20 years ago today, I had my world rocked in San Francisco: Loma Prieta earthquake

Pacific Heights to be exact.

Why--- because I experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake and it's one of the bigger events of my life.

I think I am one of the thousands who can say that baseball may have saved my life that day.

I worked in the East-bay--Hayworth to be exact---and left work early to get home and watch the World Series between the Giants and Athletics. My trip home involved traveling the Cypress Freeway in Oakland.

That freeway collapsed during the earthquake.

Many say that the early start of the baseball game (5pm) was the reason there wasn't more casualties on the Cypress freeway. I agree.

Everybody wanted to get home early for the game.

So I get home--I lived in a 3 story Victorian home on Clay Street in Pacific Heights---(Pacific Heights is in the heart of the city)--got out of my work clothes--put on a robe---fixed a big big glass of Seagram's and 7UP... turned on my TV---sat on my living room couch---and kicked back to watch the WS game that was being played in Candlestick Park.

It was 5 PM when the telecast began and Al Michaels started off with the introductions. At approximately 5:04 my TV picture froze and the signal was lost. I had about a second to ponder why it did that until it hit me---- SHIT! AN EARTHQUAKE.

Picture my living room. Wood floors---sparsely furnished--couch---TV---end table--

The next thing I know----I'm across the living room. My couch with me on top had slid compeletly across to the other side of the room. I sat in shock for about a 1/2 second---and then bam---the house shifted and I was back to my original spot. and the bam---back to the other side. It made an E Ride at Disney feel like a kids tricycle.

I finally got my senses--jumped off the couch, and headed to my room for some pants and a shirt. Keep in mind I only had a robe on.

Trying to put on pants while standing in an old creeky Victorian during a 7.2 quake is quite a task. I kept falling---pant's inside out... zipper---buttons--- door's slamming back and forth---death a possibility at any moment.

I think I heard once that the worse thing you can do during a quake is run outside. That advice has got to be bogus because that's the first thing I did as soon as I got my pants on. 3 flights down and I was out on the street.

I quickly noticed that I wasn't the only one who ignored the stay inside advice. When I ran out, I went to the middle of the street and my whole neighborhood was there with me. I lived on a hill and as I looked down the hill I could see hundreds and hundreds of my fellow San Franciscans standing in the middle of the road.

We all looked at each other (most of us have experienced many earthquakes before)and each of us knew that this was a big one.

7.2 to be exact. The average quake that I've felt while living in CA was between 4 to 5.0. Those quakes were uncomfortable enough---but 7.2!

Anyhow--- things settled down a bit and I worked up enough courage to run back into my house and finish getting dressed. I got my wallet, and a few other items and left the house. Aftershocks are known to finish off what the first quake shook lose and I did not want to be in that house.

About that time, my roommates managed to get home from work and they too gathered up some items and got out of the house. Of course the electricity was off---phones were jammed--- No one had cell phones (pre-everyone---had cellphone days)so we were kind of blind as to what actually happened in the city, etc.

My roommates and I walked down to our favorite bar and surprisingly enough---they were serving drinks...we then went to the local package store, paid cash for a bottle of Vodka---walked up the hill to the top of the Heights--found a place to settle in---and then for the next several hours watched the Marina down below burn from the many fires that had spread.

It was surreal

We finally went back to our dark house around midnight--- and went to bed.

4 days later---we got our power back and life went on.

20 years ago today---- Damn!

I also can't believe it's been 20 years.

My sister has the best tale of all, I think. She was swimming laps in a pool, outside lane. Suddenly found herself on the deck, high and dry. :D

AT HAIGHT AND BEUNA VISTA. FELT NOTHING AND GOT OFF THE BUS AT HAIGHT AND ASHBURY.
ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE IN THE STREET. WALKED HOME TO OAK STREET AND A NEIGHBOR HAD A CAR PLUG-IN T.V. TUNED TO THE WORLD SERIES. THAT'S WHEN I FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED.

