Presented below is the sixth day of the Loma Prieta “Earthquake Collage” written by Robert Sward, a poet and novelist, from his work with students and faculty and staff at Cabrillo College. Day 7 will be presented tomorrow.

Sunday, October 22, Day 6

Wake G., and try to get out of bed, but the house is moving too much to go anywhere.

According to today’s San Francisco Examiner, there have been over 2,500 aftershocks or tremors since October 17. At times it feels as if Santa Cruz is in a war zone and we are under bombardment. With police, rescue workers and news people in helicopters flying low over our heads night and day, that feeling gets pretty intense… vibration from the helicopters causing further damage to chimneys, etc., weakened by the 7.1 quake.

My daughter calls from Miami… reassure her that “Yes, we’re okay,” fearing that, in the midst of conversation, another tremor will hit and I’ll have to break off the call–and worry her more.

“Listen, honey,” I say at last, “The world, it turns out, is still under construction.” * “Listen, Earth,” I say, “we had an agreement…” Earth with a crowbar still looting and pulling people out of their cars. Smack!

***

Presented below is the fourth day of the Loma Prieta “Earthquake Collage” written by Robert Sward, a poet and novelist, from his work with students and faculty and staff at Cabrillo College. Day 6 (there’s no day 5) will be presented Sunday.

Friday, October 20, Day 4

G., seeing that I’m depressed, asks, “What can we do to cheer you up?” “Let’s invite some friends over,” I say. “How about a professional comedian?” I don’t expect G. to do anything but laugh. Instead, she reaches for the phone and calls the only comedian we know. Swami Beyondananda (Steve Baerman) and his wife Trudy Lite are in town and accept.

As we sit down to eat I ask Swamiji to pronounce a blessing. “The beat goes on,” he begins. “Yes, we’re all Shakers, my friends… Let our only shaking now be from laughter.”

“What a relief it is to feel free to talk about, or not talk about, it,” says Trudy Lite, “to be with others who experienced it and not have to reassure them… as we have to reassure our friends and relatives that, ‘Yes, we’re okay,’ when we’re not so sure we are.”

G. and I would like Trudy and the Swami to stay in our “crumbling, toothpick city,” but the quake has spooked them… They’re probably going to move on, especially if they can’t trust… if the earth goes on defaulting. BOOM BOOM. A couple more aftershocks.

“Steve, if ananda means bliss or joy, what does Beyondananda mean?” I ask him. “First you go to bliss. It’s 500 yards beyond it,” he says.

Steve and Trudy are planning an earthquake benefit performance. Among the dance numbers to be performed: “I Feel the Earth Move Under My Feet”, “Shake Rattle and Roll,” “There’s a Whole Lot of Shakin’ Going On,” “Shake it Up Baby,” and “Twist and Shout…”

***

“Cashing in on East Bay residents who are homebound because of the earthquake, hordes of San Francisco prostitutes have flocked to Oakland where business is booming.

“’The hookers in San Francisco can’t get enough work, so a lot of them have taken BART to Oakland,’ said Maggie, a 22-year-old prostitute who works regularly on San Pablo Avenue in the heart of Oakland’s red light district. ‘There’s bumper-to-bumper traffic over here and they want some of the action. We wish they would go home.’”

”…Sex goes on, even in a crisis. And Oakland is where it’s happening right now.’”

***

Post-Quake bumper stickers: “I Love Santa Cruz Despite Its Faults” “Shift Happens” “Restore Santa Cruz” “It’s All Our Fault”

***

At 5:04 PM on October 17 a family in Watsonville is watching a video of the Mexico City quake. Suddenly their house begins to shake and the shelves open and bottles and glasses fall onto the floor. The daughter cries, “Dad, it’s an earthquake.” “No, no, it’s just a movie,” says her father.

***

Presented below is the third day of the Loma Prieta “Earthquake Collage” written by Robert Sward, a poet and novelist, from his work with students and faculty and staff at Cabrillo College. Day 4 will be presented tomorrow.

Thursday, October 19, Day 3

Theater director Wilma Marcus says at the moment the quake hit, a student was being video-taped as she sang these lines from the Carole King song, “…I feel the earth move under my feet…”

Later, re-playing the tape, W. saw the singer’s face contort as she was thrown about the room. Young singer clinging to support beam as video camera went dead.

