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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Topic Author's Original Post - Oct 17, 2017 - 12:13pm PT
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Ok. Who remembers and where were you?
Returning from Sacramento to Santa Cruz.
I was in Valley Fair shopping center and the parquet wood floor in the store started rolling like waves.
It was pitch black with tons of screaming. I made my way out to my friend’s car and we sat there stunned. Finally KGO came on the radio and when they said the epicenter was Santa Cruz we wondered what we’d return home to.
Roads were closed, so we ended up at a Red Cross set up in the fields at Los Gatos High.
The next morning we were taken to a shelter for breakfast. A tv was on with Pat Robertson spewing sh#t about immoral California and this was Gods Way.
We finally made it to Santa Cruz over highway 9. It was eerily quiet. I fully expected to see the spire on Holy Cross toppled. It was erect! Good sign!
Made it to my house. MINIMAL damage! Broken mirror, TV over but not broken.
It took a very long time for Santa Cruz to recover fully. It lost many historic buildings on the Mall....the old courthouse being the biggest heartbreak of the lost buildings. There was loss of life that was tragic.
A very positive outcome was the beginning of temporary, but remained permanent, Highway 17 express.
I, and all my belongings and home were very lucky.
Susan
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Happy Cowboy
Social climber
Boz MT
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Oct 17, 2017 - 02:37pm PT
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I do now that you mentioned it Susan. Doing two of ST's favorite things, Climbing in Yosemite.
On 'Poker Face' with Dan McDevitt.
I was leading the 1 pitch climb that Dan and Sue had put in and was about 2/3's up the sparingly bolted slab. I'd worked the crux climbing 10 or more above the 3rd bolt, with the 4th seemingly another 20', then carefully down. I said "it's not bad but nothing positive to grab, you sure it improves"? and he answers "yes, remembers pencil edges up by the next bolt".
I trust but not forgetful of his climbs name, poker face...
I climb onward and indeed discover the pencil edges just when needed @ 25-30' out and pause when I get a toetip on the lowest, then dip the tips in the dust bucket. Calm and relieved the clip is one move above. A nano later I'm off for the wild ride, ripping down the slab, with Dan thoughtfully shortening the belay running downhill.
Swoosh and a bounce, I'm again looking up at the 3rd bolt 20' above. I'd not rolled or tumbled nor skinned myself up badly(I was prepared)I said I don't even know why I fell. We both wanted to complete this as Dan hadn't seen his top anchors in awhile. I headed back up as I really had no idea what caused my foot to rip and knew the hold hadn't pulled.
I was back up promptly as I now had the key holds chaulked. I clipped without linger, then on to the anchors. Dan follows adds some web and a ring and we rap down. It's Miller time for a warm one at the base, when this man walks up and asks "did you feel the ground shaking, there was an earthquake a while ago" he declares.
Now we understand my mysterious fall. By the time we got back to employee housing where Sue and Dan lived the news was all over the tube, with the big highway collapse. And THock, I also remember the Giants game.
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ron gomez
Trad climber
fallbrook,ca
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Oct 17, 2017 - 02:47pm PT
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Watching the game in southern california, till it went crazy, then no picture. Turned on local news to the tragic events unfolding in the Bay area. Just sat stunned and then waited as the news crews in SF announced after shockes. We waited and counted down the seconds, waiting for them to roll into our area. Mild rollers but still crazy to think the earth was rolling for 350 some miles.
Peace
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Oct 17, 2017 - 03:13pm PT
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Great tale, Happy Cowboy^^^^
Like Tad and Ron, I was watching the Series here in Merced while house-sitting for the folks and there were two guys from work and their wives and we were working our way through a case of Old Milwaukee I found on special at Save Mart.
I was on a sofa with Gene and his lady when the quake hit. The sofa bounced away from the wall and then the game went off the air.
I looked out the back sliding glass door at our pool. It was sloshing back and forth, which it had done before during the Coalinga quake (6.2) in '83.
