Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Several days ago, in passing, I encouraged the Reading Public to ask me about the Loma Prieta earthquake. Here it is.

I was living in the Sunset District of San Francisco in October of 1989. It was my freshman year of college, and I lived on campus at San Francisco State University. At 5:04 PM, when the quake hit, I was studying in my sixth-floor room. I heard a low, rumbling noise, like a very large truck going by, and then the room started shaking. I’d lived in the south part of the Bay Area for four years, so I knew what was going on. I stumbled into the door frame where I braced myself. As the building rocked, I watch the plaster in the corridor crack. It seemed to go on forever, and I looked back over my shoulder in time to see the minute change on my clock. I’d guess that I felt it for around 60 to 75 seconds, although it was probably much less than that. Cassette tapes flew out of racks, stacks of books collapsed, things on shelves rattled, and something tipped over in the closet, crashing loudly to the floor.

The dorm staff and RAs started evacuating us almost immediately. I’d sprained my knee earlier that day, and I knew I wasn’t going to get out in a hurry. Coincidentally enough, my roommate, Kelly, and I had just been to the grocery store that afternoon, so I took a few minutes to throw some bottled water, portable food, a radio and spare batteries, a sweater, my wallet, keys, a change of socks and undies, and of course, a book, into my backpack. Naturally, we were not allowed to take the elevator (I found out later that one of my pals was stuck in it) and I found myself sliding down six floors’ worth of bannisters, thanks to my bad knee. I’d say that they had everyone evacuated within ten minutes, including slow people like me.

We were herded into a parking lot, where those of us with radios promptly turned them on, hoping for news. We all knew that it was a big earthquake, but we had no idea how big, or how widespread the damage might be. The first hour or so after the quake was very confusing, especially because all the local radio stations were right in the middle of it. Because the World Series was being played in the Bay Area (San Francisco/Oakland), there were a lot of extra TV crews in town, and I’m told that just about everyone had better news coverage than we did. Reports starting pouring in later—damage to the Bay Bridge, the Cypress Structure freeway collapse, fire in the Marina District, a BART train stopped in the Trans-Bay Tube, unknown damage to the Embarcadero freeway, and so on. It began to sink in then exactly how big the quake had been. We heard estimates of everything from 6.5 to 7.3 (it was eventually declared a 7.1). Power was out (sporadically) over the most of the Bay Area.

Groups of people had managed to find each other; I was sitting with several other girls from my floor, including my roommate, who had been out at the time of the quake and also had a backpack and purse with her. Most other people who had been in their rooms weren’t so lucky; they’d rushed out without keys, shoes, or wallets. We found out that the campus was being inspected for safety—but they’d started at the end opposite from the dormitories. The sun went down, and it started to get quite chilly, as San Francisco does in October. People started fires in trash cans. Between the six or eight of us who had purses with us, we had enough for a hotel room…except that with the World Series in town, finding a hotel room–especially when public transportation was down and none of us had a car—was going to be quite the challenge. Nor had any of us been able to get to a phone (this was before cell phones were ubiquitous). We decided to wait and see if we could get back into our dorms. By 8:00, it seemed likely, although we heard that it could be another hour or two. I looked around and saw a group of students lying on their backs, pointing at the sky and scribbling in notebooks. Naturally, I looked up. Without any light pollution for fifty miles in any direction, the entirely Milky Way was visible; I saw more stars that beautifully clear night than I’ve ever seen before or since. It turned out that the prone stargazers were actually an astronomy class…and they were doing their homework.

Finally, around 9:00, I went off in search of a pay phone. I agreed to meet my pals in an hour, regardless of whether I’d found a working phone or not. After a trek across campus, to buildings that had already been inspected and declared safe, I found a trio of phone booths. Apparently only two of them were working, and the lines stretched across the quad. Fortunately, there was an entirely unattended pay phone inside one of the safe buildings. I managed to get ahold of my parents in Indianapolis by calling collect…as soon as I could get an open line. It was a fairly brief conversation, and I distinctly remember my mother telling me that because they hadn’t heard anything on the news about the University, they figured that I was OK.

By 9:45, I was back in my dorm room. It turned out that I’d been lucky; asbestos fell out of the ceiling in one of the other dorms, and the peole who lived there were given fifteen minutes to grab everything they’d need for an indefinite amount of time (it turned out to be something like a month before they could move back in). My roommate and one of her friends from the asbestos-laden dorm turned up a little while later. There was already a party in the room below us—as we sorted out our stuff and made room for my roommate’s friend, we could hear the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” and Elvis’s “Shake, Rattle and Roll” through the floor. We decided not to put too much effort into cleaning up, as there were bound to be aftershocks. Instead, I went to the party downstairs and Kelly and her friend went out elsewhere.

The next day, aftershocks started early. The first large one started at about 6:00 in the morning. Kelly (who was a native Californian) woke up screaming, got dressed, and was out the door in under seven minutes. I opened one eye, decided that nothing was likely to fall on my head, and went back to sleep. Exactly ten minutes later, there was another aftershock. Again, I scanned the room briefly, and went back to sleep. Another ten minutes passed, and the strongest aftershock yet (something around a 5.0, I found out later) hit. Reluctantly, I dragged myself out of bed and into the doorframe. As soon as I was firmly wedged in place, it stopped. Disgusted, I dragged myself back to bed. Sure enough, ten minutes later there was another aftershock. Not again, I thought. Does this damned thing have a snooze alarm? I didn’t even bother to open my eyes.

We found out later the same day that campus would be closed for at least a week…including the cafeteria. Within twelve hours, campus was emptier than a Portishead concert. Kelly went home to Los Gatos, in the South Bay, which was closer to the epicenter. Everyone who lived west of the Mississippi went home, in fact. Even during the summer, there are usually a good number of people hanging around the average college campus. Of the 3000 or so people who lived on campus, there probably weren’t more than 300 left. I wasn’t particularly rattled (you’ll excuse the expression) by the actual earthquake, but the eerily deserted campus took on a Twighlight Zone gestalt.

One of my very favorite earthquake stories actually came out a couple of weeks later. I was talking to the third-floor RA, who was one of my favorite people. Her floor and the fourth floor both lagged a bit getting out during the evacuation; I expected to be one of the last people out, becaused I’d stopped to pack and I had a bad knee. I was curious as to the reason, and asked if there had been damage or injuries. She put on a wide, wicked grin and told me that she and the fourth floor RA had been in bed together at the time and hadn’t noticed the earthquake at first. I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “You didn’t notice?” I asked, dubious. “Yeah,” she replied. “I thought it was just the mattress sliding off the box spring…again.”

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 26th, 2004 at 6:00 am and is filed under The Anecdote Graveyard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.