B., another colleague, says all he wants to do is to play the cello.

Dinosaur Hatching Weather

The nights are dark and, apart from the occasional aftershock, siren and house shaking, silent. The days are hot. Blue sky and windblown clouds. Businesses and schools closed. People going around in bathing suits and shorts.

Bright, sunny, 90 degree weather… day after day. Before the Great Earthquake of 1906, there was also a hot spell, says the San Francisco Chronicle… just like now. Seismologists insist there’s no connection.

Indian summer before and after. “Too good to be true weather.” But this is California. Whatever the weather, it’s earthquake weather.

***

“California sits on the boundary between the Pacific and North American plates, which are moving with respect to each other at about two inches a year,” says seismologist Kate Hutton.

“…quakes happen because [the two] plates do not move smoothly along a fault line. They catch, like two pieces of sandpaper being rubbed against each other, and then suddenly slip…”

***

Confronted with evidence of a 7.1 earthquake, Mother Nature flutters her eyelashes and responds with a look of innocence, “Who, me?”

Normally near our house we see hummingbirds, hawks, robins, blue jays… Why is it that… have all the birds vanished?

***

Outside the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting Company, where Shawn McCormick, 21, and Robin Ortiz, 22, died when a wall fell on them… Police have strung a yellow and black ribbon, “Scene of Crime–Stay Out…” This yellow and black tape, in fact, surrounds the entire downtown area.

An NBC television crew is rumored to be waiting for Vice President Dan Quayle to arrive. The Vice President of Disaster is coming to the scene of a Disaster.

Later, G. and I re-trace our steps thinking that Quayle, if he has in fact arrived, will by now have left. But he hasn’t even appeared. Next we learn that Gov. George Deukmejian will avoid a mob scene and detour to the demolished Warehouse Liquor Store on Soquel for a photo opportunity. A policeman says the Duke will appear for about 90 seconds, make no comment to anyone, and then leave. Dan Quayle or George Bush may or may not come with the Duke.  Quayle, Bush and the Duke apparently want to be seen “seeing” the disaster area so they can be seen later in the day on television seeing the disaster area.

Reporters trying to “place” Santa Cruz (California’s favorite seaside resort), attack guidebooks and the “World Almanac:”

•        California’s Holy Cross, so named by Father Serra in 1791, one of the padre’s twenty-one missions.

•        Situated along the coast off US Highway 1, seventy-four miles south of San Francisco.

•        Population 44,100, altitude twenty feet

•        Major industries: agriculture, tourism, manufacturing, food processing and high technology

•        Largest employer: UCSC with 4,400 employees

•        Home to the Joseph M. Long Marine Lab – ‘Visitors are greeted by an eighty-five-foot long skeleton of a blue whale.’

Hard data that will become part of that ‘roll of bad news flung at our doors each morning,’ as Charles Atkinson puts it.

***

TV: Bush, Leon Panetta and Mayor Mardi Wormhoudt tour the mall looking solid and normal. The buildings, on the other hand, look ghostly. I identify with the buildings.

***

***

No, it’s not the San Francisco Earthquake and it’s not the World Series Earthquake, but the Loma Prieta, in honor of a remote peak near the quake’s epicenter.

“…the Loma Prieta event occurred on a deeper fault, a dipping fault deep in the root… of the San Andreas system of faults and it was not the vertical strike-slip faulting that one would have guessed would occur…”

–News Item

It’s a Spanish name. Loma Prieta, the Earthquake of the Dark Hill. “Seismologists continued to argue about how high the quake climbed on the Richter scale. They would finally settle on 7.1. But on Thursday, they agreed on one thing: The quake was one of the five great natural disasters to occur this century in the United States.”

–News Item

San Andreas Fault. Saint Andrew. The saint of lost things. How did Saint Fault get his name?

Presented below is the second day of the Loma Prieta “Earthquake Collage” written by Robert Sward, a poet and novelist, from his work with students and faculty and staff at Cabrillo College. Day 3 will be presented tomorrow.

Wednesday, October 18, Day 2

“No sound is dissonant which tells of life.”– Coleridge

Garbage men arrive at 6 AM. Comforting: clashing, cursing, and banging of metal.

