Series, Interrupted

I was at soccer practice in Albany. We felt the rumbling in the ground, thought it was a BART train, until we realized that BART is above ground about a mile away at that location. We saw smoke rising from downtown Berkeley, and all hoped it was the high school (what can I say, we were kids, we were excited about the idea of not having to go to school). Then our parents started showing up (practice wasn’t supposed to end until 6). They were panicked. They each had different stories and bits of news (some accurate, some not). The Marina District was on fire. Buildings all over San Francisco had collapsed. The Cypress Structure collapsed. The Bay Bridge was gone. Hundreds were dead.

I went back to my mom’s house in Berkeley, where most of the damage was just things that had fallen off the wall. We still had power there, so we were able to watch the news and see the images coming in from KTVU (I think that was the only channel we got because the power was still out in so much of San Francisco). I remember looking out my window that night, across to where I normally could see the entire city and lights and buildings of San Francisco, only to see darkness. Darkness with an eery glow of orange and red from the flames in the Marina District.

Al Michaels says that in 15 seconds “…the feeling of pure radiance was transformed into horror and grief and despair…” and yet, there he is, 15 seconds after the earthquake telling us how it’s the “greatest opening in the history of television – bar none.”

Who else had forgotten the wheels Dave Parker had?

SFGate has been doing a series of articles about the quake, here’s today’s with the memories of the A’s and Giants.

I miss Bill King…

I was 12, living in Alameda a few blocks from where Jason Kidd went to school at St. Joseph’s. I was the only one home at the time. My brother (10) and stepbrother (8) were at after-school daycare, my stepmother was on a bus coming home from work and my father was at Candlestick somewhere around the center field fence area, working for a company that handled building some sets and camera platforms.

I’d just finished making a couple slices of cinnamon toast when I sat down to watch the game. Cue the highlights of Game 2, including Dave Parker’s double to right. Not long after showing his slide into second base, things began to shake.

My very first thought was “Man, he hit that ball hard!”

Then I scrambled to the doorway to the small backyard of the duplex we were living in as things went crazy.

I heard the buzz of a transformer blowing and the power went out but not for too long. I went around the house for a few moments to see if anything had broken. The cheap metal chandeliers were swaying but not quite enough to hit the ceiling. Somehow no glasses fell, nothing busted, and the only sign of damage I saw was a dent in the wall of the master bedroom from where their small grandmother clock tipped back.

Then I went out front and the air just felt wrong. It smelled a little gassy, I remember that much. A neighbor across the street had a portable AM/FM radio and we listened to it for a few minutes before I got on my bike to go see if a friend a few blocks away was all right. A day or two later we went out to the boat launch area and rock wall by Encinal high school and looked at the collapsed portion of the Bay Bridge through a pair of binoculars. We didn’t know anything about that at the time, though. I found out about it on the news after the power came back on.

I cruised around the neighborhood a little more but there wasn’t much to see or hear about until the next day. There weren’t really too many people out and about. The middle school was closed for a couple days because they found cracks in the stairwell. For the rest of that year we had to come in earlier and leave around noon before another middle school came in for the afternoon because asbestos was knocked loose in their buildings. I remember feeling sorry for them because they’d miss the afternoon cartoons.

My brothers had thought someone was kicking the table over at daycare until they looked up and saw the lights moving back and forth on the ceiling. Outside the school they were at, a water main burst. My stepmother’s bus had gotten off the Cypress structure only minutes before portions of it fell. I don’t know how close she was to those sections. My father was just fine but he said he saw a stadium worker up on one of the light towers clinging for all he was worth.

I remember there were a few good aftershocks in the days following the quake, one of them coming while I was shooting baskets at a park a few blocks away. I also went down to a Red Cross place on Webster Street one day and helped them sort some clothes and things for the needy.

Other than that, there wasn’t much of anything I saw personally that dealt with the aftermath aside from what was on the TV and in the papers. In California you grow up used to small earthquakes so even larger ones don’t seem that bad once they’re over with when you don’t get hurt or lose anything, I guess.

