A man recalls being in Glen Park during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, watching the Giants-A's World Series with his sister when a hard jolt hit. Traffic lights went out, the Bay Bridge collapsed, and neighbors gathered in chaotic streets as he tried to reach his mother.
my father to talk about his experience with the Loma Prieta earthquake. And, uh, yeah, yep, I'm happy to be here. All right, well, yeah, let's get into it then.
Well, sure, let's do it.
Where were you when the, uh, Loma Prieta earthquake happened, and what did you feel and hear?
I had just gotten off work and I got home at the time, living with my sister Maria in Glen Park here in San Francisco with a friend of mine from high school. And, uh, we turned on TV to watch the baseball game, the World Series between the Giants and the A's.
Oh, Battle of the Bay.
Yeah, Battle of the Bay. Uh, Game 1 was about to start, so we were getting ready to Watch that. When we felt a strong jolt that progressively got stronger to a shake, a really bad shake, it was— wow— moving the house left and right. I got underneath the door frame, held on. Until the shaking finally stopped. And then we—
well, how hard was the shaking?
It was pretty bad. Just think of somebody grabbing you by your jacket and just pushing you hard back and forth.
Yeah. All right.
So we went outside, and from there we just went to see what was going on outside, and I noticed my sister had was just pulling up.
What do you mean pulling up?
Oh, she was pulling up in her Jeep.
Oh, okay.
Just driving up because we lived on the hill, so she was pulling up, uh, to park.
Was she all right?
She was fine. She was a little shaken up because she felt the stop signs moving back and forth.
Oh, really?
And she thought that she had a flat tire.
Oh. That's funny.
So then we just, we stayed, um, in the neighborhood for a bit. All the neighbors had come out. Eventually we went further down the street. We were just walking, uh, and we noticed that all the street lights signals were out.
Really? Was it madness out there or what?
There was pretty bad traffic, you know. I imagine it was at that time, you know, 5 or so in the afternoon, it was rush hour. And, um, so you would hear a lot of people were rattled. They're trying to get a hold of their loved ones. I was trying to call my mom, but I couldn't get a hold of her. Yeah, sisters. It was mad.
There was a lot of things going on.
Yeah, it was bumper-to-bumper traffic, you know, just normal people trying to direct traffic since the lights were out. The lights were out. There were no meter maids to help because I imagine they were— um, it just was— it was pretty chaotic.
Yeah.
And, uh, we decided to just continue walking, uh, through the streets of San Francisco. Thinking that maybe we could somehow offer our help, but we were just essentially just hanging out with friends. We'd run into other friends that we knew. And then we learned that the part of the Bay Bridge had collapsed and then there was another freeway alongside Oakland.
Top of the third inning, Will Clark the batter. The Giants have not had the lead in these two games. A 3-2 count, a split-finger fastball by Mike Moore, pounced on by Terry Steinbach, the Oakland catcher. But look at the tough throw that he had to complete the play with Brett Butler running between him and Clark. But flash forward to the bottom of the fourth inning, Dave Parker barely by inches just misses a home run. Candy Maldonado with the hesitation allowing Jose Jose Canseco to score, and he fails to get Dave Parker at second base.
So the Oakland A's take, take Well, my topic is the Loma Prieta earthquake, which was triggered by the San Andreas Fault, where the massive Pacific plate slipped northwestward. This was during 1989. It was Game 3, I'm pretty sure, of the World Series. Baseball, Oakland Athletics versus San Francisco Giants. And, you know, just a lot of madness going on since, well, yeah, the earthquake caused 63 deaths, 3,757 injuries, and about $6 billion in damage. So it was a pretty detrimental earthquake to our community.
