At the time I was working at the Good Earth Natural Foods store in Fairfax on Bolinas Road, and doing housecleaning jobs all over Marin.

This particular day started out normally, I did my morning job and then went by the store (GE). While I was there I started getting this real ‘hinky feeling’, for no reason I could explain I called and cancelled my afternoon house cleaning job down in Sausalito (just north of the Golden Gate Bridge). Then I proceeded to buy large bottles of water, candles, matches, easy to prepare food stuff. I felt like I was in a daze, not quite all there. I drove down to the Post Office in Fairfax and ran into a couple friends, we both commented on a ‘strange day feeling’ and went about our business.

I drove to San Anselmo, where I lived at the time. I parked my 1968 VW bus in the driveway of the house where I lived, which wasn’t something I usually did. (The owner didn’t like it.) My room was the lower floor of a 2 story brick older home.

I remember setting the bags on the floor in the middle of the room and I sat down there too. This was not the ‘normal’ routine. Nothing about the day felt normal.

The next thing I remember was hearing a very loud ‘CRACK’ sound, my first thought was that something in the adjacent garage had been knocked over, but before I could get up the TV which was on a wimpy tv rack was on my back. I got that back in place and realized what was going on.

I opened the door to the driveway and watched as my bus bounced up and down, back to front – over and over again. Imagine what a rug looks like if you shake it out, the ripples in it.. the earth was rippling under my feet.

I looked up at Mt Baldy and the trees were doing hulus.. I had never seen anything like this before.

It seemed to go on for a very long time.

I went in and turned on the TV.. and got the news feed coming from the World Series at Candlestick Park in SF..

In a daze it became apparent this was a big quake.

Outside in my neighborhood people were screaming and running with babes in arms..where to I don’t know or understand. My landlord called and said, “Don’t let the old man next door turn off our gas or we won’t get it back for weeks.” I did stop him from turning the gas off. There was really little damage in San Anselmo, or Marin, a great shaking up but nothing like what was happening in the city, or really further south in the Santa Cruz area, where this quake’s epicenter was at.

I became glued to the tv watching all the horrors of pancaked houses, freeways, and bridges collapse. For days.

More than anything, I started to pay attention to this ‘feeling’ I had had that day. I call it my earthquake radar, and many times I have felt it before a quake hits, sometimes I get a ‘hinky’ feeling days in advance of something big. Mainly I need to get out of the way and pay attention to it.. it is right more times than not.

By Bobbi Kensler Wisby (reprinted from her own blog)

I was young, 19 years old, just out of high school spinning my wheels, nothing going on. I had been working as a car salesman out at Dave Hart Nissan in Watsonville, and as a warehouseman for Erics Deli on Coral St. in Santa Cruz, however, I was currently out of work.

I would borrow money from my folks for rent sometimes, and I had a plan, I was going to get in on this gig selling portrait sittings for Olan Mills picture studios. In case you are under 40, you may not recall them, but Olan Mills was a “traveling” portrait studio that would go from town to town, set up shop, make a bunch of appointments by telephone from a makeshift call center in a hotel room set up a bunch of “sittings” and then move on. They were legit, they took the pictures sold people prints etc, but it was just a sleazy sales job.

Well I had been “hired” which is a funny way of saying it, because they would hire anybody who was willing to sit down at a phone and read their script to the people on this list of phone numbers they gave you. I was on the job, nice thing, I could see the commission checks coming in, the promised payout was huge, something like 20% of the photo fees which were nearly $50 bucks!

They said the script took 2 minutes to read, and I had a list of hundreds of “Hot Leads” they said, so I was going to be in the money. If I was good I could go on the road, town to town like “Emma” or “Erma” I honestly can’t recall the woman’s name who was running the show. All I can remember is she was from Oklahoma.

My first shift started at 5 pm on October 17, 1989 at the “Travellers Inn” on Ocean street.

I was early 15 min or so, first day on the job, really wanted to get at it. Rent was due, well 17 days past due I guess, and I needed to log some time and get to work.

