The World Series

I had just sat down to watch my SF Giants destroy the Oak A’s in my newly-built 1988 apartment in S. SJ. area. — Then, at 5:04pm the 7.1 hit….trying hard to hold on to my lamp that almost fell, while sitting on my couch. Many weeks after, I kept on having ‘chills’ down my [...]

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Earthquake Oct. 17, 1989

The Cabrillo College Men’s Water Polo Team played De Anza College in Cupertino at 3:30 pm on this date. The game was a disappointing loss but the following event provided an adrenalin rush-  hi!  ho! We were returning home and approximately halfway between Saratoga and Los Gatos on Highway 9.  I was driving the lead [...]

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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 [...]

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I was driving my 1985 Plymouth Voyager minivan on Blossom Hill Road in south San Jose, approaching Cottle Road, at 5:04 PM.  My first thought was that all of my tires had gone flat at the same time, as the van suddenly became almost impossible to steer.  Then I realized it was an earthquake, as the [...]

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My Memories of the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake

Well, I think it’s best to start with a little background… I was born in 1979 and my family moved to San Jose, CA when I was four. By 1989 I was 10, and I’d had duck-and-cover drills since kindergarden. My father was also very safety-conscious (it’s his profession), so we’d been drilled at home [...]

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Remembering the ’89 Quake

It’s hard to believe almost 20 years have passed since the Loma Prieta quake, it seemed like only yesterday. To this day I thank the lord that I was too lazy to get up when my alarm rang at 5:00 p.m., otherwise my son and I would have found ourselves under the rubble at Ford’s. [...]

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Loma Prieta

Jon O’Bergh is a keyboardist with the Bay Area jazz/funk fusion group Gemini Soul and a composer. A few days ago I came across his story about the earthquake and other events in his life during 1989. He agreed to let me post the part of his story recalling the earthquake, so here it is: [...]

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I was living on Summit Road in Los Gatos with my grandmother. She and I had run into Scotts Valley to the store which used to be Zonotto’s. I remember walking down the aisle with cheese on my right and diapers on my left. There was a huge supporting beam running through the middle of [...]

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Quake of ’89

I was living in Campbell in an apartment complex called Union Manor. My sister and I had accompanied my mother to the complex’s laundromat when it hit, I was six years old and my sister was two. I remember sitting on the dryer and next thing I knew my mom had pulled me off hurriedly [...]

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Menlo Park

I was at work in Menlo Park in ’89 in a typical 1960s “curtain wall” structure that later was condemned and had to be completely reinforced with a structural steel exoskeleton…. The company at first denied there had been any damage even when cracks showed in the concrete walls. Finally two weeks after the quake [...]

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