Relatively Speaking 1990

"The earth is breaking, breaking,
The earth is crumbling, crumbling.
The earth is tottering, tottering;
The earth is swaying like a drunkard."

So wrote the prophet Isaiah (24:19‑20) describing the ultimate earthquake. For those of us who live in the Santa Cruz‑San Francisco, California area his words were probably never truer than on October 17, 1989 at 5:04 P.M. As the event took place I was at my computer in Los Angeles (some 400 miles south of the quake area) transcribing a diary that Isabelle Birkenwald Docter kept when she travelled with her Aunt Caroline Birkenwald to Europe in 1905‑06. How prophetic that I was typing the pages of April of 1906, when she was in Naples and Mount Vesuvius erupted.

The next day on the way home from work my daughter, ADINA, and I stopped off at the Red Cross office to leave donations to help the victims. A few days later I was able to reach a few of the parents or siblings who might have heard from those cousins in the quake area that they were O.K. Eventually I wrote all of them expressing concern for their well‑being and asking for their first hand experience or reactions. On the following pages you will read, in their entirety, the feelings, emotions and courses of events of those who responded as well as Isabelle's description of her experience. The first is by Stephen Godchaux, who lived in the Marina District. Stephen is a descendant of the Langsdorf line. The next four are from descendants of the Nussbaum family: Isabelle Docter, Amy Katzenstein Escobar, (she also sent along a poem by a Santa Cruz poet, Francisco Alarcon), Gary Schwartz and Susan Palmbaum Thompson.

