OT: Loma Prieta Earthquake: 25 Years Later

[ClassLessCoyote]

It seems like this earthquake just happened yesterday. Amazing how quick time files. Major condolences to those who lost someone as a result of this dark time in the Bay Area.

Please share your experience about this day.

Click to read more...

 

[Chairman Mallard]

I was 4 (well turned 4 on Oct 19) and had just gotten to Bowser in one of the Super Mario Bros Dungeons. Needless to say, I had to be physically removed from the room as it shook by my Dad.

Then my mom went into Labor and my Dad had to drive into the city and get her to a hospital, where my brother was born a few hours later.

Pretty hectic day for her I guess.

 

[Timo Time]

I wasn't born yet but always hear my parents and my sisters story. My dad had climbed into the cracks right after the quake and took pictures of it and my mom freaked that the ground would close up on him. My sister was 6 and my mom had been at work and when it hit she said she immediately drove to pick up my sister but it took her about 3 times as long to pick her up than normal.

I think I have only been through 3 earthquakes. None of which exceeded 4.0 I believe.

 

[ScottyDont]

I was living in San Ramon, I was 6. I remember going outside to check how my older sister and her friend were doing on decorating the house for Halloween. All of a sudden the earthquake hit. I run into the house, did a nifty knee slide up a landing and was commanded by my Mom to stop where I was. She babysat at the time and was huddled under a doorway with a handful of toddlers.

Apparently I spent the rest of the night hunkered down under a heavy coffee table.

 

[HOOCH2173]

I was a junior in High School and getting ready to watch Game 3 of the WS. We lived in San Jose and as it shook, my mom's husband, myself and my sister who was 7 at the time all stood in the kitchen archway.

Several books stored up high hit me in the shoulder. My sister crying and freaking out. All the power went out and then on our street you could hear a burglar alarm on a house go off.

My mom working at Fremont Union High School District had a filing cabinet come out and hit her in the back of the head, knocking her unconscious.

We had no idea where she was (before cell phones) and the phone lines were all dead. It was a crazy ruckus! And feeling 1000 aftershocks was weird cause all those 2 days I kept thinking the ground was shaking all the time.

And of course typical teenagers back then, none of us wanted to attend school the next day. sadly we still had to go. heh.

 

[CJL182]

I was really young and don't remember a thing from that day. Apparently I ran to my aunt and was crying a lot. My parents worked on the other side of the city, and it took them forever to come pick me up.

 

[kdb209]

From the Loma Prieta Earthquake - 20 Years Later thread:

I was at the World Series game for Loma Prieta. I was waiting in a beer line on the upper deck outer concourse at Candlestick. It started slowly - Oh an earthquake. It grew - damn a pretty big one. It kept going - O ****, look around for the exit ramps. And finally - Oooff, as the woman behind me freaks and grabs me for dear life. Then it stopped and there was a near riot, because the power went out and they stopped selling beer - someone jumped over the counter and tried to self serve - they quickly decided it would be better if they kept selling it (the kegs didn't need power and they just collected money by hand).

The most surreal aspect of it though was the tremendous noise, followed by a moment of sudden total silence, followed by an entire parking lot of car alarms going off.

The initial atmosphere was almost party like - people wanting to wait around and watch a baseball game. It was only as word began to spread from people with radios - the Bay Bridge, Cypress Structure collapse, fires in the Marina - that people realized how bad it was. It took the longest time to tell people that the game was canceled and to evacuate the park. The power was out so they couldn't do PA announcements - they had cop cars with loudspeakers drive onto the field, but you couldn't hear them in the upper deck.

I waited back by my car. Brake lights were bumper-to-bumper and not moving on 101.

People who had been tailgating before the game brought out coolers and grills and shared. People huddled around the few cars where someone had a portable TV.