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limpingcrab
Trad climber
the middle of CA
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Oct 17, 2017 - 03:45pm PT
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It was just after my 4th birthday so I was too hungover to remember.
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Clint Cummins
Trad climber
SF Bay area, CA
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Oct 17, 2017 - 03:47pm PT
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I was sitting in my office on the Stanford campus.
I rushed to my doorway but it was hard to walk with the shaking.
Then I looked back and saw my prized VT-100 terminal wobbling towards the edge of my desk! So I went back and held it from falling.
Right after I just headed to Handley Rock for the usual Wednesday night toproping!
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dfinnecy
Social climber
'stralia
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Oct 17, 2017 - 07:31pm PT
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I was in Saratoga. Taking a dump. Everything started to shake, things got wet, then the lights went out. Shaking continued, sound of all hell breaking loose outside the bathroom. I was 15, literally thought this was the end, Jesus was coming back. I had grown up with earthquakes, but this, this was violence. The shaking stopped, I dried off and cleaned up, made my peace with God and went to check on my Mom and siblings. (all fine, none raptured) We started cleaning up and went out to chat with the neighbors.
My Dad worked out near Great America and it took him 5 hours to get home.
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Wayno
Big Wall climber
Seattle, WA
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Oct 17, 2017 - 07:47pm PT
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I lived just off of Ocean St. Across Ocean St was Bakers Square. On my side of Ocean St just across Hubbard St is the Grog Shop. Next Door was a gas station. I was into old cars at the time and had several cars with lots of gas in them which was real nice when all the gas ran out. I have a bunch of stories related to that time and place but what really stays with me is how people really can shine when the sheeit hits the fan. Block parties to eat all the meat before it spoils.
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Modesto Mutant
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, CA
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Oct 17, 2017 - 09:42pm PT
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I was the Intramural Sports Director up at UCSC and was managing the Ultimate and Softball games out on the East Field overlooking the bay/town. The quake hit and I turned sideways riding the waves of the undulating field like a surfer. After the quake subsided, I checked in on all of the games and prompted them to continue. Once the games were done me and some of my Ultimate Frisbee buddies were driving down to the Front Street Pub to watch the World Series game. Halfway down the hill we discovered we were entering a world we barely recognized. The downtown looked like a war zone due to the pre-quake code masonry buildings. The next morning at Days Marker on Seabright, there was a long line. Most of the people were buying donuts, water and cases of beer. Many people spent the day at the beach soaking up the high temps and drinking beer. We were on an island and there was little to do. Highway 17 was closed as was the Coast Route north. And as was mentioned earlier, everyone did pitch in to help each other.
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Oct 17, 2017 - 09:52pm PT
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I was in the middle of football practice at the the high school in Cambria, just south of Big Sur. I thought I was getting dizzy, then saw the light posts swaying back and forth and stuck out my hands to keep my balance as the ground shook. That was a few hundred miles away.
To this day, I try to avoid stopping in traffic under a freeway overpass because of what became of those poor souls along the 880 corridor.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 17, 2017 - 09:57pm PT
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That quake was LITE! My homie in Anchorage for the Big One has some tales.
That sucker lasted OVER FOUR MINUTES, people! 9.2!
A 200 FOOT TSUNAMI!
Just you wait.
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Jaybro
Social climber
Wolf City, Wyoming
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Oct 18, 2017 - 04:25am PT
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In line to buy a fosters in circle k, Tempe as.
The clerk sea,
" hear the latest? Earthquake in sf. The bay bridge fell into the bay, and the world series is canceled"
My daughter Nat was born 11 days later. I will always thing of it as abirthing pain.
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Contractor
Boulder climber
CA
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Oct 18, 2017 - 06:37am PT
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Santa Cruz has seen more than it's fair share of disaster.
A friend's house slid down a hillside in Soquel after being launched off the foundation. My sister was downtown and said it was beyond frightening. We had moved back to San Diego in 1982.
