The Day the Earth Shook
Yesterday I was on my way out the door when the phone rang. I chose to ignore it and continued on my way. As far as I know, that decision had no impact on anyone’s life. But that’s not always the case. I bring this up because this past weekend marked the 21st anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, which struck the San Francisco Bay area in October of 1989. Which means it’s been twenty-one years since a similar call had a huge impact on my life.
Most people spend very little time worrying about the threat of earthquakes and manage to push the very thought of a quake into the far reaches of their minds. I was one of those people. Like many people, on that October day, my attention instead was on Game 3 of the World Series. The press had dubbed this “The Bay Bridge Series” as it pitted the San Francisco Giants against the Oakland Athletics. And as it turned out, the Bay Bridge, which connects San Francisco to Oakland, and actually collapsed during the quake, is where I happened to be when the temblor hit.
It wasn’t where I was during Games 1 and 2. If the quake had hit then I would have been with thousands of others at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum watching the A’s defeat the Giants. I had the opportunity to attend Game 3 as well. A friend had assured me he could somehow get us into the park but we would have no actual seats. I turned him down and opted to watch the game at home. This turned out to be a fortuitous decision as later I would learn that it took my friend more than five hours to make the normally 45 minute trip from Candlestick Park to his home in Oakland.
While my friend was wandering around Candlestick Park (perhaps wishing he had a seat), I was finishing up work at my office in San Francisco. It was nearly 5:00pm and I was anxious to get home before the first pitch of the game, which was scheduled for 5:30pm. My office at the time was only a few blocks from the bridge that would soon collapse. Before leaving, I made a simple phone call and it is that call that quite possibly changed my life. I dialed some friends in Alameda, intending to see if they wanted to watch the game together. When no one answered, I briefly considered going directly to Alameda. I had no way of knowing that I would never have made it. Even if I’d managed to make it over the bridge before it’s inevitable collapse, I almost certainly would not have made it past the section of the Cypress freeway in Oakland that I would have taken to Alameda. This is the section of freeway that collapsed upon itself and killed dozens of people. But as I said, there was no answer, so on that sunny afternoon I steered my car onto the bridge that unbeknownst to me, would in a few minutes collapse.
Ordinarily, the Bay Bridge is a traffic nightmare. But this was no ordinary day. For some reason (I always assumed people had already gone home to catch the game), traffic on the bridge was incredibly light. When the quake hit, I was moving along pretty well, listening to the pre-game show and thinking about the game. Suddenly I had no control of my car. It was fortunate that traffic was light as I was unable to stay in one lane. As I swerved all over the road, I remember wondering if I’d blown a tire. How else to explain my inability to steer? It hadn’t yet entered into my mind that a 6.9 quake had just hit. Suddenly, the pre-game show was no longer on the air. In fact nothing was on the air. Before I could think about why, I heard what sounded like an incredible explosion behind me. I could only think some sort of tanker truck had lost control and exploded. I glanced in my mirror but saw no hint of an explosion.
As I continued on, I regained control of my car and it finally dawned on me that there had been an earthquake. Unfortunately the magnitude of the quake still escaped me. I remember thinking, “hmm, I wonder if they felt that at Candlestick Park?” As I was getting off the bridge, I could see water and mud spewing up through cracks in the road. There were people pulled over to the side pointing back at the bridge. I still couldn’t see what they were pointing at (later I would learn it was the collapsed portion of the bridge that I had only moments earlier crossed) and I had no intention of stopping. Believe it or not, somehow I still thought I was going to get home to see the game.
Up ahead what little traffic there was had slowed to a crawl. The road had separated and had dropped a good twelve inches. Cars slowly made their way past this giant “step” in the road one at a time. Fortunately no one, including me, got stuck.
When I finally got to my exit I was relieved to get off the freeway. That relief immediately turned to annoyance as I reached the end of the exit ramp and found the traffic lights were out. My first thought? “If my house has no power, where am I going to watch the game?” Again the sheer magnitude of the event hadn’t hit me yet.
When I pulled up in front of my house my neighbor was outside. It was she who told me the Bay Bridge had collapsed. We hadn’t heard about the Cypress freeway yet. About then I finally realized there wasn’t going to be a World Series game that night. As if to punctuate that fact, an aftershock hit and my neighbor and I stood and watched my car shaking back and forth. Soon my wife arrived home and was relieved to see me as she’d heard about the bridge collapsing and knew that I had to take that bridge home. Fortunately our neighborhood in Oakland fared pretty well. We had no power for three days and no hot water either as we’d turned off the gas.
Others were not so lucky. Sixty-three people lost their lives that day and thousands more were injured or lost their homes. When the Bay Bridge reopened a month afterward, it was easy to see the spot that had been repaired while driving over it. I compared that to where I was when I the quake hit and figured out that I missed it by a mere half-mile or about thirty seconds. So if my call had connected, even the briefest of conversations would have delayed me enough to at the very least trap me on the San Francisco side of the bridge collapse or at worst…well, who knows?
So the question is, the next time the phone rings and I’m on the way out the door, will I answer it? Will you?
