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. [...]

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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 [...]

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‘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 [...]

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‘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 [...]

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I remember it as if it were yesterday.
During Loma Prieta earthquake I was in Oakland by Grand Lake Theater, in a drug store (on a corner). I remember looking at cards in the store. And seeing the pole outside the store move and a little rumbling of the floor.
Several of the customers along with [...]

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The details are clear and banal as they should be when you’re twelve years old. I was living in the far East Contra Costa county. I was playing Nintendo while waiting for the start of the third Bay Bay Bridge World Series game. I was transfixed, on the floor, on my knees when I felt [...]

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Rock and Walk

I had just started a new job about a month before and was on my way home. I had waited FOREVER for a bus but the World Series was in progress so I figured that was what caused the delay. Finally I reached the TransBay Terminal. As I crossed over the expansion joints of the [...]

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Story

Before
As with most narratives of this nature, my story is personal yet embedded in the larger experience all those in the Bay Area shared on that day.
Late in the afternoon I strode South through the middle of the UC Berkeley campus, nearing the end of my undergraduate years. Although raised mostly in California and [...]

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Earthquake

During the quake I lived in Walnut Creek. Most of my family lived in Santa Cruz. The quake hit when I was home alone. I think I was about 9 years old. It shook the whole house pretty hard. It is safe to say I was scared. When I went to call my mom at [...]

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Trucker on the Cypress Viaduct

Ed McVee, a trucker who was driving a Chevron freight truck on the Cypress Viaduct at just about 5:00, spoke to National Geographic about what it was like to barely escape from the viaduct’s collapse: his truck stopped beneath the only top deck section that didn’t crumble in the earthquake. In Nature’s Fury!, a video [...]

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