10 AM

We drive to Safeway, but the power’s out and the store–its doors opening, closing to admit one or two people at a time–is dark. Hundreds of people lined up waiting to enter…

Safeway’s concern:

a) How to protect itself against shoplifters;

b) How to ring up purchases without cash registers.

Wait in line at Ace Hardware for batteries… reading newspaper and sharing “Where were you?” stories.

“I opened the car door and jumped and started rolling down the hill with geraniums and wild flowers flying through the air,” a friend wept. “‘O God,’ I said, ‘I don’t want to be killed by flowers.’ And I saw him running towards me, Max, who eats the cat’s food, Max, the black and tan nipper at peoples’ heels, his raw, flea-bitten rump slightly out to one side. He jumped into my arms. ‘My sweet, noble, dancing prince,’ I crooned and began to cry, believing that’s how J. would find us, alone in the woods, Max in my arms.”

Hour later, store is out of batteries. G.’s friend, M., agrees to buy us canned food, coffee and cheese, which we’ll pick up later.

Check house for damage, clean up. POWER COMES BACK ON.

5.2 aftershock. A flow, or “outbreak,” some people call them, of aftershocks. “Well, better an aftershock than the thing all over again,” says my son. The quake and aftershocks give birth to “disaster-bred opportunities…” they set off an “avalanche of sales,” says the newspaper.

***

“According to Dave Steeves, chief county building inspector, Santa Cruz County floats on an island surrounded by seven major faults and is the most dangerous quake zone in the U.S.”

–News Item

“The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s top medical-disaster coordinator went on vacation, with his supervisor’s permission, the day after the earthquake struck California, FEMA officials acknowledged…”

“The departure of Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Brown before the extent of the casualties was known raises fresh questions about the agency’s management…”

–News Item

***

Mom called, Dad is gone. It had only been a few days since I saw him in the hospital. I assured her I would be there as soon as I could get myself ready and find someone to take care of my advertising clients with the Shopper.

The day was a blur of activities, phone calls and tears; finally late in the afternoon I had made all the arrangements for someone to handle my job, I was packed and ready. I knew this was going to be an emotional time. The drive to Los Banos was filled with remembering as I thought about this beloved man I call Dad. I was six when they married and that was 40 years ago.

Tears and hugs upon arriving from the few family members that had gathered. One of my daughters had driven from San Francisco. Mom, bless her heart wanted me to immediately help her pick out Dad’s clothes. So we moved to their bedroom and stood in front of the open doors of the closet looking through his shirts and suits. I feel a wave of dizziness, mom also sways, I catch her and as I do I see the hanging lamp moving. “Mom, we have just had a little earthquake.” “No, No, we don’t have earthquakes here; your dad is trying to tell me something.” At that moment she passes out.

We quickly pick her up, all 98 lbs and put her in the car and drive to the emergency. While they are checking all her vital signs and making sure she is OK. I am in the waiting room panicked, knowing she has had heart problems in the past. While all this emotional energy going on inside me I hear on a portable radio that there has been a huge earthquake in San Francisco.

The hospital gives my mother a sedative, assures us it is just shock and stress. We take her home and put her to bed. Then we turn on the television and are stunned. We are seeing live footage that is being broadcast in the moment from the helicopters that were filming the World Series at Candlestick Park. We watch a car plunging in the ocean, the results of the collapse of the bay bridge. We see rubble everywhere, buildings burning, the terror on people faces and hear the emotional broadcaster repeating that is it a magnitude 6.9 on  a section of the  San Andreas fault, the Loma Prieta near Santa Cruz. The images are shocking and they continue to repeat them over and over, adding new and more shocking footage as the minutes go by. Finally they announce it was a magnitude of 7.1.

I am beyond emotional, my dad has just passed, and my mother is fragile and she might no withstand her loss. I don’t know about the well being and safety of my other daughter and grandsons. If this earthquake took down a bridge 75 miles away, and destroyed huge buildings, I have probable lost my home which is close to the epicenter. In this brief moment in time I might have lost everything.  Looking back I realized that I was in shock as I watched the news broadcast until it went off the air, seeing the images of the bridge collapse, the fires, devastation, and hearing the panic in the newscaster’s voice over and over again.

Early the next morning I received a call, my family was safe and our home was still standing.  They reported that the inside was a total mess with piles of broken dishes, books and treasures, amazingly no broken windows or visible damage.