Erma, (Lets just call her “Erma” though I honestly don’t recall her actual name) got me started by going over the script, showing me the why’s and wherefore’s of what you needed to emphasize and say at what time etc. during the call. Total training time was maybe 10 minutes and at about 5:02 I sat down to make my first call.

(Warning, much of this that follows is a strenuous effort at recalling many faded details, caveat emptor)

Let’s see, David Alivos, number 867-5309 (you children of the 80′s will get the phone number reference)

Ring Ring….
Ring Ring….
Ring Ring….

David: Uh, Hello?

Paul: Hello Mr. Alivos ( the script had a nice blank spot where you inserted the leads name)

Paul: my name is Paul with Olan Mills picture studios and we are calling because we have come to this community to provide photographic portrait services to the residents in this area, we will only be in town for two weeks and I wanted to offer you a special…
(I’m reading from the script here, trying hard, it’s my first call, alot is riding on this, I need this job…)

David: Uh, what’s that… You know, things are shaking here, uh, crap…

Click… Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..

The sound of a dead line.

“That’s not good” I thought to myself in the 3 seconds it took for the shock wave to travel from where David was in Aptos to where I was sitting on Ocean street in Santa Cruz.

Then it happened…

The shaking as I recall started with a big jolt, closely followed up by an up and down motion that was sort of diagonal?

I thought to myself “Wow, cool, this a good one”

I looked to Erma, and quickly deciphered from the horror in her eyes, that in her world…
This was not cool.

Erma, as I said before was from Oklahoma, and as I pontificated on this event later, there are not many earthquakes in Oklahoma. I was barely a year old in 1971 in Hollywood California when I felt my first one, a 6.5 in San Fernando. Mother says I slept right through it, not a peep, I’m not surprised, I still sleep like the dead. As a child, I recall smaller quakes the happened from time to time, we would ride through them, cheer about them a little bit, commiserate after they were over, call neighbors etc.

No big whoop.

Erma was clearly having a “Big Whoop” about this one.

It lasted longer than any other quake I had been in, and was way more violent. Being from Oklahoma, Erma didn’t know to get in the doorway where I had stepped to immediately after dropping the Pac Bell standard phone back in its cradle. She had started running about the room grabbing belongings, and whispering something I can only think was some sort of prayer.

I took her by the shoulders and led her to the door, at about that time the cover to the wall heater in the room popped off rather dramatically and bounced about the room, off the bed etc. She made a sound like someone who has just been caught in a net and snared to the ground, sort of a wheeze with a little sigh…

We stayed there in the doorway for what seemed like about a couple minutes, in retrospect I realize it was only about 10 seconds? 20 seconds? but I was mesmerized by the lantern that hung in the entry way to the motel and how it swung from side to side bashing itself against the roof of the carport and the glass falling to the ground around it.

The quake stopped, not suddenly, but like you were slowly turning the dial down over a few seconds.

Stillness.

And a symphony of sound.

Car Alarms, Burglar alarms, the sound of
Beep Beep Beep Beep
Wrinnnggggg WrrrrinnnnGGGGG, WrrrrrIIINNNNGGG.
Bwoooga, Bwoooga, Bwoooga.
Rang out from all over the lower ocean Street area I was in.

Erma was silent but skittish, as though she was waiting for some kind of final blow. I was curious and walked out into the parking lot just outside our door. The door was right up at the front of the motel near the office, I looked up behind me and all of the guests on the upper level had come out of their rooms to stand on the balconies.

A middle aged man and his wife in bathrobes looked down upon me and said in a strange accent…

“Wow, you have many uhf doze around hereabouts’ mate?”

I said “No, that was a big one.”

By Paul Sosbee

I have one younger sibling and at the time my sister, who is a year and a half younger than me, was still confined to a child seat. Therefore I always had the great status symbol of the front passenger seat. This meant one of two things for me, I got to feel like a big boy, AND I got to be in charge of the radio. I was obsessed with the dial on that radio. I took great pride in being able to tune into a station just right and finding the minimal amount of static for a given channel. There was no bigger reward in the car then when I got a station to come in over the airwaves crystal clear.

