Quake of '89

Holly

Keenan

1990

I was watching the beginning of the World Series, "The Bay Series", Oakland A's vs. the SF Giants. I was at that time living in the corner row house on Lincoln Street @ Chestnut. The row houses were built in 1894 and boy did they shake! The ball game was just starting, I was digging in to some good chinese takeout dinner and suddenly I was thrown to the floor with food all over me. I could hear windows breaking in the house and my housemate upstairs yelling down to me.
When the shaking stopped my housemate and I went outside to see what was going on. We saw a live electric wire bouncing around the street and there was a gas explosion a few blocks away, you could see the smoke. We stayed a safe distance from the live wire and I think we were in shock at what had just happened.
I'll never forget looking down Lincoln Street towards Pacific Ave: people running out their front doors to the street in shock and confusion. The air towards Pacific Ave was a big dust ball. It was obvious from the dust that Pacific Ave had felt the brunt of the quake and that there was major damage.
We spent the night in a local park because the aftershocks were scary and our row house didn't feel safe to inhabit.

Holly

Keenan

1990

Dan

Genova

Cowell College

I was swimming in the East Fieldhouse Pool when it struck, I didn't feel it at all. When I got out ofthe pool, people were running around and I saw smoke coming from downtown. The dorms were emptied out and everyone stayed on the East Field until well past darkness when were allowed to go back into the dorms.

Kenneth

1991

Crown College

The classroom at Stevenson College was stuffy, the desks uncomfortable, and the professor had gone on past our usual break time. Finally, he gave us a five minute break. I got up and headed for the door, already thinking about buying a can of juice from the vending machine outside.

I had just stepped into the door frame of the classroom when the shaking started. I stumbled my way out the door. The courtyard just outside the classroom had a panoramic view of Santa Cruz and the ocean beyond it. Glass was shattering out of some nearby windows, and I yelled at people to move away from the windows. I was doing a sort of jogging dance just to stay on my feet. The deep rumbling sound seemed to go on and on, and then -- silence.

A blanket of brown dust rose from the landscape, looking like smog rising from the ground.

At this point, my brain must have decided to return life to normal as quickly as possible. I went back into the classroom and grabbed my backpack, just before the professor advised everyone to stay out of the building. It never entered my mind that there was any danger involved. I just wanted my stuff. Then, I made the insane decision to head down to the weight room and work out. What was I thinking?

As I walked toward the weight room, I overheard bits of conversation. Someone said something about the Bay Bridge falling down. I imagined the whole bridge collapsing into the water, and wondered if the earthquake had been centered in San Francisco, and if so, how bad it must have been there.

The weight room, of course, was closed when I got there. I turned around and headed across campus towards my place in the Crown-Merrill Apartments.

Along the way, two girls walking in the other direction stopped to talk to me. We didn't know each other, but after disaster hits, that doesn't matter. You just want to connect with people. They were scared. They wondered if an aftershock would cause a tree to crash down as they walked. We were like children, small and frightened, and I decided to reverse course and walk with them to their dorm at Porter. Safety in numbers -- I guess that's what we were feeling.

The Porter College dorms (and all other campus buildings) were closed, off limits until they could be checked for safety, and people were milling around on the lawn outside. Someone got out a guitar and we sat listening to him play, sometimes singing along, sometimes staring into space, glazing over, not thinking of anything at all.

After a while, near sunset, the Porter dorms were declared safe. Most of us did not want to go inside, though. We felt safer in the open air. I did step inside to try my luck at a pay phone. After trying, and failing, to reach my parents in Los Angeles, I got through to my grandfather, who promised to spread the word that I was all right.

Night was falling, and it was getting chilly. People came with emergency supplies and handed out blankets. I shared a blanket with one of the girls I'd walked with. We told each other we were scared, asked over and over if the other was all right, looked up at the stars, and felt the aftershocks roll beneath us. I must have slept at some point, somehow.

