Today is the 32nd anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake.
It happened on October 17, 1989, and measured 6.9 on the richter scale. It killed 63 people and injured thousands more.
Do you remember the quake, and if so, where were you when it happened on October 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m.?
32 comments
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When the earthquake struck, was in Pohang, South Korea dutifully serving my country protecting liberty and freedom… something you liberals and progressives are set on destroying in the name of “safety”, “equity”, and “diversity”.
We Americans are for equal opportunity for all citizens and legal immigrants.
You liberals and progressives are out for equal outcomes for everyone.
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I’m sure there was a lot of combat going on that far south in 1989
Thank you for your service. I believe in equal opportunity, equal outcome is unrealistic, as everyone has different work habits and abilities. Of course everyone should have access to a good education and after public school, either college or trade school, if you don’t do the work/study etc. you will not be successful, nor do you deserve to be. However, success means different things for different people, for some it is making enough to get by, for others it means millions. Both are okay as long as you are self sufficient. I believe anyone of even average intelligence, can be self sufficient if they have a work ethic and some people skills.
Exit12A: I also served my country for eight years, and both of my brothers and my father also served. Just so you know, we are all liberal and also believe that there should be equal opportunity. When you say “We Americans” I am sure you are not excluding me and my family, however we may disagree politically. As a child, I lived in the segregated South. I saw firsthand how people of color were mistreated. I know my gender and race gave me advantages. I don’t apologize for being a white male, I can still recognize the uneven playing field for others. It helps to look how one can make a positive contribution to America rather than being angry and like the dog in the manger. Just putting it out there for thought.
Just got off of the bridge when it hit and was in the Safeway in Walnut Creek picking up some treats for the game. In the parking lot the lamp posts were still rocking back and forth. The next day it took hours to get to the city so I took a cot to my shop and left home at 4 am and it still took a long time going over the San Mateo bridge. The object was to get to work and rest on the cot until 7am. Didn’t work out that great. One night I heard the whole Giants game on the San Mateo bridge.
I was almost 9 years old, my siblings and I were playing outside since it was still light out. It felt like the ground rolled under our feet
I was teaching a piano lesson at my home studio in Concord. When the rolling/lurching kept going more than a few seconds, the adult student and I clutched furniture edges and walls to make our way outdoors.
Without being able to focus on a level horizon and steady, vertical tree trunks, I immediately felt nauseous and dizzy and decided to lie face down on the grass. Both of us could see shock waves rolling through the nearby concrete front walk, but it never cracked!
We had bought a farm in Santa Rosa the year before. We had dairy goats. They didn’t want to be in the barn, outta the barn, in the the barn, outta the barn…. Our above ground pool splashed water all over some weaned baby goats. They were very confused. Our street looked wavy. Up and down. My husband and son were out on the tractor. Didn’t feel a thing. My daughter was baking cookies for a 4-H meeting that night. There were cookies on the floor. My daughter was braced in a doorway. Our 4-H leader worked for PG&E. He and his crew were sent to San Francisco, as they could could get there via the Golden Gate Bridge, when crews from the East Bay couldn’t get there.
I was at the Port of Oakland, near the foot of the Bay Bridge. Driving back to Concord, it took about two hours, with half an hour driving through the Caldecott Tunnel. All the while listening to the radio, telling me the bridge, and the Cypress section of the freeway collapsed Hearing that, I’m thinking that I want to get out of that tunnel before it caves in on me.
Oh, no. I’da gone over the hills. If I didn’t have enough gas I’da slept in my car till the am, and walked. Tunnels and flyovers give me the heebie jeebies. Turns out those particular tunnels aren’t bad, but I still get the heebie jeebies in there.
Yes, I was an Intern for the SF Giants. Was a The Stick for the A.s vs Giants World Series.
Wow, are there people around that still remember that quake?
