twenty years ago today

[cassidyrose]

Twenty years ago today the Bay Area experienced a 6.9 quake that resulted in incredible damage and many lost lives (warning: linked story contains stories of those lost lives, including a baby). We were fortunate that all in our family survived.

If you were local this part of California at the time, where were you when the Loma Prieta quake hit?

I was at my high school in the Central Valley, well over one hundred miles from the quake's epicenter. I had just played a tennis match and was working on laying out the school newspaper. I was leaning over the light table and thought I was having a dizzy spell (so far from the epicenter the quake rolled and didn't shake) until my teacher shouted "We're having an earthquake!" We got in a doorway and it passed. Later when I got home I realized how big it had been. The biggest stress was trying to contact all our family members in the Bay Area because it was impossible to get through to anyone on the phone. We were very lucky that all our family members survived fine, just as they survived the Oakland Hills fires two years later. Others were not so fortunate. Take a minute today to remember those whose lost much more than property twenty years ago.

Comments

[marea93.livejournal.com]

Downtown Santa Cruz with my kids, who were 4 and 9. We had just stepped off the mall on our way back to the car. I heard a roar, like a diesel racing toward us from an underground garage (only there is no underground garage there), replaced shortly by the sounds of breaking glass and many, many car alarms. The signal lights dipped and swung crazily and a drunk sleeping in a flowerbed bounced up and down a couple times, looked around, then went back to sleep. I half-fell to my knees and threw my arms around the kids, telling them 'It's just a little quake," while inside I was screaming "It's the big one and we're all gonna die!" I kept thinking I wanted to get us back to the car so I could sit and regroup in safety. But when we got there it was parked behind a burning building and we had to leave immediately to avoid getting blocked in by emergency vehicles.

Fortuitously, I had just cruelly refused to take the kids to our favorite cookie place, Pacific Cookie Company, where there was severe damage. Had I given in to that request we could easily have been injured, and certainly would have been far more traumatized.

Fortunately, our home was not damaged, but we were all a little 'shook up' for weeks. Thanks for asking; I haven't had the chance to tell this story in a while.

[zeldajean.livejournal.com]

I wasn't anywhere near the quake (never been in the area) but I remember seeing it on TV, and (in my own way, I was 10) freaking out and worrying about my family that lives in the Bay Area. It was a couple days before we could reach them because the phone lines that were working were so jammed, but they were all ok. In the meantime I watched a lot of it on the news and was some mixture of shock and amazement (this REALLY happened? WOW - Holy COW THAT"S REAL!!!) I remember wanting to do more, but being absolutely clueless as to what I could do so young and so far away.