:bounce: :bounce: :hurts:

but had no significant damage being 60 miles north of San Francisco. I remember the water slopping up out of the pool

I was in a NY restaurant with members of Circle Rep who were planning to eat and watch the game there. After the initial confusion of the quake, they sat back and waited for the baseball to start. What I recall of that event was their stunned chagrin when I told them it wasn't going to start BECAUSE OF THE EARTHQUAKE. "But it's the World Series..."

Yeah--- I heard a lot of people felt that way--

If they only knew.

I was driving to Tucson and had the game on the radio. A friend of mine was there in person, and had to run out on the field.
I also remember that because of the quake, Oakland had a chance to rest it's two best pitchers (Oakland was up two zip at the time)
and went on to win the series 4-0. My friend was very proud of the game pin from that day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW-TkpvKPl0

Things went insane.

Candlestick is about 20or 30 miles from where I lived... and the quake was coming South to North. It get to us in a about 2 seconds after the TV zapped.

Wow! Give thanks for baseball.

Emergency kits, consider getting out of the city, those kind of things

I now live in Orlando, Florida and a couple of years ago experienced 3 hurricanes in a row. Not my first though because I grew up in Miami.

In our outbuilding.

We're not supposed to get quakes here though... too far inland. If there was ever a big one here we'd get the hell out of the house, 'cause we're right below Shasta Dam.

and in my clothing store --

hayworth? -- didn't you work in hayward? -- i don't know where hayworth is.

20 year memory lapse...LOL

I was near the Lake. :D

not very far from merrit bakery.

now i live in oakland on the piedmont border between piedmont ave and oakland ave.

where on the lake were you?

behind Our Lady of Lourdes. :D

isn't that weird -- i love it.

...I was at work in Alameda, the bookcase in my office fell over. It could have hit me, since I had run for the doorway instead of staying put and crouching under the desk as I should have done. Of course I wasn't the only one to do that...

Then we all went outside and watched as part of the parking lot continued to sink, and there was a huge smoke plume visible from Berkeley where an auto shop had gone up in flames. Then someone tuned in their handheld TV (bleeding edge technology at the time) said "The Bay Bridge has collapsed!" -- at which time we all suddenly realized we had more important things to do than stand around the parking lot waiting for instructions what to do next. In a few short minutes there was a jam getting out of the parking lot, as we all got in our cars for the drive home, wherever home might be.

Many things took a few days to get back to normal. Street lights were out everywhere to start with, and only gradually came back online. But instead of causing chaos, for the next few days people were amazingly polite to one another, and drivers took turns at the intersections. That, also, had a surreal quality...

at the time and left work early to catch the game. How glad I was to encounter so little traffic as I zipped home on the freeway - the double-decker portion I had passed through collapsed on itself during the quake. When I got home my three cats were not sunning themselves in their usual spot in the carport - they were nowhere to be found. I went inside the house, opened the back door for the dog and settled on the couch to watch the first pitch of the ball game. I began to worry when the shaking didn't stop. Huddled in the hallway, I could hear all kinds of things crashing upstairs. About the time shear panic was setting in the shaking stopped.

Most of the contents of my kitchen were now on the floor. I found my dog in the far corner of the yard clutching her tennis ball - a prized possession. The cats showed up about an hour later like nothing had happened!

I didn't feel anything as I was at my now ex's work where he was changing the oil in my car. I had brought my daughter with me but my son was home. We lived in an older mobile home with an addition we had built. The mobile was on pier blocks and he felt it. Called us up at the shop and told us about it. Being 12, his big worry at the time was that there wasn't a baseball game that day. Then he called back and told us about the Bay Bridge. Since we got our TV reception from Sacramento, we were able to see coverage after we got home.

My brother was on 580 just before the turnoff onto 80 and saw all the dust from the collapsed Nimitz Cypress Structure. He and his buddy didn't know exactly what had happened while seeing that but knew it was terrible. He and I used to drive the Nimitz to work in the 70's as we lived north of Berkeley and worked near the Coliseum. I always got the heebee-jeebee's every time I drove it: all that bouncing up and down the entire time.

