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phylp
Trad climber
Millbrae, CA
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Oct 17, 2013 - 09:33pm PT
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I was in my office at a biotech company in Mountain View. My husband worked there also. We had an evacuation plan so after the rolling stopped we all marched out to the parking lot and counted heads. Then they sent us home. We only lived about two miles away and the traffic was gridlocked so we walked home with some friends who had to commute to the east bay.
We hadn't lost power and were in a very festive mood when we started watching the TV. And then we saw how bad it was and the loss of life and got somber real fast.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 17, 2013 - 10:03pm PT
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I was in the thick of it. I lived right on Ocean St. in Santa Cruz. Lots of stories involving aid to the unprepared and some serious parties when everyone decided to eat up the food in their fridges and freezers before it went bad.
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Lacey
Social climber
Nevada
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Oct 17, 2013 - 10:53pm PT
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Sitting in El Charro Avita in Carson City with Blitzo and we just ordered a pitcher of Margs. He had picked me up from the Reno Airport that day......... R.I.P. Billy.... :(
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Oct 17, 2013 - 11:00pm PT
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working at Straw Hat Pizza on Broadway, Sactown, CA,
had the world series on the tele, camera started shakin,
Al Michaels: "i think we are having an earthquake..."
where do all the Epileptics hang out?
Shakeys Pizza
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Peter Haan
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Oct 17, 2013 - 11:46pm PT
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We were in the second story bedroom of my aging house on the beach. I think it was 5:04, wasn’t it? The place was located eleven miles north of the Santa City limits on Davenport Landing Road just off historic Highway One, when the seismic forces began rippling through. The basic geometry of the place would be wracked beyond repair, just a huge jumble it seemed as we struggled for balance, praying the floors would not dropout out under us and the ceilings collapse. We would both be buried in a shameful pile of broken wood framing, crummy textured sheetrock, and stucco.
That day had been quite hot. I quit an hour earlier framing my studio addition in the back and thought to just get back to it tomorrow in the cooler morning. I had been on an unanchored thirty foot scaffold all day.
We jumped into the doorways like we had always been told. Finally it was real, this monster we had been warned about since earliest childhood. A Major Earthquake. This and nuclear bombardment. Yeah, there you jump under your school desk, right? The trusty old building, termites and all, fought and got through the worst of it. Maybe for more than a minute and then aftershocks soon after. Her foundation cracked some, but was okay, we saw later. I never viewed waves running around the landscape, nothing really memorable, as I was trapped in a small beige hallway between bath, bed and closets, stark naked.
We lost power of course; it didn’t return for a couple of days. Our well then couldn’t serve us, now just a hole in the ground, and the big concern was the 4 horses we had. They have to have 5-20 gallons of water a day. After some preparation, we drove into town in my truck with several garbage cans and barrels where we hoped there would be water and power.
As we approached the town and looked over it from the highway, all was darkened in the twilight. Both magical and scary at the same time, the expected image of our town going into evening, completely erased. By this point we had been listening to the radio and had an idea, an exagerated one, of the extent of the disaster. We thought to head up towards UCSC where a friend of ours lived just below the school. When we arrived, he described being earlier on the second story of one of the brick buildings downtown. He told of the entire front of the building falling away, leaving him and a friend gaping momentarily at the chaos developing below on Pacific Avenue as they both hugged the one door jamb that exited the office, fearing they would be thrown out the voided front to the ground below.
He had water pressure at home still but no power. That part of the water district must have been on generators by this point. We were able to drive back home in an hour or so, loaded with a couple hundred gallons slopping in the open barrels back in the truck bed. In a few days the power returned. But the town was never the same. Unbelievably only 63 people expired. We were expecting thousands. So much had been lost and at rush hour.
At my company--still entirely intact save for a couple of high bay lights that broke off--- in intervening days, we were awarded a giant millwork contract for a Walnut Creek law firm despite our region’s predicament. We moved on quickly. As if dodging an avalanche and counting our blessings. At the time I had recently gotten my first cellphone, a Motorola about 10" long plus its fixed antenna. I remember communicating with it shortly after the event from the tower building project and feeling that the future held many things for all of us.
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Oct 18, 2013 - 08:55am PT
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Wow Peter. Good story.
'89 I was living in So Cal going to high school. I worked seasonally in the Bay Area, but it was in between shows so I missed it. 4 years later however... I was living in Northridge going to college. The house I was living in was only 4 blocks from the epicenter of the Northridge quake, so I got the full monte on that little incident.
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billygoat
climber
Pees on beard to seek mates.