We buried my dad; I helped my mom with the basic things with the promise of coming back soon. It was ten days before my return to my beloved home; the area looked like a war zone. I was an emotional zombie for weeks, frightened and scared to go upstairs. Even today the slighted tremor invokes that fright followed with sadness. They are somehow emotionally intertwined.

It was months later that I had the realization that my dad’s passing might have saved my life and my daughters. I would have been in the stores and on the streets that day because Tuesday was my day to contact clients on the Pacific Garden mall. My daughter worked in one of the high rises severely damaged. Dad knew he was dying, and in that space between life and death was he aware of what was coming and did he choose to make his transition knowing it would remove us both from the danger. I want to believe this is true.

By Peggy Black

©2009 Peggy Black All Right Reserved. http://www.peggyblack.com

On Sunday, soon after the Santa Cruz Sentinel published its article about this project, Robert Sward, a poet and novelist who’s taught at UC Santa Cruz, Cornell, and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, wrote me about the “Earthquake Collage” he had put together after the Loma Prieta quake. At the time, he was teaching at Cabrillo College, and his work with students and faculty and staff produced the collage. It runs from October 17, 1989, through October 23, 1989. I thought it would be best to reproduce the collage here day by day, from November 17 through 23, as a way to capture some sense of the daily rhythm of Loma Prieta and its aftermath. All accompanying photos are by Robert Sward. Here is his introduction and the first installment of what will be a week-long series (read all installments by clicking on the “Earthquake Collage” category):

As its name implies, the following is a collage of impressions, recollections, news items, poetry, and facts regarding the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and its aftermath. Compiled shortly after the quake, this collage provides a series of images of what it was like to be in Santa Cruz at that time. The people quoted at the start are from Earthshaking, a series of remembrances by Robert Sward’s students of their earthquake experience.

“Eleven miles below the Santa Cruz Mountains the earth erupted with the destructive force of a thermonuclear bomb.”

–San Jose Mercury News

“…these pieces of crust, called plates, restlessly roam about, driven by plumes of molten rock that roil up from the planet’s superheated core.”

–TIME Oct. 30, 1989

“San Francisco’s East Bay Vivarium (America’s largest reptile shop) reports 800 escaped animals, including full-grown boa constrictors, pythons, etc., roaming their giant warehouse.”

–The San Francisco Chronicle

Rita: I pour a glass of Coke. The microwave goes beep beep beep, telling me my popcorn is done. Dancing to the beat of MTV, I approach the refrigerator when, to my amazement, the house begins to dance along with me. Wow! I think, it’s an earthquake and it’s getting bigger.

Erin: I’ve been scuba diving. Surfacing, I see the land move in waves three and four feet high, the sandstone cliff falling onto the beach, a mist or fog of some kind rising…

Coral: …the restaurant begins bobbing up and down. I slither to the floor, watch my salad dressing plop upside down in slow motion, catsup bottles falling off the counter, people yelping, the ceiling high windows flapping like flags in the breeze… the roof groaning…

Steve: The gym starts bouncing around like a trampoline. Iron weights begin flying off their racks like popcorn popping. Dumbbells are clinking together like jingle bells, like people smashing wine goblets. Weight machines swaying, mirrors rattling…

Cindy: It’s 90 degrees and my family is sitting around the living room in bathing suits. My little sister has just lost her tooth. She stands up as the earthquake strikes our house. Teetering from side to side, she says, “I lost a tooth. I hope the tooth fairy will remember me.” Then, with a worried look, she falls to the floor.

Stuart: I point my finger at the floor, which is threatening to collapse, and begin shouting, “Quiet. Shut up. Stop right now…” to gain a feeling of control. I have to repeat myself because the noise of the quake drowns me out. Pointing my finger and yelling for order–like I do at school–makes me laugh.

Robert: When the house begins to rumble and the mirrors shake, I zip up my fly and dive into the cupboard under the bathroom sink. Holding on to the cupboard doors, I shut my eyes and feel I’m on the Big Dipper or the Grizzly. “Man,” I say, “this is some ride!”

Cheryl: She clings tightly to me and keeps her eyes closed the entire time. Eventually we hear people talking and feel safe enough to venture out. Our ‘ride’ must remind her of how Dorothy felt in the Wizard of Oz, for as we come out from under the table and open the door, she asks: “Where did the house land, Mommy?”

