Loma Prieta

I lived with my ex-girlfriend (now my lovely wife) in the Sunset district of San Francisco from March, 1989 through September, 1992.

Once in a while, I’ll meet someone new who lived in San Francisco, or realize someone I already know lived there around that time.  After this discovery, the next question that quickly comes up in the conversation always is, “where you there in ’89?,” quickly followed by, “where were you?”

At 5:03 p.m. on October 17, 1989, while the rest of the country was preparing to watch the Bay Area’s Major League Baseball teams, the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics, start the third game of the World Series, your intrepid reporter was standing in the checkout line of my neighborhood Safeway supermarket on 31^st and Noriega, in the Sunset district of San Francisco.  I thought I was ten minutes away from cooking a plate of nachos, tossing a salad, pouring an ice, cold beverage, and joining the rest of the country to watch the game.  Mother Nature had other plans. 

If you’ve never lived or shopped in a grocery store in San Francisco, especially in some of the City’s more heavily Asian communities, such as the Sunset, I should mention here that many of the locals cling to the belief that they are still living back in their native country, not in California.  They like to barter and dicker at the checkout stand.  You soon learn to avoid getting behind an older Chinese lady at Safeway the way an Israeli learns not to get behind a Palestinian at the airport.  Do so at your peril because it could be a long wait.

“I pay you two dollars jar of Jif, that’s all.”

“Ma’am, the Jif is $3.99.  It’s always $3.99.  You will have to pay $3.99 if you want the peanut butter, just like everyone else.  I’ll have someone put it back if you don’t want it.”

The Asian ladies grimace and shrug, the checker moves the jar of peanut butter along the counter and towards the bagger, with the other groceries.  And on to the next item…

“I pay you three dollars for bag of rice, no more.”

“Ma’am, the rice is $4.99.  We don’t barter on our prices at Safeway…”

This exact same scenario plays out dozens of times a minute, every hour of every day, at every grocery store throughout San Francisco.  I must have watched this Kabuki show hundreds of times, and not one single time did I ever see it work.  The checkers made you pay the listed price or take it back.  That’s America.  But the Asians couldn’t resist.  It was in their blood. 

This evening was busier than normal, with everyone buying last minute provisions before the ball game.  The older, Asian lady in front of me in line was working the barter act pretty good.  And then everything started to shake.  I could feel the ground rock and roll beneath me.  I heard thousands of cans and bottles flying off of store shelves and exploding as they hit the ground.  The large glass windows in the front of the store buckled and shattered. 

Sometimes you wonder how you’ll react in a sudden or unusual situation.  I knew immediately it was an earthquake.  I knew immediately it was the largest earthquake I’d felt in my lifetime.  When the earthquake started, I was next in line in the checkout line, behind my bartering Asian neighbor.  When the quake subsided ten seconds later, I was standing outside the store, in the parking lot, safely away from the Safeway.  I looked back towards the store and realized I was the only person outside.  Everyone else was still standing in place, frozen in shock.  Ready to barter.

My first reaction was, even though it was a large jolt, I could tell that the store didn’t have any major structural damage and, as the shoppers and checkers eventually shuffled out of the store, it didn’t appear that anyone was hurt.

My second thought was, “Shit!” 

I was THAT close to getting my groceries, they were still visible sitting there on the belt of the checkout stand, and now every store in the City was going to be closed for the night.  For days.  We were going to have to make due for a day or two with whatever provisions we had at home.

My third, and most important, thought, of course, was for the safety of my (then) girlfriend.  She was working at a construction site in downtown San Francisco, and should have been starting her commute home.  No cell phones back then, and all the landlines were dead, so I’d just have to go home and wait, and hope she’d show up soon.

I slowly drove home.  The power was out all through the neighborhood, so there were back-ups at every intersection with a stoplight.  Most of the local radio stations did have back-up power and stayed on the air.  The enormity of the quake sunk in as I listened to all the radio reports on the short drive home.

An odd thing about living through a large earthquake, when the power and phones go out for days at a time, is that everyone else in the country was seeing the coverage on television that none of us in the earthquake zone were able to watch.  All we had was radio.  And as I recall, the news radio coverage in San Francisco was excellent that week.

Our flat at that time was located right on the Great Highway (which, as I liked to joke, was neither great, nor actually a highway), literally across the street from Ocean Beach, the sandy, foggy expanse in the western portion of town where San Francisco met the Pacific.  We lived on the third floor in a unit in the back, facing East towards the mountain that divides the Sunset from downtown.

I went upstairs and checked out our place.  A few things thrown off shelves, pictures fallen from walls, power out and phone line dead, but nothing major.  Our back wall was lined with several large windows, offering a scenic view of the City, and looking through them and up towards the Marina district, I could see smoke quickly rising through the air as the sun started to set.

Feeling aftershocks, I realized it wasn’t wise to stay in the apartment.  I left and went out front to wait for my girlfriend to return from work.  Hundreds of residents of the Great Highway where out on the berm of grass between the road and the beach.  Everyone excitedly checked in with neighbors for the latest news, the latest reports on the radio echoed through the neighborhoods, and we waited for our loved ones to return home. 

The ballgame was cancelled.  Word started to spread that a couple of the double decker freeways, that were prevalent in the Bay Area at the time, had collapsed; particularly tragic was the complete collapse of the Cypress freeway over in Oakland.

I think it took my wife about two hours to drive the seven miles home through the City.  She had just left her office atop the Moscone Convention Center in downtown San Francisco, and was making a left turn on to Market Street – the longest and most heavily traveled street in the City – when the earthquake hit. 

She said she noticed all the high rises that line Market Street were waving back and forth across the street.  It was a shocking sight.  Power was out throughout the City, so she had to stop at every intersection with a street light, all the way home.  During rush hour.  But she was safe.

That earthquake had a more pronounced impact on the national psyche because so many people were watching the game broadcast live when it occurred.  Friends and relatives were dialing furiously in those initial hours to try and get through and check on us to see if we were okay.

I had an “800” phone card that I always carried back then because I traveled so much for work.  They were rare at the time, if you didn’t travel.  I discovered I could go to some pay phones, get a dial tone, and eventually use the phone card to dial out.  We called our parents, told them we were fine, and asked them to spread the word. 

The sun had set and a pure darkness enveloped the City that we had never witnessed before.  The aftershocks seemed to subside and we eventually felt safe to go back up in to our apartment.  We lit some candles, set up the radio, cleaned out anything from the fridge that was going to spoil without power, and watched in awe at the red and orange tinted smoke that emanated from the fires in the Marina.  The only other visible light was the occasional lone set of headlights that we’d see from a spare car or two traveling the empty streets.  Eerie.

Power and phone service remained out for 48-72 hours.  The only way you could buy something was with cash during that time.  Most stores and gas stations remained closed. 

I did become more prepared for future quakes by always making sure we had a radio, flashlights, blankets and batteries at home and in our cars.  I tried to never let the gas tank get too low in our cars, and always try to carry some cash.  I’m curious how the cell phone system will work in the next big temblor, but I suspect it will not be very useful.  Hope I’m wrong.

Los Angeles, not to be outdone, went through their own earthquake in 1994, centered in Northridge, right where I had gone to college.  I jokingly congratulated my friends in L.A. with their foresight to have their large earthquake during a hard fought election year.  Their freeways were repaired MUCH faster than ours.  Up here, we're still working on the damn Bay Bridge twelve years later. 

I think I’ll always remember where I was at 5:04 p.m. on October 17, 1989.