Earthquake in San Francisco Bay Area, 1989, Remembered

Twenty years. It actually doesn't seem all that long ago. Or maybe it does.

It was a Monday. It was a red-letter day for me. I was promoted to a VP position in charge of all fund-raising for the American Heart Association in California. And my boss was sending me later in the week to an American Management Association course on leadership (which was huge in a corporate culture that self-importantly leaned toward in-house training).

I was working in Burlingame, just south of the SFO Airport and maybe ten miles from Candlestick Park. I was sitting at my desk, listening to a voicemail, a congratulatory message, as I recall. It was just after 5:00 p.m. The third game of the "Battle of the Bay" 1989 World Series -- with the SF Giants playing the Oakland A's -- was just underway.

And the earth moved! Boy, did it move! I got up from my desk to move to the doorframe, where I saw my office neighbor Kent had done the same. Inexplicably, I was still holding the phone (never one to let an earthquake interrupt the message I was listening to!), though moments later, the phone went dead. Chandeliers were swaying back and forth; file drawers slid in and out of their cabinet. It seemed to last forever. Actually, it was only 15 seconds.

When things settled down, we walked downstairs and outside to check on things. Across the street was the Amfac Hotel, 12 stories as I recall.
But the top couple of stories of the center tower were crumpled in at a twisted angle, and water was shooting up maybe 30 to 40 feet in the air, as though someone was standing on the roof, aiming a fire hose straight up. Dozens (hundreds?) of people were streaming out of the hotel's exits.

That's when I knew this was a BIG earthquake.

The parking lot at my office became a makeshift emergency headquarters, with ambulances and police vehicles swarming around the scene. About an hour later, my car was no longer blocked in the lot, so I could leave to go home, about a 15 mile trip back into San Francisco, where we lived in a flat in the West Portal neighborhood. The power was out as were the traffic signals. Volunteers tried to direct traffic, and drivers seemed to exercise appropriate caution. By the time I got home, it was pretty dark. Feeling my way through the darkened space, I found pictures fallen off the wall and bookcases that "walked" about a foot from their usual spot, but overall, not very much damage.

Kevin had been at school in Walnut Creek in the East Bay. The Bay Bridge was, of course, closed -- and would be for several weeks after. So, instead of a 34 mile trip that usually took 45 minutes, he had to go south almost all the way to San Jose and back up to SF, a 90+ mile trip that took him about three hours.

In Oakland, the collapse of the Nimitz Freeway, where about a one-mile section of the top deck buckled and fell, would become an indelible image of quake. Only later would we find out that a friend of ours, Cathy Scarpa, had been in the front seat of the UCSF-furnished vanpool vehicle. There were eight people in the van.

The van had gone airborne off the broken upper deck, then slammed head-on into part of the structure before dropping into the rubble of the double-deck structure. Cathy's head had gone through the windshield; her legs were jammed up into the engine. The impact had severed her seat from the floor.

Five people in the van were killed. Cathy, miraculously, lived. She had head injuries, her legs and feet had been badly broken, her liver lacerated and her right arm cut to the bone.She was in and out of the hospital for nine months and endured at least 20 surgeries related to the crash.

The toll: 63 dead, 42 of them on the Nimitz.

So much has changed in these twenty years. The Bay Bridge is still in the process of being retro-fitted. The Nimitz Freeway has been replaced. As part of my 29 year non-profit career, I've been a "fund raiser" for exactly twenty years, as of October 17. Learned so much, it seems much longer than twenty years ago. Kevin and I now live in Oakland. Cathy Scarpa now lives in Grass Valley with her partner Kay, miles away from the Bay Area. Who can blame her?

Below is a brief collection of live footage captured during the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake in San Francisco, which was created by the U.S. Geological Survey. It might be unsettling, but it isn't gory, or anything. It reminds me I need to be better prepared for the "Big One."