After getting to watch the Giants win the pennant, I was so bummed that I couldn’t get my hands on tickets for the World Series. They went ridiculously fast on the phone, and I just couldn’t justify spending what it would take to get them on the secondary market. That meant that instead of sitting in the stands, I was at work when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit.
I worked at a toy store in Saratoga. Since we were well into October, our small stockroom was already filling with boxes for the Christmas season, and there were giant heavy boxes of holiday catalogs lining the walls. That’s where I was at 5:04pm. I don’t think I consciously registered the fact that we were having an earthquake. I just bolted for the doorway instinctively, and behind me, the boxes caved into the room. I grabbed hold of both sides of the doorjam and held on while the shaking got more violent and the lights went out. The floor moved like I was standing on a blanket with two burly men wrenching each side in turn. The doorjam swayed sideways with each yank. I heard myself saying (outloud?) “Oh my god…Oh my god”. I was in the store alone, thankfully. Toys fell from the high shelves and onto the floor everywhere. When it stopped, I walked out of the building. There were alarms going off everywhere, at the bank, cars, everywhere. Other than the alarms, it was completely silent. The woman that worked a few doors down from me had cut her forehead when the windows broke, and was bleeding on the sidewalk. We were extremely lucky. Not everyone was.
The days and weeks that followed were filled with that hyper vigilance of waiting for the other shoe, or in this case, earthquake, to drop. It was YEARS before I ever fell asleep for the night in clothes that were not suitable for wearing out in the neighborhood…just in case.
Today, of course, is the twentieth anniversary of the Loma Prieta Quake. We watched a television special about it the other night. Nothing like awakening long dormant PTSD with some video footage. Being prepared is always a good thing, but I think we found out all to well that day that 99.9% of surviving a big earthquake is just being in the right place at the right time.