    I knew that it was 5:04 when it hit. I had just looked up at the scoreboard at Candlestick to check out the time. I was getting antsy, and I wanted to know how far away we were from the first pitch of Game 3 of the World Series.
    I saw it before I felt it. The glass windows on the luxury boxes began to quiver. Talking to others later, they thought it was the boisterous crowd of60,000 stomping their feet. But I had spent many hours at the ballpark this summer, and not even a Will Clark homerun had ever caused those windows to shake.I knew it was an earthquake. The whole stadium started to roll and then it jolted violently‑‑all the lights went out. When the place finally stopped moving, a lot of people cheered. I was not among them.
    My seats were underneath the upper deck. What I remember most about those few seconds is staring up at the tons of gray concrete above me, literally paralyzed with fear, quite certain that I had bought the farm. When I was finally able to unglue my feet, I ran down to the lower boxes where I could look up and see blue sky.
    The mood in the stands was remarkably cavalier. We really had no idea how serious things were. Candlestick Park, for all its many faults, was obviously an incredibly strong structure. I moved to San Francisco from New Orleans over four years ago and I've gone through my share of earthquakes. Suddenly, that evening, I'm "Mr. Richter Scale": "definitely a 5 pointer, maybe even5.5." Not even close. We all crowded around a guy with a radio‑‑the first reports had the earthquake at 6.9 (it turned out to be a 7.1). Somebody said that part of the Bay Bridge had collapsed. I wasn't waiting around for baseball that night. I grabbed my friend Sheryl and we took off for the parking lot.
    Although the radio is always on in my car, I don't think I've ever been so mesmerized by it as I was that night‑‑I badly wanted to know what the hell had just happened. One of the first things they said was that there was a major fire in the Marina. The panic set in immediately. I lived in the Marina. So did Sheryl. It was a beautiful Indian Summer night in San Francisco and we could see the black smoke rising in the distance. I began to drive like a madman. I'm amazed I didn't crash.
    I did do something while driving back that seems all too rational now. My normal route from Candlestick takes me underneath a freeway for about a mile. always go that way. Yet I refused to go underneath it that night. I didn't know about the collapse of the 880 freeway, nor do I usually display that much common sense‑‑I guess I still had the image of all that gray concrete of Candlestick in my mind. Anyway, that stretch of road is now closed as unsafe.
    The route that I took goes through a mostly poor neighborhood, Everyone was out in the streets. That made me panic even more. San Francisco is not the kind . of town where people hang out in the street like that. These people were obviously afraid to be inside. San Franciscans are accustomed to earth‑quakes. A little shaker every now and I then doesn't much bother people. This one was different.
    We finally got to my neighborhood. The police barricades were already up. I flashed by driver's license and they let me through. The area around my apartment building was chaos; it looked like a war zone. Smoke and darkness enveloped the place. An elderly neighbor was being attended to on the cracked sidewalk‑‑a bookcase had fallen on her. She was asking to talk to a priest. Sheryl set off to find her one.
    The bricks on the bottom of my building has all fallen. Sheetrock had cracked off the walls of the entrance hall. The garage doors which formed the bottom floor of my four‑story building had buckled. The place didn't look great. Instinctively, I flew up the stairs to my apartment on the top floor. There were cracks in the walls all the way up the stairwell. Yet none of this‑‑the fire, the appearance of my building, my neighbor's injury‑‑ prepared me for my apartment. It was as if someone had gone into my place in a rage, ripping everything from its mooring. No wall furnishing remained, my bookshelves had tumbled over, heavy f furniture had fallen, my kitchen cabinets had spilled their entire contents. Glass was everywhere. Even clothes had fallen off their hangers. It was as if some giant hand picked up my building, tipped it over, and put it back. I guess that's kind of what happened.
    My next irrational impulse led me to my roof. I wanted to see the fire. It was only three blocks away. It was a chilling sight‑‑this amazing inferno, one ladder rising above it, a single man with a hose at the top of the ladder, seemingly engulfed by the lot flames. I knew this building. A girlfriend who moved back to New Orleans five months ago lived there. It took no great stretch of the mind to think that she could have been in there.
    I then set about trying to call my parents in New Orleans to let them know that I was ok. I assumed that the networks were probably leading their stories with shots of the marina fire and that my mother would be hysterical. I also knew that my father would know that his son, the baseball lunatic, would have been at Candlestick Park with his beloved Giants. Anyway, the Marina, one of the centers of the I yuppie universe, had its few advantages that night‑‑one of my neighbors had a cellular car phone, about the only way to get a telephone line out of San Francisco that night, and I did finally reach my hysterical mother and calmer father.
    Sheryl desperately wanted to check out her place. Unfortunately, it was worse off than mine‑‑more things had broken as they hit the floor (it pays to have wall‑to‑wall carpeting instead of hardwood floors in an earthquake) Sheryl adored her apartment‑‑it was gorgeous. A few tears fell that night as well She asked me to drive her north across the Golden Gate Bridge to Marin County where a friend lived. She didn't want to remain in the City. We could see lights in Marin; they obviously weren't hit as hard. As I was driving back to the City that night, I was treated to an eerie sight. As you approach the, Golden Gate there's this spectacular view of San Francisco's skyline. That night, those magical hills were all dark.
    I spent the night at a friend's house in Russian Hill, another San Francisco neighborhood. I didn't sleep much and dreamt about the earthquake. I remember waking up with a start, scared as hell, when a loud truck came rumbling down the street. I was that way for days.