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Oct 18, 2013 - 09:47am PT
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I was on the ball field at Capitola Elementary/New Brighton Middle School--less than 10 miles, as the crow flies, from the epicenter. I'd just hit a double in the last inning of the pick-up game we were playing. We were all getting ready to ride home to catch the game. The shaking knocked me to the ground. Down on one knee, I watched the waves roll through the earth. Waves of ground, that is. I won't ever forget that. That, and all the windows buckling in and out of their frames but not necessarily breaking. Everything, it seemed, went to waves for about 15 seconds. This many years later, I'm fairly sure that was my first hallucinogenic experience. I was 11 years old, haven't felt anything like that since, and I'm good with that.
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pud
climber
Sportbikeville & Yucca brevifolia
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Oct 18, 2013 - 09:58am PT
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I had just got home from work.
I was lying on my back on the living room floor playing nintendo with my girlfriend's son in Burbank, CA.
I felt a weird vibration and asked her if a truck had just gone by. She said no and I kept playing.
A short time later we turned on the news and witnessed the devastation.
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SCseagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Oct 18, 2013 - 10:30am PT
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Forgot about the "waves". Had stopped in Valley Faire mall on the way back to Santa Cruz. Went into a bookstore and a few books flew off the upper shelves, "uh"' I thought. Then almost immediately the parquet wood floor waved and the books fell like crazy. The mall went dark and all kinds of screams. It was very disorienting knowing which way to exit.
I got out to my friend's car and said "not to worry, I have See's candy". For years I had the receipt from See's candy that was time stamped: "Oct. 17, 1989, 5:02 pm".
Susan
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Dick Danger
Trad climber
Lakewood, Colorado
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Oct 18, 2013 - 12:01pm PT
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I was inside Letterman Army Medical Center (LAMC) on the Presidio of SF... We were prepping for a laparoscopy scheduled for the following day when the walls split open. The building was swaying. Pretty scary sh#t that day.
The building shook so violently it threw me to the floor as I tried to take cover in the doorway of the procedure room.
Once we were out front, standing in front of LAMC, we could see the smoke and fire coming from the Marina District. A few of us jumped the 101 and ran over there to see if we could help... I was awarded a Humanitarian Service Medal for the stuff we did that day.
I miss the ocean and seafood, but I do not miss the friggin' earthquakes.
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Bldrjac
Ice climber
Boulder
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Oct 18, 2013 - 02:15pm PT
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I was rock climbing in England on the first part of my honeymoon. Jack and I had gotten married September 23, and left for England to climb and meet his extended family. From there we went to Spain and France climbing for the next 3 months, and then back to Joshua Tree for another 3 months. I vaguely recall that we heard about it, but it was SOOO distant! Didn't really get the full implications until we got back!
pam
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Majid_S
Mountain climber
Bay Area , California
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Oct 18, 2013 - 04:34pm PT
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I was fixing my car outside of the garage and then streets started to shake and trees were moving back and fort so I moved away from the house and decided to walk but couldn't walk straight for about 30 sec.
what a experience
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Dr.Sprock
Boulder climber
I'm James Brown, Bi-atch!
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Oct 18, 2013 - 04:49pm PT
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kind of a weird thing up in Big Basin state park, a ranger was taking a hike and all of a sudden a dry waterfall started gushing water, then about 20 seconds later the quake hit,
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Oct 18, 2013 - 05:49pm PT
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......
Two days later my wife and I drove up to my house near Castle Rock on Skyline (where we still live). We had rented it out since we would be away for a year.
The tenants had been at the Giants/A's game and had a helluva ride.
Worse when they got home. She had a big collection of art glass on high shelves. It was destroyed. I'd visited them about 2 months earlier when they rented it and had suggested she either enclose the shelves they'd made for the glass or better yet get it down low. I always felt badly about that.
The water line from the storage tank to the house had parted. We spend a full day in the rain digging up about 100 feet of the old line and replacing it.
We discovered a few days later, when the 17K gallon tanks went dry the spring that had provided sweet water for over 100 years, that had run at 8 gals/min even during the big drought of 76-78, had dried up. We and the neighbors had water trucked to the big storage tank for about 6 months. All the well drillers were working 7 days a week.
The spring came back about 8 years later.
Next door neighbor had finished his home built, but well built, house a year before. It separated from it's foundation and moved nearly a foot. He extended the foundation out to the new house location.
10 years later we were having a survey done and the surveyor couldn't find the monument marking a property corner near my house. It was an 'X' chipped into the top of a small rock "tower" at the base of a big fir. I gently pushed away the moss and showed it to him. It had moved about a foot.
Castle Rock Ridge also rose several inches. We're 1/2 mile as the hawk soars from the San Andreas Fault. But my house is build on bedrock.
The structural damage didn't become apparent for about 6 months......
and that's another story.
