San Francisco Quake, Twenty Years Ago Today

Twenty years ago today, I was on the streets of San Francisco in the heart of the Financial District when the 7.1 quake struck at 5:04 p.m. Later, the Ferry Building clocktower, its flagpole tilted to one side, would record the exact time for weeks.

It shake-rattle-and-rolled for a good 15 seconds, which felt like 15 minutes.

At first I just thought the guy walking in front of me on Pine Street was drunk. I still weirdly recall the pattern on his wool sweater. I thought it was kind of early for him to be drunk and staggering around.

Then I realized the ground was heaving, the way a ship would in rough waters. “Oh my God it’s an earthquake,” I thought.

I remembered the Sylmar quake of 1971. I had been a kid in bed, awakened by books flying off shelves, and I ran for cover in the doorway.

In 1989, however, I was on the streets of San Francisco surrounded by glass-walled skyscrapers. I could see the old 1920’s PG&E building on Market Street separating from the building next to it and slamming back into it with giant clouds of dust as windows shattered.

As adrenaline pumped into my system, I suddenly recalled telecasts from the Mexico City earthquake where old buildings just like those crashed down.

“I’m going to be crushed,” I thought.

I had a vision of giant sheets of glass slicing down from skyscrapers on both sides of me, including the backside of the 101 California building I’d just exited.

“I’m going to be decapitated,” I thought.

I had never felt violently exposed in all my life. I ran for cover at an ATM alcove on Market Street. Two other women were already there and the three of us huddled together babbling, “We’re going to die.”

And still the 15 seconds had not elapsed. Everything was still shaking and the buildings on Market were still separating and smashing back together with poofs of dust we could clearly see from the alcove. Then, with sudden terror, I realized the building holding the ATM could smash down and I prepared to die.

But, as suddenly as it started, the shaking stopped. Utter silence prevailed for a split second, then came screams and the smell of smoke, followed by sirens distant and near. Then people began either clattering by in swift panic or shuffling in numb shock. I turned to the two women in the alcove to say “wow, we made it,” but they had already fled.

I must have been in a state of shock myself because all I could think about was a cup of coffee. Miraculously, my favorite little cafe, Pasqua, was open just yards away. As I entered, the young man behind the counter smiled as if quakes happened every day (also in shock) and he made me a cappuccino, which arrived just as the power went out!

I wandered back to Market. I knew better than to enter the BART station to head for the tunnel under the bay to Berkeley: it would, of course, be down.

Then I realized if I’d left work earlier than 5:00 p.m., I would have been on a train stuck in the tunnel during the quake! I decided I was glad I was on the streets, scary as it was. I wasn’t trapped, on BART and I hadn’t been decapitated or crushed.

I was also glad I hadn’t been on the 36th floor of the 101 California tower where I worked at the Pettit & Martin law firm. My colleagues who had been all had to wander down 36 flights of stairs - some were stuck in elevators - after getting the fright of their lives swinging back and forth in the sky. The tower had been built on rollers to withstand a 8.0 quake.

They were universally white-faced as they emerged, including my boss, the unflappable Mary Shallman. We gathered in small groups to assess the damage and strategize. One of the partners heard that the Bay Bridge, a key artery in and out of the city, had collapsed. This, somehow, was more frightening to think about than the earthquake had been to experience.

Mary suggested we head up to her Nob Hill apartment on Stockton Street to see if we could get radio news about emergency ferry service. Seven of us walked up California Street, picking our way amongst glass and rubble. We could see brick buildings with facades ripped out, some dating to after the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.

Oddly, the radio provided no news of ferries across the bay, but waiting around soothed our adrenaline pumped agitation a bit. Eventually, I decided to go to the bay with Chris, a legal assistant who also lived in Berkeley. We headed down Bush Street. I carried my books and stuff in a Sak’s Fifth Avenue bag.

As we walked through Chinatown, I saw looters busting into stores and some eyed my Sak’s bag. I suddenly felt a new vulnerability: it wasn’t the Earth that was threatening me now, it was my fellow human beings. I had an eerie sense of how quickly even an apparently civilized city like San Francisco can fall apart suddenly.

Chris steered us hastily over to Pine Street and the Financial District, where it was eerily quiet. In the lobbies of office buildings, we could see small groups sitting against the walls, staring ahead at nothing, some with candles burning. They all looked as if they’d seen death. It was an apocalyptic scene, as if a nuclear bomb had exploded and deadly radioactivity hadn’t yet taken its course.

We kept going. We had faith that ferries would be running, even if the radio had been useless in telling us so. And indeed, hundreds of people had gathered at the bay. It took what seemed like hours to board a ferry packed with about 300 people who were either zombie-like or hysterically loud.

Everyone became silent, however, as we headed for Jack London Square in Oakland. The black-out allowed us to see stars we’d never seen above the City by the Bay. And then, hulking hugely above us, was the broken Bay Bridge. It wasn’t so dark that we couldn’t see where it had crumpled - a giant slab slammed onto the lower story of the bridge.

Later I learned that only one person had plunged to death there, which seemed like a miracle compared to how many more might have been killed. Later still, I learned of the deaths in Santa Cruz, the collapse of entire neighborhoods in the Marina District, and most shockingly, the collapse of the two-story Nimitz Freeway in Oakland where dozens were smashed in a monolithic concrete sandwich.

I was beyond grateful to be home sometime well after midnight, though it took days to get over the jumpy, racey-numb feeling I had. In the following months, I remember an exquisite sense of appreciating everything around me as if for the first time. I was never so grateful for my friends, family, and dreams.

And I made sure that one big dream came true three years later: I spent a month in Europe for the first time in my life. In Paris, the French loved hearing about San Francisco. “The most beautiful city in America,” they said.

I would have to agree. It is a phoenix that has risen from the ashes more than once in its storied history.