    The day after the earthquake was another gorgeous warm day. For some foolish reason, the police barricades were taken down in parts of the Marina. Every idiot with a video cam recorder or camera poured into my neighborhood to record our misfortune. Morons smiled as they posed in front of my building, displaced bricks in hand. The place was packed. It had a Mardi Gras‑like atmosphere, except with an obvious morbid slant. For two hours, I walked around my apartment in a stupor, watching the geeks below, sifting through my own trashed belongings. Sheryl and another friend the came by and made me leave. The police later that day evacuated the entire area, rubber-neckers and residents alike.
    The following day I waited in line for seven hours with thousands of other marina residents to find out the fates of our buildings. The City's building inspectors and engineers had separated the buildings into three colors: red, yellow and green Red meant that the building was to be demolished; residents would in most cases not be Allowed to get their belongings. Yellow meant that the place was unsafe and uninhabitable; residents would be allowed fifteen minutes per day to retrieve their belongings under the supervision of an engineer. The 15 minute rule, I assume, was imposed because the City was short of engineers and concerned that the "yellow" buildings might collapse‑‑it didn't want any more deaths on its hands. Green meant you were free to come and go as you pleased. The Mayor of San Francisco explained this to all of us and proceeded to read a list of "red" . addresses. It was surreal‑‑people screaming and fainting as they found out their homes were being summarily razed. Not a pleasant sight. My place, as I had expected, was a yellow. I was told that I would not be able to get an engineer until the following afternoon, Friday.
    I'd gone through a lot of emotions those few days‑‑anxiety, depression, gratitude. But none quitte as the one I was feeling on Friday morning‑‑ denial. I told Catherine, a girlfriend, that I thought my place would be upgraded to "green", that maybe I would be able to move back in. She looked at me in disbelief. As Cher put it to Nicholas Cage in the movie "Moonstruck", she told me to snap out of it." I did. I got a new apartment that morning. The landlord, an elderly man named Hamilton Howard, couldn't have been nicer. And my new apartment seemed great. But it was all so unreal‑‑I really loved my place in the Marina. I couldn't quite fathom that I would have to leave.
    I had been there for four years. It was a sunny corner apartment with bay windows all around‑‑a view from the Transamerica Pyramid all the way to the Golden Gate. The neighborhood was wonderful‑‑a place which reminded me in some ways of New Orleans: comfortable and inexpensive restaurants with great food, shops where the owners knew you by name, a friendly place full of young and old people (it was the only flat neighborhood in the City). And the spectacular San Francisco Bay was our front yard. But the Marina died on October 17th with the earthquake, and so did my life there with it. It was a paradise to me‑‑but built on landfill along a fault line‑‑it was a fool's paradise.
    Later that day I was allowed to enter my building. I was told by the engineer that I would be able to stay fifteen minutes, no problem I thought, I'd just keep coming back until the job was done. But just as I was getting ready to go in, I saw an engineer point to cracks in the sidewalk and say, "these are new‑‑ . this place is definitely going to go." I totally panicked. I truly believed I would have fifteen minutes to get all of my belongings. I flew up the stairs with Catherine who recited Hail Marys all the way up, warning me that she would kill me if we died in there that day. Right.
    What would you take if you had only fifteen minutes? I grabbed the irreplaceable stuff first: my writings, old letters and photographs, some rare books and my wall furnishings. Vanity proved to be a powerful attribute‑‑I grabbed my jean jacket (it's twelve years old, for Godsake), my leather jacket ($200.00), my suits (most of them handmade), my sweaters and sweats Then I went for the stereo equipment, TV and VCR (yuppies are not good in a crisis). Then the engineer told me to get out.
    Some friends came down to help me with my stuff, which by that time was strewn all over the sidewalk. It was a pitiful sight. I looked homeless. I felt homeless. A friend put his hand on my shoulder and asked me if I were o.k. I was not‑‑I cried for the first time since I was a kid. I was a wreck.
    We brought my belongings to my new place. Even though I had not signed a lease and my apartment was not ready, Mr. Howard let me store my stuff there. We just threw everything in a heap in my bedroom. I left for a few minutes to get some fresh air, see if I could regain my composure. When I returned to straighten up the place, I saw that Mr. Howard, this 80‑year old stranger, had neatly hung up all my suits and folded my clothes. It was a simple act of kindness, but it just tore me up.
    . There's a line near the end of Tennessee William's "A Streetcar Named Desire" where Blanche Dubois says, "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers". It's been that way all week. Friends, too. People have been wonderful‑‑the American Red Cross, the police, even the omnipotent engineers, just people on the street who found out I lived in the Marina. My friends have been amazing; they just took over my life for me. They rented a truck and l moved the rest of my apartment the next day in a pouring rain. So I got the hell out of the Marina. I'm never leaving San Francisco.
    This last Friday, I was back at Candlestick, back for Game 3 of the World Series, back in my seat under the gray concrete. Sheryl wouldn't come back. She said she wasn't ready. At 5:04 there was a moment of silence. As the stadium grew silent, all the events of the past ten days, the days that would forever change my life, started to pound at me again. I felt the tears coming again. But this time, I somehow stopped them. When the silence ended, the crowd erupted in cheers. This time, I joined them. My city was on its way back, and so was I.

