Saturday, October 17, 2009

Earthquakes: Big & small

It was twenty years ago today that I, and several million others, rode out the big Loma Prieta quake. It was the biggest quake I had experienced in all of my 18½ years. Yet despite all the casualties throughout Northern California, it was a different earthquake – an aftershock if you will – that had a more profound impact on my life at the time.

As a freshman in college, it was a thrill to live in the dorms. Unlike home, where almost all of my friends lived outside of walking or biking distance, there were social gatherings every night in one dorm living room or another. More often than not, I found myself in the next building over where my new friends lived – I shared at least one class with each of the four guys living there. The night of October 17, 1989 would not be much different. It was just over 10 minutes before I wanted to be downstairs for the start of the World Series game.

I had just finished showering and was busy shaving when it hit. A towel wrapped around me and half a face full of shaving cream, the razor dropped to the sink as soon as I felt the shaking start. I bolted to the interior door frame and braced myself with both hands and feet. It was then that I noticed that the exterior door was open as well. I looked out beyond the parking lot, and instead of seeing the eucalyptus trees swaying in the wind, it was the building I was in that was swaying while the trees stood eerily still. I thought my third floor room would soon be on the first.

In the last few seconds of the shaking, my towel dropped. After all was still, I didn’t care that I was stark naked to the outside world. I waited to make sure the building wasn’t going to drop out from under me, and only then did I feel comfortable enough to run back into my room. I stepped into the first pair of shorts I found and ran into my sandals as I bolted out the door. Taking two to four steps at once, I made record time to the bottom of three flights of stairs. Opposite the bottom step, my new best friend was riding his bike out the front door of his dorm.

We didn’t care about the TV coverage, or what would have been Game 3, anymore. Without a word, we were both sprinting to the same place. Coincidentally, we were enrolled in Geology 110 that semester, a class titled “Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Mountains”, and we knew the nook in the Darwin Sciences Building where the seismograph was operating. As we arrived, there was already a crowd of advanced and graduate students mesmerized by the graphs which recorded the shaking only a scant four minutes prior.

It was shocking to see them all look away and stare at me for what felt like an eternity. In my haste to see the seismograph, I neglected to consider my appearance. Standing in the Geology Department hallway, staring at the machine, I was in nothing but shorts, sandals and half a face of shaving cream.

In the first half-hour or so after the quake, my appearance wasn’t the only thing I neglected. It would take another two hours until I was able to get an available phone line in order to contact my family and let them know that I was alright. After that I thought I might try to call my girlfriend, who attended another local University, and see how she had fared through it all. I would have been wise to stop with my relatives.

After struggling with the phone lines just to let my parents know that I was fine, I postponed making further calls. My girlfriend at the time was much closer to the epicenter, so I put off trying to call her until the next day.

Frustrated at not being able to get through during the morning of the 18th, I decided to eschew official and media advisories to stay off bridges and out of San Francisco for the time being. In the late afternoon of October 18th I made the drive of about fifty miles, over the Golden Gate Bridge and through the western part of the city. Everything looked normal from what I could see, so I didn’t expect anything else to turn out otherwise.

When I arrived at her building the reception desk said that she wasn’t answering her phone, so they couldn’t let me inside. The weather was nice enough that day, so I sat on the bench just outside the front door to the lobby. I figured that when she came back it might be a surprise for her to see me there, but hopefully my concern for her well-bring would be endearing. This would certainly build upon the affection we had for one another.

It wasn’t more than five minutes of sitting in the warm October sun when I saw her about a hundred feet away and walking towards the dormitory. It almost looked like she was holding hands with the guy who was walking with her. Although not sure at first, it became a lot more obvious when they went from holding hands to slipping one into each other’s back pocket. It was the only aftershock I felt after the large earthquake of the previous afternoon

She didn’t see me sitting there as they walked inside together. Wanting to avoid further disaster, I simply got in my car and drove away. My body shook for nearly the entire drive home. Staring at the phone in my dorm room, I finally screwed up the courage to dial her.

The seismograph showed how much the earth shook on October 17th. My broken and raspy voice on that phone call told of a different fault that had ruptured in my world that October.