In the morning, I walked up to my apartment. The damage was amazingly light, although it was a few days before we had running water. I was lucky. People downtown weren't so fortunate.

As for the girl who shared a blanket with me, she wrote me a sweet note but I never saw her again. Which was sad, but somehow seemed natural. The jitters went away as the days passed. I stopped sleeping with a flashlight, and started trusting the ground not to fall away from beneath me.

Jorel

Thomson

1971

Crown College

I was in my backyard in Menlo Park, CA, playing with my kids. I'd picked them up early from daycare in Palo Alto because I was planning to go to a class in Oakland that evening. My husband was sitting at the computer in the living room. The earthquake hit, I heard things falling in the house, my husband came outside (after saving his work and shutting down the computer) and my sister called from Colorado almost immediately--she'd been watching the World Series and knew, from previous experience, that if you called right away, you could sometimes get through before the circuits jammed up. I said I wondered if I should plan to go to my class. We hung up and she called back again to tell me I couldn't get to Oakland, the Bay Bridge had fallen down. I told her not to be ridiculous.
We had a Sony Watchman at the time, a small handheld TV. Power had gone out but we tried to get some news. The information about the bridge didn't show up locally for several hours, as I recall.
The kids didn't want to go back in the house and wore buckets on their heads for protection for the rest of the evening. We had no idea how devastating the earthquake was elsewhere until later.

Chris

Dworin

1972

Stevenson College

I was in Paris and when the news story hit. This was pre-Internet. The papers there didn't have a lot of information and I didn't have a TV, so I made a bee-line for Harry's New York American Bar (owned by a friend of mine), which was a local gathering place for Americans and news from home. I was told there: "The Bay Bridge - GONE. Downtown San Francisco - GONE!" Needless to say, it was a horrible experience until accurate news started coming through. A friend of mine who was in India at the time said that the newspaper headlines there were declaring "50,000 Dead."

Rod

Funk

1992

Kresge College

I was at work at the Orchard Supply Hardware at 41st Avenue and Capitola Road. I really thought that it was all over. Windows were breaking, glass was falling off the shelves and breaking, the fixtures holding the merchandise were jumping off the ground and slamming back down, you could see waves in the floor, and I was nearly thrown off my feet.

We were able to evacuate the store without injury. Once we got fans running to clear the air of toxic fumes, we started selling flashlights, batteries, and water in the parking lot. It was very busy for weeks since I worked in the plumbing department. We sold truckloads of water heaters.

When we turned on a radio, we heard that the Bay Bridge had "collapsed," and I became very worried for my family in the San Jose area. I was able to get a quick phone call through to my mom before the phones became useless.

The aftershocks were terrifying. I didn't stop my car under an overpass for months and no one thought that was strange.

The most positive thing about the '89 quake was how everyone pulled together. Nothing trivial seemed to matter. Everyone treated each other with compassion, dignity, and respect since we all realized that we had experienced loss together and needed support for recovery.

Paul

Dungan

1992

Merrill College

I was in the first floor of McHenry Library studying (maybe slepping...)in one of the reading chairs backing up to the plate glass windows opposite the main entrance. The initial jolt knocked me out of the reading chair and I dove under an adjacent table. There were 2 other people under the table with me. From that vantage point we could see the glass for the open center area of McHenry swimming...like jelaten and the building appeared to be swaying back and forth.

We exited the emergency exit out on the side of the building where we gathered with others away from the building infront of McHenry. There were many large aftershocks and then we dispursed.

I went to Merrill to track down some friends and I could not find them. Then I went with some others toward the applied sciences building because some of our friends were in computer lab over there. On the way, at the intersection by Crown and the firestation, there was a deer that had been hit by a car down in the gully. We tried waving down a campus cop to put the animal out of it's misery, but it took a while as they were responding to other emergency situations. Finally, a county sheriff came and took are of it. It took him 2 or 3 shots at point blank, but he got it done.... not sure why it did not take one... The other interesting this was the deer would always become very restless right before an aftershock... interesting little fact...

