The Earth Moved

I've been in two major earthquakes and close to several others. The biggest was the San Francisco earthquake in 1989. I was there for the World Series with my friends Con Psarras, then a reporter for KSL TV and now the news director, and Tom Walsh, who was also a reporter for channel 5 at the time. Tom and Con had just gone to get us a cold beverage and left me sitting there talking to Con's uncle who got the tickets for us. We heard a low rumble and Con's uncle knew immediately what it was and seconds later it rolled through Candlestick Park. I've described it before as something like sitting in a chair on a waterbed, just wave after wave. It went on for maybe 30 or so seconds, but not so long that anyone had to change their underwear later. After it passed there as a moment of dead silence and then a huge cheer went up as though we'd all been on some massive roller coaster ride and just made it to the end. Of course no one in the stadium knew of all the destruction that 6.8 earthquake had just caused. It took me 3 hours to get a phone call back to the station, no conveniently portable cell phones then. Tom managed to get a live shot back to KSL TV after he ran into a former colleague, Leah Richlin, who was there working for a satellite communications company.

Tom and I had taken my Mom's car into the city for the game and there was no way to get to it then. But Leah's car was at Candlestick and she gave us a ride back to my parent's house down the peninsula in Foster City where we had been staying. Fortunately there was no damage to their home, just a few knick-knacks that were broken after falling out of cabinet. Leah wanted to drive home to the East Bay, but my Dad refused to let her go because there was no way to tell how badly the roads were damaged. So she stayed in one guest room, Tom in the other and I took up a spot on the couch in the living room. Later that night we got a phone call from KSL photographer Carl Peterson who had been sent to meet up with Tom and begin doing stories. No one could fly into San Francisco so Carl landed in Sacramento and rented a car. He was asking for directions to my parent's house. At the time my folks lived in a town home in an out of the way area of Foster City, not easy to find if you haven't been there before. Either my directions were exceptional or Carl had the homing instincts of carrier pigeon (probably the latter) he arrived at my parent's home in the middle of the night with another gentleman I assumed was a producer. I told them to grab a spot on the flood and get some sleep. I was up at 5 a.m. that next morning doing live shots for KSL Radio from my parent's kitchen table, describing the most up to date information from the local TV stations.

My mom was up about 8 a.m. to find a house full of people she'd never met or had only just met the night before, but never batted an eye just began making us all breakfast. We discovered the guy with Carl was not a producer but a British gentleman stranded in Sacramento trying to get to his wife who was staying at hotel in downtown San Francisco. Carl just said hey that's where I'm going, come with me! Tom, Con and I were supposed to play golf that day at my father's course and I'll never forget when he came downstairs and asked if we were ready to play. Tom and I had this look of resignation on our faces as I explained to my Dad that vacation time was over, we all had to go to work. Tom was assigned to go to the epicenter of the quake near Santa Cruz but was afraid the roads were impassable. My dad showed him a way and he managed to get there in time to do some exclusive stories for KSL. Then my father and I drove into San Francisco with our new British friend so he could find his wife and I could find my mother's car.

I know this is a long story for what will be a short message. But the thing I take away from the experience the most was how everyone just pulled together to help others. I was especially proud of my parents for that. A while later my Mom got a note from the British guy thanking her for the hospitality, even though we didn't have any currants for the toasts.

Tom moved to Florida a few years later to take a job as an editor of a major weekly newspaper in Miami. We had this discussion once about where you would want to live, some place like Florida where they had a lot of hurricanes, but you could see them coming or a place like San Francisco where they had occasional earthquakes but you couldn't see them coming. Tom said he would pick Florida and the hurricanes. The irony of that is he now lives in San Francisco. Go figure.