10/17/89
At 17:04, when the quake hit, I was in the bathroom (just about to leave). I heard what sounded like someone pounding loudly on the door. Then I felt the floor begin to shake. I briefly wondered how someone could shake the bathroom floor by pounding on the door, then realized it was an earthquake. Now we have all been told, in case of earthquake, to either duck under a desk or table or get in a doorway. There was nothing near me to duck under, and the door looked unreachably far away, with the floor pitching the way the James Caird(1) would in very large swells. So I stayed put and hung onto the sides of the stall. The shaking seemed to last for many minutes, though I heard later it was only seconds. Then it slowed down, and I made my way to the doorway and stood there. I could see several other SRI employees standing in a nearby door. I think it was also at this point that the power went out briefly, but that may have come earlier, when the quicker shaking was going on.
After the motion stopped, I went out into the hall. Vivian, my supervisor, passed me and told me, "Get out of the building." She went toward the machine room. I followed her there, because my purse and keys were still in my office. As soon as I got into the room, the 800 number rang. I thought, what a terrible time to get a reference call. Maybe it is someone who doesn't know about the quake calling to complain about not being able to TELNET to the NIC(2). I answered the phone, preparing to say, "Sorry, but we cannot handle your reference call at this time. We have just had an earthquake here." It was Mark, calling to see how things were in the machine room. I told him they looked OK, but the 20(3) had crashed. I then put on my bike helmet and reflective vest (figuring I might as well have my head protected and be visible) and grabbed my purse and backpack. My bike was also in the machine room, but I figured getting it downstairs would be hopeless, so I left it. Vivian did a shutdown on the 20, so it would not come up and crash again in aftershocks, and then we both left.
There are several parking lots at SRI, but only one is the obvious one to go to from our wing of E building, and everybody was gathering there. Two people had portable radios, and one of the sign language interpreters was interpreting for Ken. Like most of the people in the less damaged areas, I didn't realize at first how bad the quake had been. I guessed maybe 6, with us very close to the epicenter. Of course, as the damage reports came in, it became clear that it was worse. After a while, one of the people standing by the a radio announced that the Bay Bridge had collapsed. The person with the other radios was complaining that several radio stations were dead. More reports on the state of roads followed. I understood people to say that two bridges had been destroyed, and that the epicenter was in Berkeley. I think also at this point some people had started to say that this was *the* big quake which we had been warned about. Other reports told of roads which were clear. There was a cheer when people heard that the Dumbarton bridge was still open.
Joel had just left work when the quake hit. He first thought that he had a flat tire. He pulled over to the side of the road to fix the flat, and he saw some children crying. He thought they were afraid of him and started to tell them, "It's all right, I just have a flat tire." Then he noticed the ground was shaking. He and the children were under some power lines, so he chased them into a church parking lot and comforted them by telling them that they were in the best place they could be.
After about twenty minutes, Jose (deputy director of the NIC) announced that he was going back in. Mary opposed the idea, and I said I would not go in until I had spoken with Vivian (who seemed to have left), but after some discussion Jose, Mary, Trudy and I decided to go back in together. Trudy was worried about something in her office (perhaps her fish tanks), and I figured if nothing else I could get my bike. As we went up the stairs, Trudy pointed out some long cracks all along the walls of the staircase.
I first went with the others to Trudy's office, which had water on the floor and fallen books, but didn't seem to be too damaged. Then I went to the machine rock. I almost immediately got a phone call from Joel, trying to find out if I was all right. He said he had already called Grandmother and Grandfather, and they were fine, with Grandfather mostly sounding interested in the quake from a technical standpoint. I told him I was still trying to reach Vivian, and wasn't sure whether I would be coming home. Tried to call Vivian, but couldn't get through. Went outside of the fishbowl to the machine room. Chan (another operator) was in there, hanging up tapes which had fallen down. 1 told him I would first get my bike out and then help him. After I got back, I looked around for loose wires which I should report and heavy, precariously balanced things which should be moved in case of aftershock. Chan was replacing same of the tiles in the ceiling and moving a computer cabinet back in place which had moved to block a door. I couldn't see any hazardous wires, and I quickly decided that, since the only way to reach anything high up was to get on a chair with wheels, I was not going to move any precariously balanced objects after all. In my office, I saw that a monitor which had been placed on a' shelf above my terminal had fallen on the floor right around where I would have been sitting. I moved the monitor under the desk, and then I went out to help Trudy, Jose, and Mary, while Chan tried to reboot some of the Suns (some were up).
