Anniversary of Loma Prieta earthquake rattles our memories
Like most Hollister residents of a certain age, I remember
exactly where I was on Oct. 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m., even though I
wasn’t in Hollister at the time.
I was a 20-year-old college student at Fresno State, sitting
with my roommate in the living room of our apartment watching the
broadcast of the World Series matchup between the San Francisco
Giants and Oakland A’s.
Anniversary of Loma Prieta earthquake rattles our memories
Like most Hollister residents of a certain age, I remember exactly where I was on Oct. 17, 1989 at 5:04 p.m., even though I wasn’t in Hollister at the time.
I was a 20-year-old college student at Fresno State, sitting with my roommate in the living room of our apartment watching the broadcast of the World Series matchup between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s.
Announcer Al Michaels said “I think we’re having an earth…” and then the screen went blank. After a weird delay attributed to our distance from the epicenter of the Loma Prieta quake, we felt a minor shaking that was enough to make the light fixture above our dining room table swing back and forth. The quake was strong enough to knock out the television broadcast and powerful enough to be felt in the Central Valley, so I knew it wasn’t good.
Over the next minutes and hours, as images of the collapsed Cypress Freeway, the buckled Bay Bridge and the burning Mission District of San Francisco replaced the game coverage on TV, I knew this was “The Big One” that we had been expecting.
This was the days before cell phones, so I picked up my house phone and called my parents’ house, only to repeatedly encounter a dead connection. My roommate called his mom, who also lived in Hollister, and had the same luck.
We had no idea how badly the quake affected our families and our town and we felt powerless to do anything about it. Within a few hours, a call came in from my mom letting us know that they were OK and the house was still standing, but things were a mess.
My dad was in Monterey and my mom and sister were just leaving the house at the time of the quake, with my sister sitting in the car as the shaking began. My mom recalls hearing the sound of a bookcase crashing to the floor, opening the door to survey the damage, then quickly locking up and getting in the car to go check on my grandmother, who lived in a century-old farmhouse on Union Road.
The only damage at the old structure was a cracked chimney. Downtown Hollister, of course, was not so lucky.
I remained in Fresno in the days after Loma Prieta, as my parents told me there was nothing I could do to help at the time. At our Hollister home, my mom cooked canned beans on an outdoor barbecue grill over a fire of old newspapers.
The aftershocks, my mom recalls, were scarier than the initial shock, as she wondered whether the next shaker would be bigger than the previous one.
“They were too frequent and too strong,” she recalled this week. “Amy (my sister, who was 18 at the time) was in our bed and would hold on to me as tightly as I was holding on to her during the shaking. I admit I was afraid.”
K&S Market – now Safeway – handed out six packs of “emergency” water donated by Anheuser-Busch. I still have an unopened six-er in a cabinet as a keepsake.
My mom’s employer, Cable Car Sunglasses, was a mess after the quake, with “rows of merchandise toppled like dominoes, file cabinets emptied and paperwork everywhere,” my mom said. “They told us to stay home until the aftershocks stopped.”
Because of that week after Loma Prieta, when “you couldn’t buy gas, use a credit card or take a shower,” my mom said she now makes it a habit to keep gas in her car and cash in her wallet in case the world stops as it did for a few days 20 years ago.
There are memories about fear and uncertainty, for sure, but also recollections about the good will shown by neighbors and the entire community of Hollister.
“Neighbors would come around and offer candles, flashlights, a strong drink to settle nerves,” my mom said. “Thankfully, no one was hurt, the houses were sound and a degree of normalcy was achieved within a few days. I developed a new respect for Mother Nature and realized how unprepared we really were for what happened.”
I now live in the house that was a big mess 20 years ago, and – other than the 20-year-old six pack of emergency water, a few candles and canned food – am sadly under-prepared for the next quake. Perhaps this week’s anniversary will provide the impetus for me, and all of us, to prepare for the inevitable next great shaker.
Adam Breen writes a blog at http://thebreenblog.blogspot.com, teaches newspaper and yearbook classes at San Benito High School and is a reporter for The Pinnacle. He is former editor of the Free Lance.