from ISABELLE BIRKENWALD DOCTER'S Diary
(all spellings and punctuations are hers)

APRIL 8, 1906 NAPLES
I forgot to mention that when I got up this morning I was told that during the night there was an earthquake caused by the Vesuvius, the volcano has been in Eruption since the last 5 days, the burning mass flowed out of the crater down the mountain it is called lava, the poor people that live here had to flee for their lives, it caused great excitement and many extra papers were sold.
APRIL 9th NAPLES
There was an awful eruption last night the Vesuvius thundered and lightened continually all night until a late hour this morning. Naples is a deplorable sight it rained ashes all night, as the wind came that way, the streets are covered thickly, it rained a little while which made it so much worse, everything is ruined that is in the vineyards and the flowers, The guests at the hotel were all so frigtened that nearly everyone left for Rome, the city looked very dark with the falling ashes until 2 oclock when the sun came out brightly. Mostly all the shops remained closed as there was no business and kept the stores from getting any ashes on their goods.
APRIL 10th
I left for Sorrento at 9.30, the weather was beautiful, warm and the sun shone brightly, when we were about half way, we sailed in to a cloud of ashes, we had to go into the cabin, it was so dark that the lamps had to be lit, it looked like a terrible storm was coming, the signal was given several times on account of danger, all at once we came out into the bright sunshine again. We arrived at Capri about 11.A.M. Capri looked terrible several inches of ashes had settled down on this little town as the winds had drifted that way from Vesuvius.
SORRENTO After lunch we took a cab for Lora Annunciata about 10 miles from Sorrento it is a small town just before you get to the Vesuvius, a terrible sight in our eyes, not much was left of the place, except the ruins of 3 towns and tons and tons of burning lava. I climbed to the top of the heap with the rest of the crowds that were there, but the heat was so intense underfoot and the smoke forced us to go down again. It was awful the scene it presented such desolation. On the corner to the little village a man stood with a large plate soliciting aid for the unfortunates who were so overtaken by this awful calamity, on our way home I saw about 25 girls dressed very poorly walking in the dusty road without shoes, in their stocking feet, praying for deliverance and asking for assistance from the people passing them.

    I thought I would write down our experience while it was still fresh in my mind. I'm so glad you wrote because I don't think I would have taken the time to do this.
    At 5:00 P.M. on October 17th I arrived home where our two dear friends were. They had just come down from Mendocino to visit us. We are in the middle of remodeling our 80 year old Victorian home so I was giving them a tour of the kitchen. I was telling them that it was worth all the money because our contractors had secured a main wall that probably wouldn't have survived a heavy duty earthquake. Not more than a couple of minutes passed and our neighbor came strolling up to see the remodel. Her name is Vicki and our friends are Rose and Michael. Two minutes later I said "oh my god an earthquake!!!"
    Rose had my two year old and I ran down the ramp to the backyard to join them and yelled to Michael to grab my5 year old Alysa. My husband was in the back yard setting up a barbeque.
    I held on to Vicki's arm. The earth was shaking so violently we couldn't move. Vicki suddenly remembered her 8 year old daughter was alone but she couldn't move. It was like a bomb had gone off, the house was shaking violently and you could hear a thundering noise. My children were dead silent.
    As soon as it was over we went to our second back yard which is open space and all of a sudden we looked up and it looked like downtown was in ruins, huge black billowy smoke clouds loomed over us. We still didn't know how bad it was. Vicki came running back and said her house was destroyed inside. I didn't even want to go inside, but fortunately most of our stuff was in boxes. I realized then that I had used all of our bottled water up during the remodel. I told my husband that while he turned off the gas we were going to walk to the corner store and get water. When we got to the store there was a line and about three inches of glass and liquor spilled on the floor. As I waited in line with mostly people buying liquor, a big aftershock came. The store owner yelled for everybody to get out. I took my 5 gallons and ran out to where Rose and Michael were with my children. Thank god we had an extra set of parents for that week. The kids needed lot of attention and holding, and we needed to do a lot of things to be prepared. At this moment we heard the news about the Bay Bridge and all I could think of was my brother who was working in S.F. and living in Oakland. It was a very scary time. We got back to our home and inside plants had fallen over, and a few things had broken off the mantel.
    We were very lucky, besides books and shelves in the bathroom emptying out our 80 year old home was incredibly unscarred not a crack that we could see. Rose cleaned up most of the stuff while I calmed the kids down. We didn't go upstairs, we thought about sleeping outside but it was getting dark so we decided to eat tuna sandwiches and listen to our portable radio. Unfortunately my car was being worked on that's where we had 2 flashlight, but we did o.k. with 2.
    As we ate dinner we could smell smoke. We huddled around this little radio which was our life line to the outside world. We had no electricity for 3 days.
    Our first phone call came about7:00 P.M. from the neighbors who own the house next door to us but live in San Leandro. I was very surprised to hear from them, but they called my parents to let them know we were O.K. We could get calls but not make them.
    Our contractor had stopped by earlier and told us he had just secured our beams at 4:30, 45 minutes before the earthquake struck.
    The reality of the earthquake and the danger is more astonishing each day. I didn't work for three days after the earthquake because I am a teacher and the schools were closed.
    Going back to work, leaving my children was very difficult. My husband had Wednesday and Thursday off after the quake so we were all together. That felt very secure. Now to go downtown is very hard. There are huge bulldozers and empty lots where your favorite shops use to stand.
    People are strong, and have a lot of strength in unity in Santa Cruz. Yesterday they had the lighting of the town clock and it was beautiful to see the people gathered singing Christmas Carols and listening to our local Congressman and Mayor talking about the rebuilding and the visions of our New Downtown.
    I've rambled on enough. The kids. talk about the earthquake a lot. My 2 year old doesn't like to go to bed. She says I'm scared and then shakes her hands. So life goes on and we are really doing fine.