The El Nino storm of 82' will haunt me forever. 22 lives were lost- kids I went to school with never came back from Christmas break. The side of an entire mountain turned to a 20 foot tidal wave of mud and trees on Love Creek. Whole families are buried under that hillside to this day.
The English Beat were cranking out great albums at that time and I still think of that storm every time I hear a Beat song.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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Oct 18, 2017 - 06:45am PT
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I and a friend rolled into town a couple of months later to visit another friend who had just delivered his final stained glass creations for a restaurant covered in them. They were all destroyed and all the old red brick structures in town were now holes in the ground with temp quonset huts set up down the street. Mainly I now remember the row of big holes in the ground. Pretty devastating...
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hooblie
climber
from out where the anecdotes roam
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Oct 18, 2017 - 06:49am PT
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maybe if i said i was in a bar with a television in red lodge montana ...
but it was a sandwich shop/deli deal with tv and a nubile ice cream scooper girl who
i can't picture or remember anything else about but strangely a gentle stir lingers.
my dad had recently retired as the chief of the building department for the city of san jose and was still registered
with civil defense so he went around kind of triaging school buildings ok'ing them or tagging them for engineer review.
i knew the santa cruz mtns very well down to the affected area, in fact i got launched outta the loma prieta RCS of the sierra club
and schooled in the earth science department at UCSC so i consumed all the news that came my way
with special interest and certainly concern for those so horribly stricken.
but damn ... that girl with the scooper, and a thirty year reach ???
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justthemaid
climber
Jim Henson's Basement
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Oct 18, 2017 - 07:42am PT
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I lived too far away for the 10/17 quake but lived only 2 blocks from the epicenter of the Northridge quake.
@Healyje... Your friends story reiminds me- I managed a stained glass store at the time... I spent the next two full years of my life working 80+ hours a week just doing repair work.
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tuolumne_tradster
Trad climber
Leading Edge of North American Plate
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Oct 18, 2017 - 08:45am PT
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Driving on Crow Canyon Road between San Ramon and Castro Valley. Didn't feel a thing. Only reason I knew the quake had occurred was because I was listening to the World Series on the radio.
This Shake map shows why.
The bay mud and artificial fill areas in the corridor between the Hayward and San Andreas faults really shook like jello, e.g.,Cypress Structure...
and North Beach...
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zBrown
Ice climber
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Oct 18, 2017 - 09:09am PT
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The one I remember best was the Sylmar quake, felt in Orange County. It is reported that this "strong ground motion " was timed for 12 seconds but seemed to keep OC rolling for for more like a minute.
In early 1971, the San Fernando Valley was the scene of a dense network of strong-motion seismometers, which provided a total of 241 seismograms. This made the earthquake the most documented event, at the time, in terms of strong-motion seismology; by comparison, the 1964 Alaska earthquake did not provide any strong motion records. Part of the reason there were so many stations to capture the event was a 1965 ordinance that required newly constructed buildings in Beverly Hills and Los Angeles over six stories in height to be outfitted with three of the instruments. This stipulation ultimately found its way into the Uniform Building Code as an appendix several years later. One hundred seventy-five of the recordings came from these buildings, another 30 were on hydraulic structures, and the remainder were from ground-based installations near faults, including an array of the units across the San Andreas Fault.[17]
The instrument that was installed at the Pacoima Dam recorded a peak horizontal acceleration of 1.25 g, a value that was twice as large as anything ever seen from an earthquake. The extraordinarily high acceleration was just one part of the picture, considering that duration and frequency of shaking also play a role in how much damage can occur. The accelerometer was mounted on a concrete platform on a granite ridge just above one of the arch dam's abutments. Cracks formed in the rocks and a rock slide came within 15 feet (4.6 m) of the apparatus, and the foundation remained undamaged, but a small (half-degree) tilt of the unit was discovered that was apparently responsible for closing the horizontal pendulum contacts. As a result of what was considered a fortunate accident, the machine kept recording for six minutes (until it ran out of paper) and provided scientists with additional data on 30 of the initial aftershocks
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