I was able to watch the last two games of the World Series and feel just as happy when the A’s won as I think I would have had the quake not happened. It’s just so rare for anything like that to take place when such a major event of any kind is about to be played and it reminds you of what’s really important.

Although we didn’t feel anything in Sacramento the water in our pool in the backyard was moving because of the quake.

I was getting ready to watch the game with my Dad and a friend from high school when the live feed went out.

I’ll always remember watching the aftermath of the quake as it was really the first time in my life where I realized that real life can sometimes invade the games we all enjoy.

trying to get it done so I could watch the World Series without distraction. The game was on TV and my mom was getting dinner ready. The TV picture went out and the first things out of my mouth were something like “Oh crap! Of all times to lose a signal!” I felt a jolt and saw the light swaying above the table. I put my feet flat on the ground, looked at my mom and said ‘Earthquake.’ I had never really felt one before, so once I got the confirmation, I jumped up and met her in the doorway to finish riding it out. When it was over we walked outside….OK fine, I ran outside. Neighbors were milling around talking to each other and I rode around the neighborhood on my bike. We went into the house later on to watch the footage from around the Bay Area. It was pretty scary.

Even still to this day, when I feel a slight tremor on the floor or a low rumble, I stop moving, place my feet flat on the ground if I can and wait. The last big one I felt was last year. It was a quick jolt lasting no more than about five or six seconds. I saw the fishtank water sloshing, worried that the TV might fall off the wall, and I ran into the kid’s room, where he was taking a nap and swept him up. We kinda milled around the entry hallway for awhile in case of an aftershock.

Of course, I was living in Ames, Iowa, at the time. I came home that night around 8:00 expecting to see how the game was going (I expected to see the A’s ahead 4-0 by the third inning), and instead I see the aerial view of the Bay Bridge. Later that night my brother called me from Ohio to tell me he had talked to our mom and dad and that they were OK – I could not get through to the bay area for two or three days.

One of my friends from Iowa was in San Francisco that day on business in a high-rise in downtown – this was a Iowa girl who had never been to the west coast before. She said they went for quite a nice little ride in that building.

We were waiting for the coaches to get there for our practice that evening. Most of us were on bikes, circling, having fun as kids do. There was a huge mound of dirt that we’d ride up and rush down for adrenaline’s sake. I was sitting on my bike, waiting for my turn to ride down, and the adrenaline really started. Telephone poles shook, trees swayed, and we all knew this was something huge. Even as ten year-old kids we had felt our share of quakes, and this was different.

My dad came and got me soon after and we went home to make sure everyone was okay.

I will always remember that day, and that World Series.
God bless the families of those who lost their lives that day.

KGO, includes an aftershock during the report: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiiBPut80G0

KPIX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7-I-IHX24E

I was in bed at my house in England, It was well into the early hours of the moring and I was listening to the game on American Forces Network. They kept broadcasting for twenty or so minutes after the quake, describing not only what was happening in the stadium but what they could also see beyond.

For the next few weeks I worried for all my friends in San Francisco, this was pre-Internet so the only sorce of immediate news was very brief and on the BBC, eventualy I found that they were all ok.

I’ve always felt connected to the event, I may have been over 6,000 miles away, but somehow I feel as though I was almost there.

In SF we had no electricity (the loud bang as all the power went out was way more frightening to me than the shaking). So while everyone else can feel nostalgia about the tv coverage, mostly I remember sitting in the dark, worrying about the Giants and A’s and listening to crazy rumors about the Bay Bridge being completely collapsed. It was good when our phones came back and we could get phone calls (from New York and Norway and France, everyone my roommates and I had ever met checked on us) and find out what was going on.

I don’t remember this, obviously, but apparently my family had taken a trip to Honolulu with two of my grandparents. We had only just left the airport and arrived at the hotel around 3:30 (5:30 Pacific Time). As soon as we entered my room, I apparently saw the TV, recognized it as the magical box that brought me Sesame Street, waddled across the room, and hit the big button. The last guests had left the TV on a news channel, and my parents saw image after image of the Bay Bridge, the Marina District, and the Cypress Structure. The phone lines were jammed until well past midnight, until we were able to get in touch with some relatives and be sure everyone was okay.