It wasn't my fault, It was San Andreas' fault.
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paul roehl
Boulder climber
california
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Oct 18, 2013 - 06:00pm PT
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I was at Cabrillo College in Aptos getting my mail and just about to start class. Not too far from the epicenter, I'd never been outside in such a powerful quake. It was amazing. The thing I remember most clearly is the dust that rose like smoke from all the buildings and being swept by a fear that my family might be in danger. Getting home that evening was epic.
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Fletcher
Gym climber
The great state of advaita
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Oct 18, 2013 - 06:49pm PT
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I was at work at the recently funded start-up I worked for at Fifth and Townsend, on the third floor. A very old warehouse converted into funky office space. Things started shaking and we were freaked out. Concrete and brick walls started flexing and I swear I could see waves flowing though them. You could have ridden those waves! Power was off and we got out of there quick. I just wanted to get back home to our apartment in Pacific Heights where my first wife and 3 1/2 month old daughter were. It ends up my workplace was a building that also had survived the 1906 earthquake. I think it's still there today.
I immediately saw that another building's walls had collapsed on a side street off of Townsend. This was right next to the 280 freeway exit ramp that was completely garfunkled off its moorings. Under all of those bricks lay the bodies of two editors (John J. Anderson and Derek van Alstyne) from MacUser who'd just met with my boss. When searching for the rare street parking space in the area, I'd sometimes ended up parking on the same street in the same location. I recalled wondering, "What would I do if I was here and an earthquake happened?"
I very gingerly drove home trying to avoid passing beneath overpasses (very difficult in those days in SF). I was hearing about all the damages and mayhem on the radio in my car. I finally made it back to Pacific Heights and, compared to what I'd been listening to, things looked seemed normal. I raced up to see my then wife and kid. I was about as white a sheet from what I'd seen and heard.
My wife greeted me and appeared very relaxed. "You don't know what's happened?" Of course, she hadn't heard. No power so no way to get an update. She told me that there was a lot of shaking, but only a few pictures were unbalanced (Pacific Heights is on bedrock; I was in South of Market, which is filled in marshland). Our daughter slept through the whole thing. She said when it was done she looked out the window and saw a guy walking his dog, nothing unusual. And then she said a sentence I'll never forget: "Things looked OK, so I thought this must be what they mean by California having frequent tremors." We'd recently moved here for the first time.
A good friend of mine, who I'd later hire to work at the Fifth and Townsend location, was commuting home from Vallejo and heading up the Bay Bridge when the earthquake struck. Fortunately, he was a way off from part that collapsed. He had a very long trip home that night all the way down around the south bay.
Eric
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 18, 2013 - 07:22pm PT
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Tangential Thread Drift Warning
So the neighbor across the street is all over quake preparedness. She had
the whole hood over a couple of weeks ago. I had things to do. My next
door neighbor, whose hubbie was across the street, asked me why I wasn't
there.
"I've got everything I need, I know everything there is to know, and if I
need something I'll just get my shotgun out and go get it."
"Then why did your wife go to the meeting?"
"So that I'll know who has all the good sh!t I might want. Duh!"
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phylp
Trad climber
Millbrae, CA
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Oct 18, 2013 - 08:19pm PT
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Good stories everybody!
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Oct 18, 2013 - 10:07pm PT
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I was driving on Crow Canyon Rd between San Ramon and Castro Valley on my way to my parent's house in San Leandro listening to the ball game. Didn't feel a thing. Wouldn't have known there was an earthquake if I hadn't been listening to the radio. I was driving on bedrock, east of the areas that experienced peak ground acceleration. On land, the real shaking took place along the bay margins, especially areas of bay mud, alluvium, and artificial fill.
By the time I got to San Leandro it was bumper to bumper traffic on all the major streets and people were standing outside of their homes. Took me about 2.5 hours to drive home to Concord from San Leandro while listening to the damage reports on the radio. Cypress structure and Bay Bridge collapsed, Marina District liquifaction and fire, etc. Many of my friends who were driving on freeways in the East Bay all thought they had flat tires.
Here's the "seismic gap"...
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JOEY.F
Gym climber
It's not rocket surgery
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Oct 19, 2013 - 01:52am PT
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Speaking of liquifaction,
I was at my cubicle on the 3rd floor at Bay and Powell..(above what was a Co-Op wayy back in the day). Rock and roll. Holy S!!! this is the big one. Walked home to Telegraph Hill, which is on bedrock too. Nothing fell off the shelves, no damage at all. It was a very warm afternoon. Going up the hill began to see smoke and fires from the Marina. Friends had crab and sourdough and vino. We ate and listened to the radio. The skyline was black for several nights, and , no "city buzz", really quiet, very eerie.
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