SFist Watches: A Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
We'll never forget where we were during the early evening hours of October 17th, 1989. It was one of those warm, Indian Summer days, and the air was completely still. To the superstitious, that's known as "earthquake weather." We had just gotten to Candlestick Park for the third game of the World Series. Giants versus A's--an event we'd hoped to see at least once in our lifetimes. We were ensconced in our seats in the roll-away metal bleachers in the outfield, seats not normally used during season baseball play, and we were watching the teams warm up on the field while our dad was at the concession stand getting hot dogs and beer. It was still a little while before the game was set to begin, but we were enjoying just being there, watching the teams warm up; hearing the Giants faithful talk about how THIS was going to be the Giants' night.
We had a tiny black-and-white Sony Watchman with us so we could watch the TV coverage along with the game, and we were checking out the pre-game show. It was some pretty boring stuff. As our eyes darted from the TV to the field and back again, we began to hear a roar. We thought a small army of baseball fans were perhaps charging down the aisles of those rickety metal bleachers, but turned around to see nothing abnormal. Then our seats began to shake, and a strange hush went through the stadium, as if everyone were taking a collective and sudden gasp of breath. And then we knew: This was an earthquake. And as soon as that realization hit, the stadium crowd caught their breath and started to roar, and scream, and panic. We looked above us and saw nothing but concrete. We looked before us and saw...Kevin Mitchell standing stunned in the outfield. And we knew: if that concrete started to crack, we were running directly into Mr. Mitchell's arms.
We stood frozen and stunned, only thinking, "Please let this end. Please let this end. Please let this end."
And finally, it did.
Nothing had collapsed, we were alive, and once the shaking had stopped, one could hear the sigh of relief go through the crowd as the stadium filled with cheers and claps. At that point, we really had no idea the extent of that quake. We knew it was big enough to shake a stadium, but we were fine. The building had remained upright, and we could only assume that the rest of the City had faired just as well. When our dad finally returned to our seats--with beer and hot dogs--he was smiling. He'd just thought we'd gone through a great ride. It was only until broadcast came back to our tiny, handheld TV about 15 minutes later that we began to realize this hadn't been a harmless ride. There, in tiny black-and-white, was that surreal image of the Bay Bridge, the upper deck resting on the lower deck. And we knew, there wasn't going to be any baseball tonight.
We made our way out of the stadium, and onto the freeway back home. We could see smoke rising from an area that looked like it could be the Fillmore or the Marina. Our TV's batteries were holding out OK, and somehow we felt safer looking at that screen and images of the collapsed freeway, and the Marina on fire, than we did if we looked out the window at the actual smoke and flames. Watching it on TV made it seem less real to us. It put up a false barrier between us and the horror that was going on mere miles away. And we needed that, because without it, we would have probably been reduced to a shaking mass of terror, rolled up into a fetal position in the back of the car.
We got home to find that our family members were all accounted for, and our apartment unscathed. Living on Potrero Hill, a nice solid rock, spared us any damage. There was much relief, but not much relaxation as the truth of possible aftershocks began to dawn on us. As the sun went down, and our electricity remained out, we stayed glued to that tiny TV into the wee hours of the evening, unable to sleep because of fear and nervousness and adrenaline. We eventually changed those batteries with the only spare set we had, and fell asleep from sheer exhaustion.
The next day, the extent of the damage became clearer to us, as did the realization that things could have been much, much worse. We, as a City, were very lucky. In the wake of Katrina, and looking back on it, it kind of freaks us out to realize how unprepared we really were, and if it had been a bigger quake, we probably would have been SOL for many days in regards to food and water. We are doing our best not to make that same mistake.
Because the quake happened while much of the country was watching live coverage of the World Series, it brought the terror immediately and directly into the living rooms of middle America. Perhaps that was the most significant difference between that natural disaster and a disaster like Katrina. Most of America knew right away that a disaster had hit--they heard those baseball announcers say on live, network TV, "We're having an earthquake!!" New Orleans didn't have the benefit of a nationally broadcast sporting event to spread the word that they needed immediate help...
Ten days later we were back at Candlestick park for that third game. We lasted about five innings. Every time someone walked down those metal bleachers, our seats would shake and we'd start to have nervous flashbacks. Besides that, the Giants were getting trounced. It was a painful evening.
The fifteenth anniversary of the 1989 quake was last year, but at least one station is acknowledging this sixteenth anniversary. The National Geographic Channel will be airing an episode of "Mega-Weather" focused on the '89 quake tonight at 7 p.m.
Hmmm...but we thought those stories of "earthquake weather" were just myths...
And isn't the air today very, very warm...and still?