A Study in Survival /Part Two

I was living in San Francisco when the Loma Prieta earthquake hit.

It was 5:04 p.m. on October 17, 1989.  A friend and I had just turned off Van Ness Avenue looking to get something to eat.  Parked cars began bouncing up and down on the street and I did not immediately understand what was happening.  Traffic stopped and people leaned out of their car windows.
"Was that an earthquake?"

I witnessed a phenomenon I will never forget. The entire city shut down, emitting an arching low moan that plunged two octaves into silence. Electric busses, restaurants, stoplights, music - everything shut down as the city was muted.  We decided the best course of action was to get back to our Potrero Hill home.

As soon as we arrived, we pulled out a small battery-operated black & white TV.  There was nothing on the air.  After about 15 minutes, KRON/TV-4 came on with their helicopter showing the first views of the city and damage from the earthquake.  When the chopper reached the Bay Bridge, my stomach dropped.  A section had collapsed and as we watched, we saw cars drive over the edge and fall to the lower deck.  The helicopter proceeded to Hwy. 880 in Oakland.  The upper level had collapsed down onto the lower level at the height of rush-hour traffic crushing everything beneath.  I could no longer breath.  Apartments buildings had sunk in the Marina and people were trapped amid fires and explosions.  A brick building for transient workers collapsed killing nearly everyone in it. 

The occurrence of the Loma Prieta earthquake coincided with an important event.  The San Francisco Giants and the Oakland As were playing the first game of the World Series that night.  The importance of this cannot be underestimated.  There were 62,000 people at Candlestick park.  Thousands of others had gone home early that day to watch the game.  Bridges and freeways were virtually empty.  Sixty-two people died and nearly 3,800 people were injured, but this number could have been far greater if the Bay Bridge and the 880 freeway had been its usual bumper-to-bumper commuter traffic.

It took four days to reestablish stoplights and bring power back to San Francisco.  There were closed freeway ramps all around the city that took years to repair and shore up.  Due to structural damage, the controversial Embarcadero Freeway, built in the 1960s, was torn down.  Property values soared: This elevated freeway that had blocked the views and thrown so many businesses into shadow was now gone, restoring the vistas San Francisco is most loved for.

We are all interdependent, more so in our cities, but even so in the country. We no longer sit alone in the wilderness, like Laura Ingalls Wilder and her pa, twisting hay into burnable sticks to survive the long winter.   We depend upon each other.  We eat the food others have grown and shipped.  We wear the clothes others have made and our transportation is what others have built.

Interdependence, this is what society is built upon and infrastructure is the base we all stand on, connected together.