Human memory is an unreliable thing. Even in adults. Over time things get warped and twisted and we can never be entirely sure of the details of our past. We have the gist though and so if some of the details seem a bit far fetched please remember that I was 5 years old and that when you’re five everything is more dramatic and pronounced than it really is. Also, the details I remember make for a much better story and because reality is subjective, and this is the reality I remember, it must be real. Or, at least real enough to tell.

We were coming home from the grocery store on the freeway, me in the prized front seat and my sister in the back. Suddenly the radio station that I had tuned into perfectly starting spitting static out of the speakers. I sprang onto the problem immediately and reached for the dial, but before I could our car suddenly swerved to the left. I was jolted and my outstretched hand missed the radio dial. As I fumbled for it again the car swerved to the right and I once again missed my mark. Frustrated at my mothers sudden ineptitude at driving I shouted.

“Mom!!! What are you doing!?!?!?!?!”

“It’s not me mijo!” she replied frightened.

My mom regained control of the car and brought us to the center lane. I’m not sure how long the earthquake actually lasted but I only remember these two swerves, once to the left and once to the right. I am also unsure as to how an earthquake would cause a car to swerve severely back and forth across a freeway. I remember my mother being freaked out and me sitting there annoyed that I had been interrupted from reaching the dial. We made it home and my mother wouldn’t let us go inside. She had been listening to the news the rest of the way home and there were warnings of potential aftershocks. I remember casualty reports and my mother explaining to me that people had died. In my head I imagined a group of people standing in front of a building and as the ground began to shake the building was dislodged from its foundation and came crashing down onto them. Without fully understanding the concept of death I still knew that it was something to be afraid of and sad for. The family across the street had several pets and they were all outside in their driveway surrounded by animals. Too afraid to go back inside lest the roof cave in on them. I ran into the middle of the street for fear that our house would betray me and topple over on top of me. The adults stood around talking to each other and I didn’t pay attention. Grown up conversations were often too difficult to decipher. There is so much we can’t understand until we have a concept for it. People dying didn’t really seem like a big deal to me at the time. I knew I should be worried and sad but only because I saw the grown ups around me worried and sad. Only when we understand the permanence of death can we really appreciate it.

This is where the memory ends. I’m sure my mother was worried about my father and the rest of our family. There were no cell phones then and it must have made events like these much more difficult to deal with when you couldn’t get in touch with the people you care about with the ease that we can today. I don’t remember when we went back inside, or any after shocks, or when my father got home from work, or if it even was a work day. I just remember being annoyed at the swerving car and being sad and afraid of something I didn’t really understand. I could make up those details, it would probably be about as accurate as if I actually remembered them. But I don’t remember them and so only the half fiction of my memory is real enough to tell.

By John Bobst (who also writes at his own website)

At the 5:03 pm time I was working the front service desk and was able to get under the counter, and gesture to anyone in the area to do the same. I was in work mode first, got all the necesssary keys and made sure all monies were locked up, went outside and regrouped. Later that night and the next day Kmart opened their doors to those in need of blankets, batteries, flashlights, candles and many other items that people in the neighborhood/community might need, that we had to give.

Now, Kmart (that store anyway) sold beer and wine. When our store went about cleaning and categorizing all of the losses you can bet that the crew wrote off just about the entire beer and wine department. Then we had a much needed party with the store crew and all!

PS. My daughter thought the earthquake only happened at our house!

By Phyllis Burke

An entire portion of Interstate 880’s overpass, near the Cypress street turnoff in Oakland, had not only collapsed, but 67 people would lose their lives, 3,757 would be injured and more than 12,00 people would become homeless before it was all over. The unsuspecting motorist never imagined they would not live to see the next day as they innocently drove that now famous portion of I-80. Rumors begin to trickle in of the tragic freeway death toll. We all held our breath waiting for confirmation of the sheer devastation we hoped was only a rumor. As I walked into our 2-bedroom apartment at 928 Marin Street #2, on the corner of Florida and Marin Street, the first thing I did was turn on the television. To my shock and horror, graphic images of twisted metal, mangled buildings and rising death tolls were pouring in from every available news camera.  Immediately, we all knew that what we heard was not just rumors, but brutal hash reality.

