Was the Loma Prieta earthquake really thirty years ago today? Some on these boards weren't even born yet or were perhaps in kindergarten or in first grade at the time, while I was already in my first semester at San Jose State (having graduated high school earlier that year)... man, I'm old! Among other things, it hit the Bay Area in the middle of the only World Series to date to feature both of the Bay Area's MLB teams. In any case, where were you the moment the earthquake hit (I was sitting bored in a math class at SJSU in which the teacher was explaining how logarithms could be used for the Richter scale - I'm not kidding!), and how will you commemorate the anniversary? GO SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES!!! -G
As previously posted on Random Jibberish: I was lying on a futon in my apartment in Buffalo to watch the World Series, when the game was interrupted with news about the quake. At first they reported that there had been a quake, and I was nonchalant, since minor ones happen all the time, but then they reported that the Bay Bridge had collapsed. Imagining the entire span of the several-mile bridge in the water, I bolted upright. That moment is seared in my memory . . .
(Thread moved to OT at Goodsport's request.) 30 years. Damn. I was in college on the East Coast. so obviously did not feel it. I'm pretty sure I was not watching the World Series as I was a Dodger fan at the time, and the Giants/A's were pretty low on my list of things to watch. My parents had recently moved from LA up to the Bay Area while my dad was teaching at Stanford (after all the kids left the nest - I was the youngest) but I was thinking, well, good thing they're in LA and not in the Bay Area. Oops. They told me they were in their apartment in Mountain View and half the water in the apartment complex's pool sloshed out.
I was not in the Bay Area, not even in the country. I was still in high school in another country. I knew our family would move to the US in about a year or so, and San Francisco would be a likely destination since our relatives were in the area. I remember seeing the earthquake footage in the news and I asked my mom, is that where we will be moving to? Also, my geography class teacher warned me and told me about all the faults too.
Your post reminded of the first Quake I ever experienced, in Spring 1988. It was my law school graduation day, and my family, in town from Buffalo for the festivities, and I were having dinner at the MacArthur Park in Palo Alto, in a beautiful old wooden-frame building by the train station. The place shook quite a bit for what was a fairly mild quake, and my mom looked at me in dread and asked if it happens all the time. I said, truthfully, it was the first one I had ever felt in three years in California.