Post Quake

Don: Afterwards, we get together in the backyard with our neighbors and break out a couple bottles of champagne. We eat oysters and caviar and a rack of lamb. During dessert–a delicious apricot and chocolate tart–there’s a heavy aftershock. No more good manners. We dive under the table.

Shelley: We explore downtown Santa Cruz. We see a sidewalk of broken glass, a street filled with jewels.

***

***

The 7.1 tremblor wasn’t the Big One.  In fact, people now refer to it as “The Pretty Big One.” The Pretty Big One killed 66 people, caused $7 billion in damages, destroyed downtown Santa Cruz, portions of San Francisco and Watsonville, scores of homes in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and left more than 10,000 people homeless.

***

Tuesday, October 17, 5:45 PM, Day 1

Sitting now in the stairwell–safest part of the house? – with G., four or five cushions around us, listening to SONY Walkman. No lights, no phone, just the Walkman and the aftershocks. A 5.0 tremor follows the 7.1. Nimitz Freeway collapse, “hundreds killed,” says the radio.

Earth in labor… tremors… The interval between contractions is diminishing while the contractions themselves increase in force. Or is it me? Call in gynecologist. “Doctor, doctor…” And what is the earth giving birth to?

Our hearts attack us. The earth attacks.

Just before the earthquake started I was sitting on the edge of our bed on the second floor of our house in Aptos and talking on the telephone to a person in Marin County. Suddenly the house started lurching from side to side and having been through several minor earthquakes since moving to the area in 1986, I didn’t give it much thought except to start listening for our doorbell chimes. From previous quakes, we had discovered that any quake larger than 3.5 tended to make the 4 hanging chimes in the entry hall swing in such a manner they would hit each other and ring out. The motion started and just continued to get stronger. By now the chimes were ringing, my telephone connection had been cut off and the side-to-side house movement had become an up-and-down hopping and the noise of everything moving was terrific. At the height of the disturbance it sounded like a pile driver was attacking the house. And it felt like it too. The first thought that occurred to me was “This is getting bad now and I don’t know how much longer the house can take a pounding like this.” A large mirror which was attached to the bed set headboard detached itself from its mounting and fell across my shoulder but did not break. A tall dresser 3 feet away from the foot of the bed bounced off the wall and fell across the bottom of the bed.

As the sound of crashing and falling things began to wane, I heard this small voice on the telephone handset (which I was still holding) say somewhat shakily “I’m alright” and I couldn’t figure out how my wife’s voice had suddenly come from the telephone! It turns out that downstairs my wife was at her desk, which has custom overhead cabinets including an old-style (meaning heavy, picture tube-type) TV built-in, fending off items falling off her storage shelves, including the 24″ television, which she caught before it crashed to the floor. In the process, the falling TV had dislodged her telephone’s handset and although we were no longer connected to my Marin call, the telephone was basically acting like an intercom or shared listening device and that’s why I heard her make the comment from my upstairs telephone connection.

Since we had been warned over time that the San Andreas fault was overdue for a San Francisco 1906 style earthquake repeat, our thinking was that if the earthquake was that strong 90 miles down the coast, that San Francisco must be about destroyed! It wasn’t until later that we found our house was only 5 miles south of the earthquake epicenter.

One of our first worries was we couldn’t find our cats. One of them had been sleeping on a bench next to a fully loaded 12 foot high bookcase, which now was mostly unloaded, and the bench was covered with fallen books. It turns out the cats had bolted for safer places, probably in the first seconds of shaking, but we still had worries about them because we had broken glass in many places and we didn’t want them to get their feet cut. We had a display cabinet in the dining room with our wedding crystal and some heirloom crystal that had belonged to my grandparents. Very little of it survived. We had another display cabinet with a collection of porcelain bird figurines and we lost about half of those. But the worst damage by far was in the kitchen-wet bar area. During the earthquake, overhead cabinets popped open and plates, glasses, wine bottles, condiments and all manner of wet and dry food spilled out and fell on our countertops which were tile. While this was going on, the drawers immediately under the countertops were sliding open just in time to receive much of the now broken glass and liquid and dry contents of many bottles and packages. And a lot of the mess made it to the floor as well.

