I know that this is not an anniversary, or anything. But I was asked to post this story on Facebook, so I decided to blog about it, and then post a link.
In the fall of 1989, I had been in California for a little over a year. My buddies from Rice and StyleWare who worked at Claris usually went on a CD run about once a month, and then dinner afterwards. Our favorite place, though certainly not the only one, was Tower Records. Not sure what city it was in, actually. Mountain View, Los Altos, and Palo Alto all had borders around there. It was at the corner of El Camino Real and San Antonio Rd, caddy-corner from Chef Chu's (yum!) and Armadillo Willy's (meh).
One fine afternoon, we decided to go on a run, and try to beat the traffic by leaving Claris right at 5:00. I already decided not to watch the World Series; neither of the teams (Giants and As) were my team, and the Astros had been in a pennant race with the Giants in 1989, and lost out. World Series games are too early on the West Coast.
I drove, and my two buds rode along. I put a cassette into my car stereo, and off we went.
We were driving on Old Mountain View-Alviso Road, which runs parallel to CA-237, at that point, almost a freeway (still had traffic lights but was freeway speed). At the Santa Clara-Sunnyvale border, there is a bridge over a creek. Right before that bridge, the car hit something like a log, followed almost immediately like another impact. But I did not see anything on the road.
I stopped the car, but it was rocking in all directions. It was an earthquake. It went on quite a while. The cars on the highway were not aware of it, but the street lights were all swaying.
The rocking (it was not shaking) stopped after a while. We looked at each other, shrugged, and kept going. "There are lots of earthquakes here, right?" "Right."
Came around the corner to the fire station, and they were lining up the trucks at the end of the driveway by the street. Then we noticed that the traffic lights had no power.
Growing up in Houston, the safest place to drive when there was no power was the freeway, since the intersections did not rely on lights. So we got on 237, exited 101, and then exited San Antonio, going towards El Camino Real.
About halfway to El Camino, at Central, the traffic started. None of the traffic lights had power. By now, it was about 5:20, and people were leaving to go home.
We were almost to El Camino when an aftershock hit. We got to the parking lot, and it was full of people milling around. Some of the windows at Tower were shattered. The light at San Antonio and El Camino was off. This is when we got scared.
I switched to FM radio, and there was only one station on the air, KSJO. The DJ said "Whoa! Another one! We are riding the waves here, the ground waves!"
The other drive-time host said, "Whoa! Look at the TV! The Bay Bridge is broken!"
"Be careful out there! And here is a surfing song for those ground waves!" and proceeded to start playing Surfing Safari.
We turned left onto El Camino and discussed our options. We were now afraid of bridges and overpasses. None of us had any food at home (we were all bachelors). The car had maybe 1/8 tank of gas. I had $4 and credit cards. I was now starting to worry about getting home to Milpitas.
We did notice that about every mile, there was power at that intersection with El Camino Real. When we got to Grant Road, there was a gas station with power. I spent my last $4 and got the tank up to almost half (gas was cheaper then!) It was getting very dark by now.
We then proceeded to go down El Camino Real some more. The plan was to go down to Bowers, and head up to Claris that way. At Remington/Fair Oaks, there was an open restaurant! Spoons! Not the best food, but it was edible, and had power. We stopped and got a table. They took credit cards! Ate a big big meal.
When we left, there was a 3 hour wait. The motorcycle store next door had a big line where they were selling generators.
Finally got back to Claris about 8:00 PM. We went in the front door. The security guard and one of the admins were manning the front desk. They checked out names off of a list, but told us we could not go any further. There was cosmetic damage, and the building was being inspected.
So we tried to go home. I had to go home on 237; it was really the only viable route, and I did not know any others yet anyway.
It was a parking lot. And, it still had traffic lights. At just about every single light, there was a major accident. It was a harrowing hour and a half for a 15 minute drive. Getting past where it intersected with 880 took a LONG time.
I drove up to the house in Milpitas, and my roommate was wondering the dark streets with a guitar, singing. We went into our dark house, and realized something. Both of us had waterbeds. Waterbeds had to be heated, or the sleeper risked hypothermia. We had no power...
I fished out my emergency transistor radio and discovered KCBS AM, where I caught up with everything that was known up to that point (the Bay Bridge break; the Cypress collapse; the Marina District burning; the cancellation of the World Series game; all of the bridges were closed). And that there was looting.
I can't believe we were worried; we were 50 miles from San Fransisco. Nonetheless, we slept on the living room floor with baseball bats next to us.
At 2:00, the lights came on for 5 seconds. At 4:00 AM, they came on for good.
We got up at 7:00, and looked around the house. All of the bookcases up stairs had fallen over, and our study was a mess. Other than that, we had no other damage.
Claris was open that day, but we did not have hot food, since their water supply had not been cleared.
A couple of side stories:
Our house in Milpitas had frequent power outages until they got the power back on that night; the transformers were all old, and evidently one would fail after fixing another until they were all replaced. A few weeks before the quake, I had a date with a woman. We were to go on a Hornblower bay cruise. I was to pick her up at 1:00 PM. That morning I was washing clothes, and the power went out, so I did not have anything nice to wear. I wore a sweatshirt and jeans. She was visibly disappointed...
Anyway, after the quake hit, her phone lines did not work for 2-3 weeks. Once I did get in touch with her, she had started dating somebody else.
Unlikely she would have continued to date me much longer anyway, but I blame Loma Prieta for that failed relationship!
One more:
My father decided that October to take a train vacation. He rode the train from Houston to Chicago, and then went west to Seattle. His plan was to ride down to San Jose, spend a few days, then get back on the train to LA, and then Houston.
He was in Seattle when the quake hit. He got in touch with me a couple of days later. Asked me if I knew if Amtrak was running. I had no idea. He called back a couple of hours later and said that Amtrak said that they were running.
I met him at the San Jose train station on Saturday after the Tuesday quake. He looked white as a sheet. The color started coming back to his face as he looked around, and grinned ear-to-ear when he saw me. Hugged me real hard.
"You looked like you had seen a ghost when you got off the train," I told him.
"Well, the train stopped in Oakland, and the station was in ruins except for our platform, and the collapsed highway was visible from the windows of the train. You don't know how happy I am to see you, here, with everything safe!"
