain sense of stillness as though all the creatures of the world were in psychic recuperation from being sucker-
punched.

We went and watched the police impound garage on Shattuck Avenue burn for a while, but decided to get home as news started being passed by word of mouth and from people with portable radios. We walked the rest of the way back to our place on MLK Way and the power was out when we got there. So we threw together a cold meal from whatever was in the refrigerator and waited for the juice to come back on. When we had TV again we more or less just sat there watching endless reports of tragedy, not saying much.

The other thing I recall is that the daily paper was exceptionally thin the following morning, perhaps only 16 pages or so. Certainly their printing and distribution had been affected like the rest of Bay Area life, but it seemed odd that such a slender publication would have to bear the weight so much bad news.

-S.F. Giangst

I remember it as if it was yesterday. I remember when the shaking began, grabbing my Tonka truck and running out of the house trying to find a place to hide. As I was running I fell down to the ground. With my head in the grass and my ear pressed hard against the ground, I could hear the sound of what I thought was a giant worm gnawing his way towards me. I of course jumped up immediately and ran to the front of the house and out into the street where there was plenty of asphalt. I knew this would be a safer place because giant worms have a hard time boring their way through such a solid material.

Thinking the worst was over I looked back towards my house. I was in total shock at what I saw. The ground began to shake once again, and as it did, it began to crack and open up; and then the horror began. One of the larger worms that was after me had managed to slither its way through one of the large cracks in our front lawn and began gnawing on our house as if it was a Quiznos deli sandwich. I had to save my house and my other Tonka toys, so I jumped on the back of the worm and tried to break him like a wild bull. Unfortunately I had never ridden a wild bull before so I had absolutely no idea of what to do next. Then as suddenly as it began, the worm jerked his head back and looked at me from left to right: he was slowing down to a snails pace and stopped gnawing on our house. I had broken the worm! The worst was finally over.

Now that I had complete control over the worm, I pulled on his head and pushed it to the left then kicked him in both sides as we rode off to the nearest Red Cross shelter. From there it’s all just a blur.

By Buddy Burns (reposted from this blog’s Facebook page)

My earthquake story

I was going to school at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, back when it was located at 19th and Ortega Streets. On the late afternoon of October 17th, I had stopped at a ‘mom and pop’ corner market at 19th and Ortega to pick up a bottle of grape juice and a small package of Sausolito cookies. The quake hit a few minutes after I left the store, while I was standing on a corner, waiting to cross the street. It knocked me over, so that my hands were touching the ground. I looked up, and saw a lady in a convertible at the stop sign next to me. Her car was rocking back and forth, and she had a terrified expression on her face. She seemed to be looking to me for an explanation. I looked across the street and saw houses swaying, and telephone wires twirling in circles, like jump ropes. Alarms went off everywhere.

Once it stopped, I started laughing hysterically – the way people do when they know that something life-altering has happened, and somehow they’ve managed to keep themselves in one piece. Nothing had collapsed in front of me, so I thought everything was okay. Still, on my way home, I kept encountering people in their front yards, unwilling to go back in their homes. One lady was sitting on her front steps, crying. I asked if she was okay, and she sobbed that everything in her house was shattered. Then I started to worry a bit, and I ran home. My roommate was out in his car listening to the radio, he said, because there was no power. I found a radio with batteries in the house, and we waited inside, listening to the radio, learning of the devastation. The sun went down, and the city was dark except for the fires in the Marina District. Occasionally, the power would come on for a few minutes, and we’d see a bit of television coverage – the Bay Bridge collapse, the Cypress Structure in ruins, and the Marina District in flames.

The next morning my roommate and I surveyed the neighborhoods in the Inner Sunset District, near our flat. It seemed that some blocks, like ours, had been lucky – a few things knocked down, and just a few cracks in the walls and the stucco. Every other block, it seemed, had been hit hard, with houses literally cracked in half, or knocked askew off their foundations. Down in the business section of the Inner Sunset, the shops had lost all their windows, and were all shuttered and closed. Later that day, I started to feel helpless just sitting at home, and decided to volunteer at a shelter in the Marina District, where newly homeless locals were sent. I took a bus down to the Marina District, which only got me so far, since the area was closed off to traffic. I walked the rest of the way, and even though I’d seen pictures in the morning paper and on the news, I was unprepared for what I saw. Seeing the ruins of the Marina took my breath away, and I had to stop and gather my emotions.

I spent the next few days at Marina Middle School, and I don’t remember any of it. It was all a blur. I only remember the fierce storm that kicked up when I had to leave to go back to school. It was like adding insult to injury. The rain poured and the winds howled, blowing over steel barricades. I remember that Geraldo Rivera was there right as I was leaving, and I was in a shot with him and a bunch of other volunteers. When I made it back to the Conservatory, soaking wet, there was an administrator at the door, checking people off as they arrived at school. Nobody could focus on school right away, but we tried. We all had different stories, and couldn’t stop telling them. It’s been 20 years, and I’m grateful to be able to tell my story again.

By Kathleen

‘89 Quake Story

My husband and I lived in Antioch and worked in San Leandro at the time. He picked me up from work at around 4: 53pm and we headed home. We went through Castro Valley and were making the turn from Castro Valley Blvd. onto Crow Canyon Rd. when we noticed a police car parked across the intersection. The officer was trying to get into his car and had one foot in and left arm on top of open door. He and his car were violently swaying from side to side, and up and down. We were wondering what he was doing when all of a sudden we felt like we had 4 flat tires as we straightened out from the turn and headed down Crow Canyon Rd. I said “something is going on” and turned on the radio.