When I got to Trudy's office, she announced that she saw a wire sparking. "Don't enter my office," she said, and walked into her office. Just at this moment (at 17:41), the worst aftershock hit, and I ran for a doorway, while someone yelled after me, "Don't take the elevator!" As soon as the shaking stopped, I went to the machine room to tell Chan to leave the building. Chan was making a note on a pad of the time of the aftershock. Ne told me that the Suns would not boot. I told him not to bother with them (I did not particularly want an off-duty operator hanging around while I, the on-duty operator, left). He showed me the lights in the back of a Sun, and how they differed from those in the back of a Sun which was running normally, saying, "I think there's a disk error." I told him again to just leave it, and he agreed, so I entered the time of the quake and the aftershocks he had recorded in the logbook for the 20 and we left the machine room. (I found out later that he came back, and was there for much of swing shift, because power was out at his place. The 20 was rebooted at 20:00. ) I then remembered the wire in Trudy's office, and went back to see if she was all right. Trudy and Mary were gone, but I found Jose in Vivian's office looking at her Sun, and I told him that several computers were down and would stay down, because I wasn't going to hang around to reboot them. I left the building.
Outside, the crowd had thinned, but there were still groups of people talking there. Some said they did not want to go home, because roads were blocked between SRI and their homes, or because their homes were in areas where buildings had been destroyed. One group was discussing going back into the building; as I approached them I heard one saying, "There are enough crazies going back in there." After a little discussion, they all agreed to go back in and power down all the computers quickly, then leave. I wondered whether I should have tried to persuade Chan to power down the computers, instead of trying to persuade him to just leave them, but decided not to go back in to power them down. I hung around till 18:00 to give traffic a chance to thin, then left.
Traffic was terrible. There were as many cars as during rush hour on a very buzy freeway, and all the traffic lights were out. Fortunately, the sidewalks were clear, so I biked there. Cars treated traffic lights as four-way stops, and that scc2m~d to work smoothly. I normally take half an hour to bike betwccn home and work, but I went slowly and took forty minutes (probably the cars were slowed more by the traffic than I was).
At our apartment complex, there was a cluster of people outside talking with the manager. She told us she had had the gas turned off, and there would be no hot water. "Will the water be OK to drink?" someone asked. "I think so, but you can boil it." "Excuse me, what did you say?" "You can boil it." "With no gas?" (We all have gas stoves.) She then told us the story of what she was doing when the quake hit. She ran out of her apartment to go to her children (who were at the store with another adult), and was hit by huge waves coming out of the swimming pool and across the lawn. The swimming pool had cracks in it.
The apartment itself was OK except for some fallen books and one broken glass. Everything had fallen along one line, while things perpendicular to that line had stayed upright. The rabbits and hamsters were all right, but all the cats in the apartment complex had disappeared at the time of the quake, and were not seen for hours afterwards. Once I arrived, Joel told me to cover the phones while he checked the stores (we have several within about two blocks of us) to see if any were open. He had set up the computer to automatically dial his mother, his brother, and my mother each in succession, but none of the calls could get through.
When Joel got back, he reported that all the stores were closed, and power was out everywhere around our block. A little later, I went out with him again to check the stores. The Coop, 7-11, and Safeway were all completely closed. The Coop was a mess, with groceries and wine from smashed wine bottles all over the floor. Midtown Market was also a mess, but the employees had set up a table near the door where they were selling batteries, candles, and bottled water. We stood in line and bought two containers of water. (Having moved so recently, we were not well-stocked for food, and had only a couple of bottles of cherry Coke to drink if our water failed. Of course, that is not counting the possibility of using the swimming pool.) There was one woman in the parking lot who was giving away candles, free (which we did not take because we had power, about three flashlights, and at least half a dozen candles - well, that is how many we have packed away somewhere, the number that have been unpacked and can be found is somewhat less). After that, I tried to call [my brother] Paul, but got no answer, indicating that power was out at his place (if it were up, his answering machine would answer).
(1)A rowboat owned by Lynn's family. [Return]
(2)Network Information Center. [Return]
(3)Digital Equipment Corporation 20s - a minicomputer (which were bigger than today's workstations.) [Return]
The California Reader
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