I saw a familiar (and very unhappy looking) guy standing outside a limo a few cars down - some guy from TV. Was that Paul "I'm a Credit Man" from the Diamond Center (no), was it Sy "I'm not just the president, I'm also a client" Sperling of the Hair Club for Men (no), was it George "I Guarantee It" Zimmer, founder and CEO of the Men's Warehouse (yes!). Someone went over to ask if his lifetime pressing guarantee covered earthquakes - he was not amused.

Finally after about 2 or 3 hrs, traffic started moving on 101. I made the long drive back to West San Jose, through a patchwork of places with and without power. Fortunately my power was on when I got home - everything was pretty much OK except for one toppled bookshelf and a VCR which committed suicide by jumping off the top of my TV.

The other odd thing that I remember were the radio announcements asking for emergency personnel (police, fire, doctors, nurses, etc) to report (as expected) and ending with "and would all elevator repairmen please call your service".

 

[Eighth Fret]

I was 7. Getting ready to watch game 3 of the WS. I heard a rumble, then felt a shaking, looked up and could see the wall of the building move. My mom, not thinking clearly under pressure, grabbed me and dragged us next to the heaviest object in the vicinity (the refrigerator). Our backs against the fridge, I remember the back and forth motion of the ground. My dad was in the shower upstairs and came booming down the stairs in a towel with shampoo in his hair to make sure we were OK. My brother, who was three at the time, slept through the whole thing.

 

[Chairman Mallard]

From the Loma Prieta Earthquake - 20 Years Later thread:

That scene at Candlestick must have been surreal.

 

[209]

I was working at ADP in Santa Clara off of 101/Montague Expwy. I watched the parking lot literally ripple like a wave going by. Finally got to my car to cross Montague to get home in Fremont. Couldnt even get home. No power anywhere. It was a complete zoo on the roads. I remember turning on KCBS and hearing "this is the emergency broadcast system. This is not a test." Then KCBS back on and I hear, the roads in Oakland collapsed, the bay bridge collapsed, the Marina in SF was on fire and the world series was cancelled. That was when I realized the earthquake was massive.

 

[slocal]

I was at the Stick with my older brother and dad. I didn't really know what was going on, but I remember crying when I saw smoke on the way home, and then really crying when I heard my uncle's wall-sized aquarium had been destroyed. I freaking loved those fishes.

I also remember getting really sad when walking through Christmas in the Park and noticing the damage to St Joseph's. I remember thinking it was such a shame that such an "ancient" building was cracked. Had no clue how they'd fix a cracked building.

The mind of a 7 year-old

 

[KirbyDots]

I had just come home from a field trip to San Francisco. We had gone over the Bay Bridge only a couple hours before it happened. I was back home all the way in Davis and I noticed the hanging plants spinning around, tell my mom I think there's an earthquake. She doesn't believe me tells me to sit up on a bar stool and have some ice cream, ended up falling over backwards and hitting my head. Afterwards I remember visiting my grandparents and seeing all the damage.

 

[sharksohnoes!]

I was three and a half at the time and remember it vividly. It's my first memory actually.

I grew up in a small town in Santa Cruz county, only a few miles from the epicenter of the quake. My aunt had come over from San Jose to visit for the day and my mom and I were walking her out to her car so she could head back over the hill. I was actually the first to notice that something weird was happening. The tall skinny trees in my neighbors yard all started to sway together before there was actually any shaking. Then the rumbling came. The shaking started and my mom screamed for us to get in my aunts car. We lived under a bunch of huge oak trees, this made sense. What didn't make sense was that we dove into a two seated, soft top convertible :laughs: Fortunatley no trees came down.

After the quake was over we got out of the car and went back into the house. Our cupboards were all open and everything inside had shattered all over the floor and countertops. My grandmothers house in Aptos actually had its foundation shift. It slid down the hillside it was on a few inches. There were cracks above most of the door frames and on the walls.

Much of downtown Santa Cruz was destroyed. Half a dozen or so people were killed by falling buildings. President Bush actually came and toured the ruble in SC. I remember going shopping with my mom downtown and many of the shops had to relocate to these giant, semipermanent tents that were constructed in some empty lots.