Growing up, I remember one of my favorite movies of all time was the “Battle of the Bay” video narrated by Bob Costas. Does anyone remember this video?

Specifically, I’m looking for this in DVD. I’ve tried googling it and I’m still looking, but I figured someone might here might know of a place I could find it.

Getting ready to watch the game. Nothing spectacular – my brother and I got in a doorway til it was over. The story sure fascinates people now that I live in Wisconsin though. Stuff like earthquake drills at school blow their minds.

But being distracted by something else. I was 6, it was pretty easy to be distracted. I ran out of the house with my Mom (at the time, we were living in Union City) to pictures falling, arriving at the outer doorway, only to be even more scared by seeing the street pavement waving. Scary stuff.

It’s funny to think, though, that the playoffs were on ABC at the time and Al Michaels was annoucing. He’s associated with MNF to me now.

I remember the whole fucking world started shaking at the same time the TV went out.

Not bothering to stay in a door frame, I ran out the front door in time to see the power and phone cables swaying enough to nearly touch and arc together. Cool fireball effect.

That’s basically the only memory I have of it.

I was sitting on the ground playing Legos with my 4 year old sister waiting for the World Series game to start, and didn’t really know what was going on. I was stilling under some giant bookcases that had some oil lamps on the top of them, and my mom pulled me out of the way and into the middle of the room right before they would have crashed onto the top of my head. Then my mom pulled us under the table where we rode out the last few second and the immediately ensuing aftershocks.

I don’t remember much else besides that. As I said I was 6. We checked the house for broken glass. Smelled around for gas and turned it off. Went out into the street for a bit to ride out a few more aftershocks. But I do remember not enjoying it too much, and the aftershocks at night after I had been put to bed seemed terrifying to me. I’m over it now, luckily, lol. If its not a 6 pointer, I don’t even bother getting up from what I’m doing. We Caifornians sure are crazy sometimes.

here.

My mom is Norwegian, and even though she’s been in the Bay Area since ‘69 she’s never quite gotten used to earthquakes. She felt this one a full 10 seconds before I did or the TV signal went out. She just jumped to her feet, yelled “Oh my god!” and totally George Costanza’ed it out of there.. leaving me by myself wondering wtf, until I felt the jolt myself.

I was in Fremont, just a few blocks from the Hayward fault, and I remember it really shaking, and as we were standing under supporting beams of the house looking up at the ceiling and waiting to see it collapse on us. It didn’t, and we sustained no damage, except for my goldfish who was in a bowl next to the sink while his aquarium was being cleaned. He rode the wave down the drain, poor guy.

My dad was at work, and his secretary was an older woman from Arizona who had never experienced an earthquake before. She was on the can when it hit, and screamed “What’s going on?”
and my dad, Mr. Tact, shouted back “It’s an earthquake! And it’s The Big One!”
The lady apparently totally lost it and ran right out of the bathroom, through the offices and out the front door with her pants around her knees…

some jerk-off Giants fans began to run around and scream “you’re really in for it, now!!” As if the earthquake was going to somehow change things. Little did I know how much it really did, unfortunately. I told ‘em that it just delayed the inevitable, which, once again, it did as well.
I didn’t get back to Vacaville until about 2 in the morning. I was 25 and in my prime, baby — even made last call. lol
I pray I get another chance to see a World Series in Oakland, but if I don’t, I’ll always have ‘89. Earthquake or not, we rocked.
Little side note … I had a co-worker try to welch on a hundred dollar bet “because of the earthquake.” He claimed that all bets were off after the quake. My room-mate and I actually stole his German Shepherd, and I swore I’d do something crazy if he didn’t pay me. He did. I gave him his dog back and I told him I wasn’t kidding. He would’ve never seen his damn Giants-loving dog again … don’t ever, ever, ever f with my A’s or my money. I still see the loser once in awhile, and I give him that look like, “Yup, I know it was immature, but you still wouldn’t have seen your dog … sorry.” lol