Yes, I remember the quake as I just returned from my commute from SF to Pleasant Hill.. At that time we were able to park our car to meet our carpool driver at near where Kohl is now located.
As we approached the parking lot everyone in the carpool remembers the asphalt parking area was bumpy….what really happened was the earthquake was JUST occurring.
Yes, sitting on the 3rd deck at Candlestick–wow, what a night–got home to Concord about 4 a.m.
Was inside my pleasant hill home, about 8 years old. Doing homework at the table, and suddenly the whole house was shaking! It was scary. Then we had no power for awhile. Candles and radio. Still helps me to remember to be prepared for anything.
I was on the 7th floor of an office building on Pine St in downtown San Francisco. We walked home to the Marina because the buses stopped running. My roommates found me at the intersection where a white building had collapsed (it made the cover of Time magazine and there were fatalities) and told me our flat was ok. We had a big group of 20-somethings in our place that night who either had damage or were too scared to stay alone with all the aftershocks. I moved out here nine months later.
Wow,….32 years ago, I turned 32 years old on this day.
It’s a day to remember, and hope it never happens that bad again.
Happy Birthday, Roz! 🙂
Yes!!! Happy Birthday Roz…I will always remember now because it’s my brother in-laws Birthday too. Hope you did something special.
Simonpure~
Well what-da-ya-know!
Another to add to the list of similarities with our Families.
Too funny,…got me laughing.
Oh,…the big surprise for my B-day,… My youngest brother was in town for his Class Reunion and he came to visit. It was fun!
I was in the basement of our house in Minnepolis. Just settled in to watch the baseball game and the TV went static. I heard Al Michaels saying we’ve had an earthquake. My GF had lived in Oakland so I yelled at her to come down and see this. Swore I would never live in a place with earthquakes after seeing that but here I am
My wife was a young CHP officer who had served
her first year of duty in Los Angeles after getting
out of the academy. She had then transferred to the
Oakland office and her beat was the Cypress Structure.
Luckily she had been called back to L A to testify in
a trial. She was just arriving back when the earth-
quake hit. She went directly to work. Because of
her smaller stature she was sent into the collapsed
Cypress Structure with other rescue workers. She
did body identification. She also escorted Buck Helm
who had survived for almost 90 hours to the hospital.
She’s one tough cookie who retired as a Sargent.
I remember it and could care less about anniversaries for it..
So how much DO you care about the Loma Prieta Earthquake anniversaries?
Must be nice to have not been affected or traumatized by it like many of us were, especially those of us who were kids at the time and had to watch/listen to weeks of the news talk about bridges collapsing, cities on fire, and dozens of people smashed to death on a freeway.
I was a my Diet Center business in San Bruno, which was located right on El Camino, first I thought it was a big truck, it didn’t take long to realize it was not. I lived in Foster City, my daughter was 9 years old, I rushed to pick her up, she was really freaked out, we went home, we had a little kitten, who got as far under the cough as possible for several hours, I had a Royal Copenhagen vase at the top of a bookshelf, the vase rolled of the bookshelf and rolled across my carpeted floor, and did not break. It had been retirement present to my mother, and was/is worth $500.00 or more. I did have some things break not as valuable, but sentimental value never the less, Later in the evening we went to my Danish girl friends house also in Foster City and several neighbors sad out on her patio and listened to the radio. My ex husband worked in Alameda, but lived in Foster City, he joined us later, which helped calm my daughter down. We had aftershock for a few days and every time we had one, my daughter would start crying, thinking it was another big earthquake.
I was in Arlington VA on a business trip, a little over a mile from the Pentagon, having dinner. I found out about it when I got back to my hotel room and turned on the TV a little after it happened. I tried for about two hours to get through to my wife at our home in Clayton, when she finally got through to me.
When I got back a few days later and was driving home from SFO on the flyover to the San Mateo Bridge from 101 it started shaking and I thought “here’s another one” but I realized the shaking was due to a large truck nearby.