All in all a pretty chilling scene. And a pretty destructive first memory for me!

I watched a fantastic episode of 30 for 30 on ESPN the other night about the Battle of the Bay and the Quake that stopped it. Worth a watch. Especially for you guys that were at the stick that day. You might spot mini Slocal!

 

[Mr Fahrenheit]

If anyone is interested ESPN did a 30 for 30 on it and the Bay Bridge series called "The Day the Series Stopped"

 

[stator]

I was still at work at a Hewlett-Packard division. My office cubicle was on the 2nd floor adjacent to the windows, but the floor was an overhang beneath me.

Usually, I don't respond to earthquakes, or if I do slowly. This one caused me to react immediately and I still don't have a clear understanding on my initial reaction.

I immediately moved to another cubicle that was not an overhang, and moved the chair out of the way to dive under the desk. I remember getting alarmed due to the length of it and could see the waves go through the floor. After what seemed like a long time, crash noises and women screaming dominated.

We evaluated to the parking lot, climbing over fallen cabinets, ceiling tiles, and other stuff, to hear all the car alarms going off. The alarms would reset, go quite, and get triggered again with an aftershock.

 

[kdb209]

I was still at work at a Hewlett-Packard division. My office cubicle was on the 2nd floor adjacent to the windows, but the floor was an overhang beneath me.

Usually, I don't respond to earthquakes, or if I do slowly. This one caused me to react immediately and I still don't have a clear understanding on my initial reaction.

I immediately moved to another cubicle that was not an overhang, and moved the chair out of the way to dive under the desk. I remember getting alarmed due to the length of it and could see the waves go through the floor. After what seemed like a long time, crash noises and women screaming dominated.

We evaluated to the parking lot, climbing over fallen cabinets, ceiling tiles, and other stuff, to hear all the car alarms going off. The alarms would reset, go quite, and get triggered again with an aftershock.

Which HP site were you at?

I was working at HP Cupertino then. I remember the site was closed the next day. We came back to work on the Thursday to find them handing out hard hats to all employees - somehow they had come up with several thousand hard hats in a day - due to falling drop ceilings and light fixtures.

I still have that orange hard hat - now emblazoned with a Giants SF logo.

 

[SactoShark]

I was 9 in Walnut Creek. After if stopped shaking, I came out to look for my brother. Watched the basketball hoops swinging like bobble heads. Unreal. My dad was about 5 minutes from the Bay Bridge. He ended up stuck in SF for a day or two.

 

[Bizz]

I was 8 years old at the time. I was outside and just about to leave my friend's house near Yerba Buena HS to go home and watch the game when it hit, I wasn't very scared because I knew what was going on as there was a 5.7 earthquake that hit Morgan Hill about 2 years earlier. In fact I didn't think much of it until I got home and saw the news.

 

[MrCowGod15]

I was 5 and just remember being in the back of my grandparents' car, on the way back from Taco Bell in Willow Glen when it hit. I remember seeing an old lady hanging on for dear life to her fence in her front yard. The most I remember of it was the aftershocks that night and being super freaked out about them and watching the local news covering everything.

 

[stator]

Which HP site were you at?

I was working at HP Cupertino then. I remember the site was closed the next day. We came back to work on the Thursday to find them handing out hard hats to all employees - somehow they had come up with several thousand hard hats in a day - due to falling drop ceilings and light fixtures.

I still have that orange hard hat - now emblazoned with a Giants SF logo.

Santa Clara, just a few blocks over. We were closed the following day as well, but I had to come back in the next morning after the quake since I was on the response team. I remember composing the message that went out to all Santa Clara employees voicemail box that morning. I must of redid it about 7 times. Some of my colleagues thought I hired a professional to make the recording.

I laughed, but if Randy's new partner does not work out... eh? Haha, I don't know much about NHL hockey and I look ugly on camera. Would be a difficult situation being on camera and drinking bourbon during the game, and knocking the Sharks around when they deserve it. I'd probably last not even 5 minutes.