Quote:
Originally Posted by mgburg
Hello? California? Shelves?
Ever hear of earthquakes? 
He's from California!
 |
Yes, you could say I heard of them.
The '89 quake. 5:04pm. 10/17/89. I will NEVER forget it. I was there when it happened. Just off work, near 7th and Bryant streets.
I was walking down the street and heard a mighty roar. You could actually see the huge ripples, like waves in the ocean, coming straight at you.
The steady, crunching, inexorable tide, moving at seven miles a second.
The pavement buckled underneath me, and I staggered, as if drunk, trying to keep my balance, while above me, all the transformers on the telephone phone poles blew up in blue flashes, and I felt I that would die for certain.
Either swallowed up by God's earth or electrocuted by live wires.
Longest 10 seconds of my life.
The Marina District burnt up the worst.
It was hit the worst because of the rubble and landfill those buildings were built on.
The brick building facade, at 7th and Townsend, near the Flower Market. It collapsed on the street killing several people unfortunate enough to have been there walking.
I was only a block away from there when that happened.
I knew an Assistant District Attorney, Murleen Johnson, from work, who lived in the hardest hit neighborhood, the Marina ("Yuppieville"). She was a young single very good looking African American lady.
She had just bought some wine and cheese on Chestnut street, at a store, to take home, and turned the corner on Divisadero, and it happened.
She actually saw her own apartment building collapse in front of her, on North Point.
Had she not stopped off to make that purchase, and gone straight home, she most likely would have been killed or badly injured.
Couple of my friends who lived up on Anza Vista Terrace at the time, near the center of the city, near Masonic, sat and drank wine in their apartment, and watched the dark city that night, and saw the Marina on fire.
Much later they told me about what they said when they talked about it that evening.
They told me this:
They said, "Just imagine if YOU yourself, were that earthquake. It was like you were sleeping, and moved a little bit in your sleep, in bed". That was what this earthquake was like!!
Then they thought some more, and said, "Imagine if you were that earthquake, and
ROLLED OVER in your sleep!!!"
Then they thought about it some more, and said, "Imagine if you were that earthquake, and you
GOT UP OUT OF BED!!!! 