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:
One cloudless October day, during the waning warmth of Indian summer, I was getting ready to leave work when the phone rang. I lingered for a moment at the office door, debating whether or not to answer it. After the second ring, I walked back to my desk and picked up the phone, a decision that perhaps saved my life. A colleague on the other side of campus [of Foothill Community College in Los Altos Hills] requested some material and we agreed that I would leave it in an envelope for her to retrieve later at the building entrance. Just as I hung up, the ground started shaking, accompanied by a low rumble. I looked up and saw the fluorescent light fixtures jiggling. At first I wasn’t scared — I’d been through the big 1971 Simi Valley earthquake in junior high — but then the lights exploded with a surge of electricity, emitting sparks and a flash of blue light, while a cubicle divider came crashing over beside me with startling violence.
As the shaking intensified, I thought of a mustang bucking wildly at a rodeo. Was the earth trying to shake something off its back? A section of bookshelves tilted and fell, spilling law books across the floor toward my feet. Anything tall that was oriented parallel to the quake’s north-south motion toppled, yet, oddly, nothing on the desks seemed to move. Only fifteen seconds passed, but it seemed to go on for minutes. When the shaking stopped, people emerged from their offices; fortunately, no one was injured. My hands were trembling as if the quake had entered my body. Outside, the abandoned old house next to our building — a relic that the college had inherited when it bought the property from the orchard farmers who originally owned the parcel of land — was still standing, but I noticed the upper portion of its stone chimney had toppled onto the path that I usually took to my car. Rubble was piled in a heap like a grave mound. If it hadn’t been for that phone call, I likely would have been passing right next to the chimney when the quake struck.
Driving home, the traffic was crawling on the freeway since a section of road had buckled. The crack continued through a sound wall, splitting it apart and leaving a jagged gap. A pall of dust hung in the air, shaken up from the earth. The destruction seemed spread out randomly. When I at last arrived home, nothing in our apartment had been disturbed, although a mile away a hotel had partially collapsed. J.’s stuffed animals were all standing, sheet music was open on the piano, dishes remained secure in cupboards. The only sign that something was out of the ordinary was the wall clock, stopped at 5:04.
By Jon O’Bergh
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