With all the broken glass and food goo about we decided to start cleaning up before anyone or the cats could get cut on the hazards. We now had no electrical power but fortunately, I had decided to prepare myself for the frequent winter power outages we have in Aptos and had purchased a 3500 watt electric generator a few months before so we were able to start it up as darkness fell and restore some semblance of order before nightfall. We wound up filling 5 garbage cans with broken glass – only half full each because of the weight of the glass – before we were done. We did have several interior house walls that suffered drywall cracks or tears but only on the walls oriented north-south. East-west walls survived intact which, I surmise, indicates that the strongest motion affecting our house came from the north which was the direction of the epicenter. In the whole 2-story house we only lost one window which fell out of its frame. All the other glass damage was from contents stored in cabinets but there was plenty of that. No people or animals were harmed physically but mentally we were pretty wound up in spite of being tired from cleaning up and we didn’t sleep all that well that first night as a few fair sized aftershocks rolled through later on. We couldn’t help wondering if they would build up as big as the five o’clock one.

By Tom Beckett
Santa Cruz, CA
(Aptos, CA at the time of the earthquake)

On October 17, 1989, I was working at Heartwood Spa, the beautiful hot tub and garden retreat near Dominican Hospital that has since closed. I was working the desk in the front office, which had originally been a chicken coop in an old Live Oak farm.

Sitting at the small desk heading into the last hour of my shift as a receptionist, I chatted with another staff member. The door to the garden was open and the weather was extremely hot, the air still with expectation.

Suddenly the tiny wood frame building was thrown from side to side by violent rocking. Paul said, “That’s a big earthquake.” I considered diving under the desk but the shaking was so intense that I ran out the open door in fear, with Paul following close behind.

The earth literally rumbled beneath our feet as everything around us—trees, the building and even the concrete, was shifted and tossed to and fro.

I tried to make it to the open grassy area away from falling objects but I only made it to the edge of the garden where I crouched instinctively on my hands and knees to try and center myself. This is when I felt the ground rolling and rumbling from deep below in an awesome display of earth’s inner power. I watched in a daze as the landscape around me swayed crazily.

The shaking finally stopped but only for a moment till an aftershock rocked us once again. Finally, there was a moment of stillness.

“God, that was big!”

“That was the big one all right…”

My stomach felt uneasy as if I’d just stepped off a boat. The massage clients had run out from their treatment rooms wrapped in only towels and we all stood looking at each other in disbelief.

“It must have been centered here.”

“If it wasn’t centered here, I hate to think what it was like where it was centered…”

“What time did it happen?”

“About five minutes after 5:00.”

“Do you smell gas?”

The smell, we finally realized, was the smell of alcohol. Peering over the fence, I saw a river of booze running out of the liquor store next door.

Someone was hollering, whooping like they just got off a roller coaster ride. The sounds of sirens and shouting rose into a crescendo. The little wooden building still stood but everything in and around it was in shambles.

As we cleaned up, it became a cat and mouse game. Go inside, start to sweep up the broken glass and mess, and then run outside with each new aftershock. Each quake instilled terror of an even greater and more destructive temblor.

Back at my condo, my housemate had picked things up, shut off the valves, removed items from the shelves and laid a large antique mirror on my bed for safe keeping.

Jerry was worried about his mom, who he couldn’t reach by phone. So with darkness approaching, we gathered candles, matches, and batteries in a pile on the coffee table for later use. Then I grabbed a flashlight and drove him to his mother’s house in Soquel.

I pulled up to the house and sat outside in the twilight trying to tune in some news on the radio. Suddenly, Jerry ran out of the house, sobbing hysterically.

“The fireplace has completely collapsed, and I don’t know where she is!”

Inside, the huge rock fireplace in the living room had tumbled down leaving a pile of boulders and rubble filling up most of the room.

I shined my flashlight under the rocks, fearful of seeing a hand or body part sticking up. Finally, we noticed a single candle burning near the mountainous pile and a neighbor let us know she was all right.

The owner of Theo’s Restaurant next door stopped by with a few bottles of champagne that were miraculously unbroken. So we toasted, celebrating our survival and ate cold spaghetti together.

