I was in the men’s room at the parking lot across from Light House Point/Steamer’s Lane in Santa Cruz when the shaking began. I heard the roof beam of the cinder-block restroom building give a loud CRACK and I decided I’d better quit urinating and get out. (Most men know that this can be a very difficult proposition…It took me a second to make this decision!)
I stopped in the door frame and looked out to the parking lot to my 1966 Dodge van where my fiancée and my friend were sitting. I saw waves of asphalt traveling toward me and my fiancée leaning out the door of the van yelling “Hey, quit jumping on the bumper!” I yelled, “It’s an earthquake, hold on!” she turned in the direction of my voice and her eyes went as wide as dinner plates when she saw the asphalt waves.
We both were silently staring at each other for about the next 10 seconds or so, and went the waves stopped, I made my way over to my parked vehicle to see that everyone was alright. About that time my friend looked toward the bay and exclaimed, “Look at the @#$% water, man!” My fiancée and I turned to see that the water in Monterey Bay had “sucked” out to beyond Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf and was still moving away from shore at an amazing pace. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and ran toward West Cliff Drive to get a better look. As I was marveling at the water receding from shore and thinking about Tsunamis, I heard the “skittering” sound of animal claws on pavement. I turned toward the noise and saw a Welsh Corgi heading towards me, running as if the Devil himself was after him.
I screamed and ran towards the little dog with my arms outstretched. “Stop dog, Stop!” No luck. Before I could think I was diving to try and catch the little guy before he hit the street. No luck again. The Corgi, bent on escaping his Demon, skirted around me and ran directly in the path of a car driving down West Cliff. Of course, the driver of the car was looking frantically at the water in the bay and never saw the poor little dog.
Smack! the car hit the dog. I don’t remember if the driver even stopped. I imagine he did, but I do remember going out to the street with some old newspaper that I’d found lying in the gutter and lifting the dog onto it and dragging him back up to the curb. I also remember feeling the little guy’s neck for a pulse… His heart was slowing, slowing, stopped. The Corgi died from his injuries right then and there.
The radio dial was completely empty in the first few minutes after the quake. We knew it had to be bad because of the fact that no one was on the air. I tried the small T.V. that was strapped to the ceiling of my van and found all of those stations off the air as well. Within a few minutes, local AM station KSCO was back on the air however and began reporting. None of the radio announcers knew how big the quake was, but were reporting that it was the largest and longest earthquake any of them had felt. They were asking for anyone with information to please come by the studios as they didn’t have phone service either, but they did have an emergency generator.
We were lucky, as back in those days I carried and illegally high powered CB radio in my van. I was able to make contact with several of my friends on CB. One man asked me to check on his grandparents who lived just off of West Cliff Drive. He told me that he was stuck on the east side of town as the main road through that part of town; Soquel Avenue was blocked due to “giant holes in the road.” Later, many local “Ham” radio operators appeared on the CB band, saying that their long-range radio repeater systems had gone down due to power failure and CB and the other “short range” bands were the only thing going. The rudimentary cell phone systems of the day had failed as well.
We went to my CB friend’s grand folks’ home and found grandma okay, but she told us she “couldn’t find grandpa.” We searched the house and found grandpa hiding in a closet. I guess he thought he was back in the infantry in WW II!
My home and my grandma’s home were both okay, save for a little junk and china on the floor. I set up a small “information” post for the seniors who lived in my grandmother’s condo complex, as none of them had power either. I had radio and television receivers as well as a police scanner and my CB radio. I kept hot coffee available on my camp stove, provided a source of light in the evening time and went on water and supply runs for some of the folks who were too scared to venture from their homes. In the next few days we toured the county to see homes completely destroyed, roads collapsed and power lines down. A couple of deaths and several injuries occurred in downtown Santa Cruz due to the old, un-reinforced masonry construction in that area. We lost our beloved Cooper House in this earthquake and if you ask me, downtown Santa Cruz just isn’t the same without it.
By David Eason, Santa Cruz
