I was 19 years old and I had just moved to Santa Cruz from New England in May of 1989. I had no idea of what even a small earthquake felt like. I was living in a house on River St. near downtown Santa Cruz with two of my closest friends. I worked at Casablanca Restaurant down by the boardwalk at the time and that day was my day off. My roommate Gabriel and his friend Darren, who worked in construction, had just gotten home from work and we were sitting on our front porch having a beer when the earthquake struck. I remember Darren reacting very quickly and he started running toward the street away from the house. I didn’t know what to think, I just followed him. The time that the earth was violently shaking seemed like forever. When I reached the sidewalk in front of my house, I turned to see the telephone poles on Soquel rocking back and forth at extreme arcs and the wires were whipping through the air. I felt nauseous and I thought to myself “please make this stop.”

Next to our house was a Chinese restaurant and by the time we all reached the parking lot the shaking had stopped. We were all facing toward downtown Santa Cruz looking across the river and a huge cloud of dust rose above the Pacific Garden Mall. Darren turned to us and said “I’m going down there!” and Gabe and I both agreed and we went with him. I remember seeing the smoke from the fire that broke out at the old train station and I remember when I got downtown, seeing Ford’s Department store collapsed. I even recall seeing the woman with her leg torn off being carried out of Fords that made the front page of the Sentinel. It didn’t really sink in how crazy that situation was, but I do remember sleeping on the Levee for the next several days because the aftershocks were intense and constant.

By Steven Lasch