I was intending to drive to SF to meet with a friend for dinner. At the intersection of Treat and Oak Grove I noticed that the traffic signals were out and bouncing around! I was thinking that this is a heck of time for the traffic signals to fail! The radio in my vehicle suddenly was very static!! Traffic was a mess! I made it to the PH BART parking lot to make a U-turn and tried to return home. At this time one station was back on the air and announced that there had been an earthquake.
I had started out from my home at about 4:30 pm and did not make it back home until about 7:30 pm.
I was on the 22nd floor near Market and Van Ness. I could not stand without holding onto something. I sat against a wall in a short hall. Towards the end of those 17 seconds I wondered if it was better to be on top of the rubble should the building collapse. After the shaking stopped the building swayed North/South because it was built on rollers. Out of the window I saw people poring out of the underground Muni stairs. My apartment was on top of Twin Peaks just below the observation area where tour buses stop. When I got home an hour after the shake 1 cat was under the bed covers. I set out candles and my flash light for easy access when the sun set. Then I walked up the hill to see a group surrounding someone with a portable TV. The city was dark except for the hospitals with their generators. About 8:30 cars were able to back up off the Bay Bridge. Luckily I had phone service so I called my parents on the East Coast to let them know my brother and I were okay. My power came on around 10:30 so I could learn the full impact.
I worked for BofA at the time in their main data center. Management wasn’t worried because we had large generators on the 9th floor and they kick in on time. Unfortunately the fuel pump for the generators was plugged into PG&E. When the generators ran out of fuel the stopped working. Long story short; the ATMs stayed up.
I was at work in a one story office building at the corner of Durant and Bowditch Sts. in Berkeley across from the Hotel Durant, marking time till closing at 5:30. We had a 15′ x 6′ storage room with floor to ceiling shelves down both sides of the length, plus stuff hanging on walls (some of it very large) throughout a main room full of desks and seating. Nothing at all was disturbed apart from the power going off and the computer systems going down, and because of our presumption it therefore couldn’t have been too big of a thing, we stayed open till closing time, but without any customers coming or calling in. I got the full picture as I (finally) got to my West Oakland neighborhood and saw the Cypress Structure. It had gone the very way I’d always imagined.
I was at home in Pittsburg, on the phone with a parent of one of my students in Concord. I felt the quake and mentioned we were having a quake. She said it was also felt in Concord. Then the Pregame for the series broadcast went blank in the background. When I hung up the phone, both of my daughters aged seven and nine, were in a “safe position” near their bedrooms. We left the house and checked the gas lines before returning. The oldest learned that in school, and I knew it as a lifelong Californian. The Sacramento stations came on the air and I followed the news from their perspective.. My brother-in-law had just left Moscone Center and it took him until 3:00 AM to get home to Pittsburg via the Golden Gate and Richmond bridges.
When the quake struck, and I’ve written this before, I had gone out into the back yard to bring my cat in. It had been a warm, sunny afternoon. The birds were chirping, and squirrels frolicked in the trees. Suddenly, everything fell quiet and still and the leaves on the trees began to rattle. My cat ran and crouched next to the trunk of a large Cedar and the ground began to undulate under my feet. I could see the earth passing by me in waves. I stood there awe struck as it went on for several seconds. I had never seen anything like it before and I had experienced several significant quakes in the area. When I got in the house, of course, the ballgame had gone off and the news was reporting what had happened, although it was hard not to know we had just had a big earthquake. Nothing was disturbed inside the house. It was the first and only time I have ever seen the earth move in that fashion.
For years, I have been trying to remember the name of the one man, the last man, they pulled from the collapsed freeway in Oakland. It was days after they had pronounced that no one else could possibly have survived that long under those conditions. He had actually walked out with rescuers although weak and frail. It was such a hopeful sign and lifted everyone’s spirits in that dark recovery effort.. Then, the sad news that he had succumbed in the hospital a fews days later.
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