As I slumped down in the corner of our old Victorian style apartment overlooking downtown Vallejo, it seemed as if I were suffocated by all the horrific news being piped in on every air way and mode of communication possible. Then I realized that even though history had just been re-written and life would never be the same for thousands, I began to think of all the things my wife and I had to praise God for.  Even in spite of all the things we never will understand, there is plenty that we can still praise God for every day of our lives, even in the face of tragic circumstances, because it is His love and grace that sustains those of us who survived. As I prayed for those still trapped under tons of concrete and rubble not knowing that to a great degree their fate was already sealed, I concluded my prayer with the following realization as I spoke these words to my heavenly Father on their behalf:

Countless victims suddenly realized as they sat helpless in their vehicles, their inescapable fate was sealed, and they were about to meet an untimely death; I imagined in my heart their last words may have sounded something like this:

The end is near though it may seem
no time to cry, no time to dream
No time to wonder what could have been
as time draws closer to an end

I must live each day as it comes
because yesterday is gone
and tomorrow isn’t promised to me

As I grow older and life flies by
I suddenly realize
‘No Time To Cry’

By Van Waller

By Shaun Saffen

My parents couldn’t find me and they looked everywhere. It took them almost 4 hours to find us but eventually they did. When we finally went back home we arrived at our house and it completely fell off the foundation.

I have two pretty cool videos. The first is one my neighbor took. Since we lived in the woods, our houses were pretty far apart. But my neighbor decided he would check on us to see if we are ok. He came down to the house and in the video everything is silent. He is calling our names and saying “oh my god, oh my god” after he saw that our house fell. He didn’t know if we were in the house or not, dead or alive.

By Jared Stasch

We’d both lived in the Bay Area for decades, and experienced many quakes. We knew this one was big. Our flat, which had survived the 1906 quake, swayed and creaked violently, and for a long time. Some pictures and objects fell. We made guesses about the strength and location of the epicenter. The TV went blank, and the power went off. Our cat freaked out, and we captured and cuddled her. We found a battery radio and turned on the news. One of the first things we heard was that “The Bay Bridge has collapsed.”

We had a clear view of the span from our deck: We could see it still standing. We got our binoculars, and then saw the collapsed lane. Soon, neighbors we did not know started wandering down the beach in front of the deck, and everyone was chatting excitedly.

We heard that the Marina district was on fire, but couldn’t see that part of the city from our place, so we walked down the block to the Sausalito
Boardwalk in front of what was then Sally Stanford’s restaurant. We could see the flames, and worried about a friend who lived there.

Since we were moving to a hot climate, we were already in the process of clearing out our closets. The next day, we filled up the car with warm bedding and warm clothes: I recall there were many drop off points for this type of donation. Because the Bay Bridge was closed, traffic in Marin was horrific. We felt grateful not to be commuting anymore. At first everyone was courteous on the roads and in public, but as the weeks progressed, people seemed to lose their patience with the congestion and inconvenience.

We felt many, many aftershocks; as boaters, we kind of got used to that, like rolling on the sea. A couple of weeks later we flew down to Mexico to oversee progress on our house; we stayed in a rented apartment that had twin beds. One morning I woke up on the floor: I had a vivid dream of an earthquake, and had literally bounced off the bed. I think I was so used to moving earth, my dream re-created it.

One of our former employees had been at Candlestick during the World Series game, but no one we knew was seriously impacted by the quake. We were extremely offended when people suggested we were moving away because of the quake. We were, after all, moving to the Hurricane Latitudes.

I have always remained happy to have been here to experience Loma Prieta, tragic as it was. I am among many who actively enjoy feeling the earth move, as we did this week at work. I feel resentful when there is a quake and I somehow don’t feel it, like the 6.2 today [January 9] in Eureka. I like to be reminded of the power of nature: Despite human depredation on our environment, there are some things we cannot change or predict.

By Jane Firstenfeld

I was in the upper deck, hanging out with some friends. I remember the ominous sound, the tremendous rumbling as the earthquake approached us. And as we rocked back and forth up there, we were pretty sure the whole place would come down. When it stopped, and everyone was alive in a stadium that had withstood the onslaught, there was tremendous cheering.

By Caitlin Scanlon