Thanks for your letter and note. We were pretty much unaffected by the quake here in Marin County. We were all out taking a walk and thought it was 'just another quake.' It wasn't until we turned on the evening news we heard of the destruction. All of our friends were pretty much insulated from significant problems as well.
All is wonderful here as Justin approaches six months. He is active, happy, content and growing‑‑what a delight!

    The earthquake, or as we refer to it, The Earthquake, was three months ago, but just as we all remember every detail of JFK's death in 1963, it is unlikely that time will dim our memory of the events of October 17th.
    My husband, Gene, and I were at Candlestick Park awaiting the start of Game 3 of the World Series. We had just taken our seats following a tailgate party with family and friends when the rumbling began. Gene thought it was a jet flying overhead; I knew it was an earthquake, but rather than run out from under the overhang, I froze in disbelief. In the fifteen years I have lived in the Bay Area I have experienced many small 'quakes, but this was unlike the others. The stadium foul poles looked like metronomes swinging back and forth, and I could hear the concrete rattling‑‑ and I could feel my heart pounding.
    I had a portable radio plugged into my ear, but it went dead for five minutes, as did the small television belonging to a man seated in front of us. When transmission resumed our first picture was that of the collapsed Bay Bridge, and the reports of the fire and freeway collapse followed shortly. We knew there would be no ballgame, so we left, not wishing to be in a stampede.
    What should have been a 1 to 1‑1/2 hour trip home took close to six hours. Every parent's fear is being separated from family during an emergency, and the worst part of the whole ordeal for us were the 2 hours until we knew our children were safe.
    The schools do an excellent job preparing children for earthquakes, and as a result they handled themselves beautifully, with the help of our neighbors.
    The following day all the "what ifs" set in: what if the quake had hit after dark and we were stuck in Candlestick Park in the dark with sixty‑two thousand people; what if the structure had not stood up to the pressure; what if there had been a gas leak in our home and one of the children had struck a match; what if we had not been at Candlestick Park and Gene had been on the Bay Bridge on his way home from work? We were extremely lucky on all counts, and were only sorry the telephone lines were so jammed that we could not communicate with family outside the area.
    As a postscript, Gene and I returned to Candlestick for the second attempt to play Game 3, armed with our "I survived Game 3" t‑shirts. If there is any humor in tragedy it had to be the sight of the ushers with flashlights as part of their uniforms. Fortunately, they were not needed, the As won the Series, and we hope we are never that frightened again.

our house
we formed
a circle of
chairs

We waited
for night
listening
to news
in the radio

each aftershock
brought us
closer
and closer
sometimes

we stared
at each other
sometimes
we laughed

in hours
we went
back maybe
a thousand
years

we were
now
a small band
of mystic
gatherers.