That is when we heard the news about the quake. As we drove home through Danville, and all the towns along the way, we saw lots of people outside, and lots of dust! Didn’t see any real damage. We turned on the tv when we got home and were amazed over the damage! Our relatives from back east could not get through on the phones and were freaking out.

We did not go to work for a few days until all of the freeway overpasses were inspected. Our condo had some cracks in the outside stucco, but nothing else. Nothing even fell over inside!

By Linda Parker-Fedak

Parker-Fedak

My experience of Loma Prieta…Shak’n it up!…

A couple of months before the Big EQ I was fishing on the Delta and threw my line out and snagged a passing ski boat and skier.  I yelled to my wife to give me my fishing knife quick! I cut the line just before it ran out of string and probably would have snapped the rod and reel out of my hand and off to sea.  The fast moving fishing reel’s bale and screw flew everywhere and got lost.

At around 5 pm on Oct 17th I decided to work late at Jackson Street (ACP / Dial-One Corporation) and also called the fishing reel company in Los Angeles to order a new bale unit  I was telling the Rep about my catching a 5000 lb. “Chris Craft” when all of a sudden I felt the big one start and told the Rep “Oh sh*#, earthquake!, F#&$, gotta go!” (I hung up, He must have been the first in L.A. to know about our big quake up North!).

I first ran to the door of our work’s kitchen/coffee maker room, then followed others running wildly towards the 2nd floor conference room.  I got under the conference room’s door frame with another colleague (Grace G.) as our two story un-reinforced brick building danced around pretty forcibly.  It seemed to shake violently forever…

I got my personal stuff after the big shaker and walked towards the Embarcadero BART Station, which was by then closed off, then towards Mission St..  I saw many buildings on the way with their front sections broken off.  You could see right inside of the offices; chairs and file cabinets, but no people.  I found a payphone in an empty parking lot with a long line of people waiting their turn.  Most of them left because they didn’t know how it works during an emergency.  I finally got my turn and went off-hook for about four or five minutes before the “Switch” gave me a dialtone…Then I entered 0-1-and the number, and waited for another three minutes or so for a second tone to enter my calling card and pin number.  The Inter-State call to an out-of-State relative went through ok!

Afterwards, I walked back towards work on Jackson St. and the clerk at the old wine and liquor store (Davis St and Jackson St) said he grabbed a girl trying to run out towards the door just as the store’s big pane windows exploded glass inside…He saved her face if not her life..   I sat outside of work, across the street at MacAurther Park with many other people listening to AM Radio News and talking (many shaken up over the EQ hit).  I could see our building had shifted offset next to the restaurant’s building.  Later, our computer room’s back brick wall eventually had to be reinforced with large steel girders and tiedown guides to keep it safe and sane to work in… (We got bought out by MCI and eventually moved from that building a couple of years after the Big Quake.  There’s new restaurants and businesses in the building today…Oh Dear!).

I ended up stuck in The City that night with no money, just a useless ATM debit card.   I ended up spending the night at a couple’s house which was my work colleague’s  (Jason T.) “best man” at his wedding in years past. They lived on the other side of China Town.  We all stayed up and watched the Marina’s fire blazing glow most of the night…The rest of the city was blacken dark, with no electricity, anywhere!

The next morning Jason and I walked back towards the work place along Jackson Street and could see bricks from the three and four story un-reinforced brick buildings (mostly antique shops and such) had fallen out onto the sidewalks, but mostly out to the curb areas.  A brand new Camaro (or maybe it was a new Trans-Am?) convertible had brinks all inside it – Smashed-in car windows were seen everywhere.

I finally got a ride out of The City to my home in Pacheco the next day.  My wife was so happy to see me, with her own stories to tell… What a week of aftershocks and devastation!

I also have experienced the 1984 San Jose/Morgan Hill 6.2 Earthquake while working for Nortel-Danray as an on-site technician at National Semiconductor’s basement PBX room.. I have never seen so many ladies from a lab area run up and out of a building so fast in my life.  Pretty scary down in the basement…

And, during the 1971 San Fernando/Sylmar 6.6 earthquake my brother and I were sleeping in bunk beds at our childhood home in San Dimas when the room rocked violently, and we were 60 miles away…Had my share of Shakes and Quakes, thank you very much!

…When and Where’s the next big one gonna be?

By Robert H

‘89 Earthquake

I was in Oakland during the Earthquake. I lived two blocks from the Cypress freeway and was literally probably the first person to scale the collapsed freeway to assist the injured and search for individuals under the pancaked freeway. I ran down the street moments after the quake hit, and ascended a ladder that was being put up against the freeway before it even settled. I could see the Marina burning from the deck of the freeway and crawled under about 12 sections of the freeway looking for survivors.

I found a couple, and helped one man pinned in his car by a enormous block of cement that pinned him in the front seat. I witnessed numerous dead bodies and crushed cars. There were two powerful aftershocks that hit while crawling on the freeway. I crawled over the freeway until it was dark and continued to assist when rescue teams finally arrived.

I no longer live in Oakland, but miss the community greatly. Two years after the earthquake I saved four homes in the Oakland fire with another man with three garden hoses from burning down including his home…I love the Bay Area….My home away from home…

By Lucas Kenna Mertes