A week or so later, a friend I knew who had lived in the Santa Cruz area, told me that the house they had sold before they moved to the Sierra's had been destroyed in the quake.

First, most are designed to withstand a violent earthquake, and...

Second, the parts of the skyscrapers not so well designed for earthquakes are the windows. And if you go outside, and there are thousands of windows bursting their glass and frisbee-ing down to street level, you might very quickly become human hamburger.

Glad you survived intact!

:hi:

More stories here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6794985#6795410

I didn't catch that thread...

:P

it took me a moment or two to decide whether to use a 5 or a 3. You can see where that ended up.

But I have been in So. Cal. for all the big shakers, Sylmar in 71, Whittier Narrows in 87, as well as the Landers and Northridge quakes.

It's madness once the ground starts moving under your feet. I can still remember the Sylmar quake like it was yesterday, my mom went nuts and it was very scary, I was only ten. The Landers quake hit at 4:30 a.m. and I woke up about ten seconds before it started, I heard it coming.

Glad you're okay.

just south of Oakland. The first thing I did was call my grandmother in Hayward. The phone had no dial tone but I dialed anyway and got her. She was OK and I assured her all of us were OK. My husband who worked in the Opera House in SF happened to be home that day.

The electricity went out but we heard the news from the car radio. It was really weird to find out the Bay Bridge had fallen down.

The local news stations stayed on the air around the clock for three or four days doing the most amazing coverage I've ever seen. They coordinated traffic by telling us which freeways were being declared safe as inspectors looked at every single ovderpass and bridge in the Bay Area. Companies called them to spread the word that they were closed so no one had to go to work, or that they had changed the working hours. They announced all the detours available and, of course, we all watched the coverage of the Nimitz freeway collapse and the rescues. If there hadn't been the baseball game there would have been hundreds more cars on that freeway. We found out that the residents of the area saved many people that day by climbing around the flattened cars and rescuing many people.

BART the train that crosses the Bay underground actually withstood the earthquake very well. The train stopped and people had to exit and walk through the tunnel and take buses home (no charge) along regular streets because there was no way of knowing if the freeways were safe (overpasses may have fallen or be close to collapse) .

People pulled together everywhere.

but near the Oregon border. My friend's family lived in SF. She told me her sister was at a grocery store when it happened. Many people's first response was to run out of the store. Well, the store's windows blew out and many were hit with glass.

I also lived in Ferndale, we had just moved to Sacramento when an earthquake hit the Ferndale area. Some of our friends lost their Victorian houses, they slid right off their foundations. I believe the town of Scotia was on fire from the quake, and the aftershocks were in the high fives.

I'd stopped commuting about two weeks before the quake or I'd have been there right about that time, usually got to it a few minutes before 5 -- I know from always looking at my watch to see how long it took me to get across the thing. It made me really phobic.

My mom was at Candlestick that day, on the upper deck. She said it did its own wave. :)

I've been on the lower level of other multi-level freeways, but none of them ever creeped me out like the Cypress did.

I said I'd never live in that area of CA. A year and half later I was living in the Bay Area.
Managed to leave after 3 years there and only ever experienced one minor quake in that time.
That was scary enough for me to never go back.

Glad you survived and everything was ok.

and I was in New Orleans, getting ready to watch the Series.

But I lived in both The City and Oakland briefly, after college. So it was my world -- and now is again.

PSA: The East Bay city between Oakland and Fremont, home town of George Foreman (the elder,) is "Hayward".

...at the exact time the earthquake hit up there.

Really odd call...a ring, ring...and then a squeal.

I hung up and the back line to the office rang ~~ it was after business hours ~~ I picked it up and it was my hubbie telling me to turn on the TV in my office ASAP because there had been a major earthquake in the SF area.

Really eerie feeling to be calling at the exact moment that quake hit.