The Night the Earth Moved

I remember exactly when it happened.

It was Tuesday, October 17, 1989, just before the World Series game. The time was 5:04 in the afternoon. Live cameras were already on the field when a magnitude 6.9 earthquake rocked the San Francisco Bay region. Its center was near Loma Prieta Peak in the Santa Cruz Mountains, roughly sixty miles south of San Francisco.

At that very moment, I was on the phone with my wife, asking her about dinner plans.

Then I heard it.

It was a loud, deep noise, like a freight train coming straight through the building. The floor of my shop began to move sideways. Then my wife screamed through the phone.

Then the line went dead.

A moment later the floor began to roll. Things fell from shelves. Heavy storage racks in the shop started to collapse. My fellow employees and I ran outside into the parking lot.

The pavement was moving like water.

We stood there looking down at our cars while the ground rolled beneath them. Telephone lines and power lines snapped. Somewhere nearby, highway overpasses were collapsing. The whole modern world seemed to have come apart in seconds.

I did not think. I acted.

Instinctively, I got into my car and started driving home.

At the time, I lived in the Santa Cruz area, and my office was in San Jose. To get home, I had to cross the Santa Cruz Mountains on Route 17, a winding mountain road. My wife and two young sons were on the other side of that mountain.

My mind went on autopilot. I had only one thought: get home to my family.

I do not remember how I got through the damaged sections in San Jose. I do not remember making decisions. Somehow I reached Route 17 and started up the mountain.

I turned on the radio. The news was confused and frightening. The announcers said Route 17 was closed. Impassable. Unsafe.

The words did not register.

It was getting dark as I climbed higher and higher into the mountains. Huge cracks had opened in the pavement. Power lines were down across the road. I kept driving.

Then the boulders began coming down.

Large rocks rolled from the hillside onto the highway. I saw one boulder coming down in front of me that looked bigger than my car. Still I kept going. I had no fear. Only focus.

At the top of the mountain, I looked out and saw fires in San Francisco. Large fires burned in the city, especially near the pier area. The radio reports were still sketchy, but they were saying the quake had been centered near Loma Prieta.

That was only a few miles from my home.

Then, for the first time in my life, I prayed.

“Dear God,” I said, “I have never prayed before. But if you leave my family unharmed, you can do whatever you want with me.”

Just then, at the lookout near the top of the mountain, the road began to move again. The back end of my car started sliding off the pavement toward the edge of the mountain.

Luckily, I had front-wheel drive.

I hit the gas. The tires burned. Somehow the car pulled itself back onto the roadway. I kept going.

Coming down the other side, the main road was blocked and nearly impassable, so I turned onto a small dirt road. It led toward Watsonville, an agricultural community. Suddenly it began to rain.

That made no sense. Earlier it had been a beautiful blue-sky day.

Then mud started hitting my windshield.

I realized what was happening. Irrigation pipes and water lines had broken all over the fields, spraying mud and water into the air. Roads into Watsonville were closed, but I did not care. I cut across an artichoke field and kept moving.

When I finally reached Santa Cruz, police and fire trucks had set up a barrier. The area was closed, they said. Too dangerous.

I drove around them.

By then it was pitch dark. There were no lights anywhere. I made my way through the suburbs by instinct and memory until I finally reached my house.

I went inside.

No one was home.

Dishes were shattered across the floor. Broken glass was everywhere. Bookcases had fallen over. Books lay scattered across the rooms. The house looked wounded.

But somehow I knew where my family was.

They had gone to our friends down the road. The family was active in Scouts. Their boys were outdoor types. If anyone knew how to respond to a disaster, it would be them.

I ran down the road to their house.

And there they were.

My wife. My two sons. Alive. Safe. Setting up a tent.

I cannot describe the relief. We were all overwhelmed. We hugged one another in the dark while the earth continued to tremble beneath us.

The aftershocks kept coming. The children were frightened. The adults were frightened too, though most tried not to show it. Everyone wondered the same thing: were these aftershocks, or were they foreshocks of something even worse?

As the long night passed, the neighborhood began to organize itself.

Some of us went house to house checking for fires. Many hot water heaters had toppled over, exposing open gas flames. We shut off gas lines and water lines where we could. We knew we would need whatever water remained.

Later that night, people began emptying their refrigerators and freezers. With the power out, the food would spoil anyway. So we gathered what we had and made the best decision we could.

We cooked.

Neighbors rolled barbecue grills into the street. Someone brought steaks. Someone else brought fish. Others brought whatever had been thawing in their freezers. In the middle of darkness, fear, and broken ground, the neighborhood held the biggest barbecue I had ever seen.

Then came the ice cream.

It became an ice cream social after an earthquake.

That may sound strange, but it helped. It gave people something to do with their hands. It gave frightened children something sweet. It gave adults a reason to talk, to organize, to laugh a little, and to remember that we were still alive.

As more news came over battery radios, we learned that we were near the fault, and that Santa Cruz had been cut off. Roads were damaged, blocked, or unsafe. There were no cell phones then. No instant updates. No way to know everything. We had only fragments of news and the evidence around us.

Most people remained calm. Some could not. A few panicked and locked themselves inside their cars. Others set up tents and unrolled sleeping bags. No one really slept. Every aftershock brought more screams from the children and more silent fear from the adults.

It was a long night.

In the days that followed, we began to understand the scale of what had happened. Roads were broken. Buildings were damaged. Emergency access was difficult. Several people had died. Many more were injured. The earthquake had torn open not only the earth, but the illusion that ordinary life is solid and permanent.

But my family was safe.

My wife was safe. My sons were safe.

That night, on a broken road in the Santa Cruz Mountains, I had prayed for the first time.

And my prayer was answered.