Then I road my bike home to mission and the 1... quite a ways. and we slept outside until the house got checked out and was safe.

crazy!

Gary

Patton

AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE - November 21, 1989

At 5:04 p.m., on Tuesday October 17th, Santa Cruz County was struck by an earthquake, and torn apart. Among other things, the earthquake stopped the town clock, in the City of Santa Cruz.

On Sunday November 19, at 5:04 p.m., we started the town clock again, in a moving ceremony of renewal. As the Chairperson of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, I was privileged to be able to speak at that ceremony. Here is what I said:

It's hard, my friends, to say all the things that have happened to us. The events we have experienced confound us greatly. They raise questions in our minds. What is it, this city that we love so much?

Is a city the brick and the mortar the wood, and glass; the concrete and the steel? Is a city the materials we make it of? Is a city the odd corners and the passages the secrets; the alleys and the backdoors; the plazas; the curbsides; all the strange spaces that make it up? Is it the fragrances we breathe in the city streets the coffee and the smoke; and flowers, sometimes; fir trees at Christmas; soap; cookies baking; the autos going by? Is our city the noises we hear the disturbances down the block (we turn and look); the Salvation Army Band; the bells from the fire tower; the town clock's gong? Is the city the spoken conversations we hear, as we pass in fleeting moments is the city all that?

Or light? The light dying down, at five o'clock, reflecting from the windows; hard at noontimes, sometimes, picking out the colors in the textures of the walls? Or the textures? Is the city all the different textures that we know sandstone, grainy to the touch on the Cooper House wall (run your fingers over it); old wooden storefronts, with cracking paint; tiles and stucco; all that we touch, that touches us?

If that is what the city is, we've lost those things. We've lost those things that belong to us that were our city: the particular light, in particular and specific spaces, that composed themselves "just so," for us; the smells, and the noises, and the textures of the street that was our street.

It was ours and theirs! The other ones the ones who made it; the ones who came before us: each space; each stone; each store a legacy.

We've lost those pieces of history that composed our present. Some of us have lost our lives, as our city came apart. It confounds us greatly. It raises questions. It raises questions what history we shall make.

For a city is bricks, and mortar, and space, and light the touch and the textures, and the noises in the street, and all that pertains to the lives we lead.

And while we live, we are the city. The realities we leave behind us, when we go, are the ones we make. With good will, and great visions, the city we build will be an opportunity realized; the spirit, speaking; our dreams come true.

Our dreams, and our spirit, we have not lost.

This was my speech. It's just words, of course, but I think that these words speak the truth. While we live, we are the city. The realities we create, and the history we make, will come from the dreams we choose to dream.

Erik

Ehrke

1993

Stevenson College

I was swimming laps in the E. Fieldhouse swimming pool. As I recall, I could "hear" a deep, sub-sonic rumble through the water. It was percussive, and the closest thing that I could compare it to was the (underwater) sound of a really solid "cannonball" plunge into the pool. In fact, that is what I assumed it was and I kept swimming, thinking that perhaps a group of people were doing a series of cannonballs for fun (?!?!). But the sound built dramatically, and the water began to slosh in the pool. At that point, I stopped mid-lap and picked up my head to see the E. Fieldhouse swaying like crazy and the lifeguard shouting for everybody to get out of the pool. It looked to me like the windows were going to pop out of the building at any minute, and I did not want to be near any breaking glass, so I kept treading water until it was over. I am not sure what my heart rate was, but I felt pretty amped.

In retrospect, I think that being in the water cushioned the shock and altered my subjective perception of the scale of the earthquake. I was surprised to learn of the massive, widespread damages afterwards. I remember people sleeping out on the E. Field that night, and the surreal experience of riding my bike downtown and seeing the destruction. Phone lines were busy and it was difficult for people to call into the S.C. area. Safeway, on the W. End of town didn't have power, and was pretty much giving away ice cream and frozen foods in a darkened store with near-empty shelves. It was really cool how people pulled together and related to each other in the wake of this disaster.

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