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