By Martha Graham-Waldon

I was working on the 31st floor of the 101 California Bldg in downtown San Francisco when the earthquake hit. My girlfriend and I both worked for Russian stock brokers, and they had called us in to work their phones that afternoon. We had just caught a bus, and a cable car, took the elevator up to the 31st floor, sat down to make our first calls when the quake hit.

We had just moved to California from Maryland and this was our 2nd earthquake. That high up, we heard the earthquake before we felt it. You could hear a low rumbling that got louder and louder. When the first wave hit, it caused the building to start shifting to one direction. The scary part was that it didn’t shake, and the floor just kept moving to one direction. Then it began to tilt, and I thought maybe that was it. I later found out that this newer building had flexible girders built into the structure, and this caused the building to move and “flex.” The building felt like it swayed 50 feet in each direction! Once the quake waves hit the roof and began reverberating back, along with more waves coming up the building, the building started to shift and tilt around randomly for a while. I described it as feeling like an ant on a blade of grass on a windy day.

I vividly remember we all started looking over at the Bay Bridge, even though we couldn’t see the damage.

The funny story was that one of the stockbrokers was still selling to a customer over the phone during this whole event. We later found out he had never been in a quake, and thought we were playing some sort of joke on him.

Both my girlfriend and I eventually took the 31 flights of stairs down and headed towards Union Square. We found one store open, a Chinese grocery that had one of those old mechanical cash registers (and a candle lighting the place).

Unfortunately, my girlfriend and I got into an argument after this. I cannot remember what about, but she stormed off and I did as well. The rest of the night involved me finding my way back to Western Addition where we lived, and worrying about the fact I just left my girlfriend in downtown SF to fend for herself in a blackout.

I caught a bus downtown that was my bus to Western Addition, but the bus driver told me he was just driving wherever he could get. It turned out the bus had just come from Candlestick, and it was full of people who had been at the World Series game. The bus ended up driving down to Lombard Street where we ended up in an endless traffic jam in the Marina.

I got off the bus and headed toward Van Ness Avenue. I remember being amazed that the city was in a blackout. There was a lady walking down Van Ness with a candle to guide her, I remember seeing tour buses just driving around aimlessly. Eventually I found my way to a friend’s house on Van Ness, and then caught the Fulton bus towards my apartment. The scary thing was the bus driver stopped the bus halfway there, in a bad neighborhood, and said she wasn’t driving any further because of rioting. I left the bus and jogged around the bad neighborhood all the way to our apartment.

I ended up getting home at 4am after a very long journey, only to find out that my girlfriend had made it home in a couple of hours!

Because of this event, I decided I wanted to understand earthquakes more. I came to UCSC as an Earth Sciences major and graduated with an Earth Sciences degree in 2001.

By Patrick Testoni

My mother, sister, and myself had sat down to an early dinner not much before the earthquake hit. My father was away on business, as it happened, for a couple of days. If I recall correctly, dinner was mac and cheese, and being a quick eater I’d finished my dinner and my drink just as the quake started. We moved under the nearby door frames by the dining table and waited it out. A few dishes came tumbling out of cabinets and shattered on the tile counter of the kitchen, but nobody was hurt. The water heater in the garage toppled off its footing, though, spraying water into the garage, and we went out and turned off the water and the gas line.

After a quick review of the house and making sure there was no other damage, and almost getting hit on the head as I opened a cupboard and the iron came tumbling out, I went out to the neighborhood to see if anyone needed help. I was 15 at the time, and a member of the Boy Scouts, troop 614. I threw on my uniform shirt, I don’t think I bothered with the uniform pants as I was in a hurry, and grabbed a water main wrench and large crescent wrench from the garage just in case I needed to deal with a gas or water leak, and went door to door checking on the street. I knocked on at last a hundred doors, though I don’t think the majority were home from work yet. Of the houses in my neighborhood, just up the hill from Valley Gardens Golf Course, there weren’t any that I visited with major visible damage, and only a few people needed water or gas turned off.

In my wanderings I recall a police car paused to chat with me and took my name and information, though they didn’t stay long as I didn’t have anything of concern for them. A couple weeks later, though, I received two letters of commendation for my efforts, one from the Chief of Police and one from the Mayor, I think.

Later, when things were less critical, I recall riding my bike down to the abandoned Sky Park airport and watching the helicopters land, though I don’t recall exactly what dignitaries were supposed to be on them.

By Jeff M