QUAKE DIARY : The City Shows Class and Grit Amid the Devastation

A grand city copes. Perhaps not so grandly, but dame Baghdad by the Bay hiked her skirts Wednesday and made a measured show of coping nonetheless.

Day 1 of San Francisco’s long road to recovery testified to nothing so much as the cruel fickleness of disaster. Tears flowed along with wine; resolve stood up to meet tragedy. Fine crystal vases survived untouched on tiny ledges of top floors in some neighborhoods. In others districts, whole buildings crumpled into charred deathtraps.

On a warm, sunny autumn day, all was spread out to be seen--the ugly, the ruthless, the beautiful, the sad, the touching and, of course, this being San Francisco, the determinedly unique, even weird.

The city zoo was open and rubbernecks were encouraged by Mayor Art Agnos to go visit the animals and stay out of the way, please. But there was not even basic mail delivery in the city, most businesses were shuttered, electric power was erratic and pay telephones had long lines. A limited number of newspapers made their way to the streets and lines formed for them, too.

The Irwin Blood Bank put out a call for help. No, not for donors. Plenty of them showed up. What the blood bank sought was entertainers--mimes or magicians or jugglers--to occupy the crowd.

Why not? In the pleasant sunshine of many areas of the city, the deepest damage was to the psyche.

In the predominantly gay Castro District, where obvious problems were virtually non-existent, well-muscled men sunbathed and enjoyed a day off the job. At the North Beach Playground, every tennis and basketball court was occupied. But only blocks away, rescue workers grimly pulled bodies from the carcass of a collapsed building.

Everywhere this was a tale of two cities.

The hungry lined up for food on one block. On another, a truck farmer hawked vegetables without interruption. The worst in the community surfaced as a handful of muggings were reported. The best saw citizens jump out of their cars and direct traffic at intersections where there were no stoplights.

As far as it is known, nobody actually left his heart here in San Francisco as people endured the curiously willful and random paths of destruction that fingered out over the city at 5:04 p.m. Tuesday. But hundreds of thousands here and millions in the larger Bay Area region would tell you it felt like it.

Some believed the fear, anxiety and wonderment were larger than real life. “The whole thing has been overblown by the media. It’s media overkill,” said Doug Tompkins, president of the Esprit Corp, headquartered here.

Tompkins said Esprit executives around the world were flooding him with calls. “They think this place is leveled. . . . I talked to my parents in New York. And they think San Francisco is in ruins.”

Strange and unexpected things were happening, though. No doubt about it.

Personal injury attorney Melvin Belli offered free legal help to anyone needing a hand in filling out disaster assistance forms. Belli’s regular office was in a damaged building, so he set up shop outside.

Even in disaster, San Franciscans maintained their renowned tastes. Hungry clients lined up outside popular restaurants, in some cases more than 50 at a stretch. But ordinary delis and eateries nearby were nearly empty.

Some people were not even in town and still suffered the wrath of Tuesday’s quake. Real estate broker Andy Friedman was watching television in Seattle when cameras focused on his Marina District apartment house. It was engulfed in flames. At the scene Wednesday, he said he was left with nothing but the clothes he carried with him.

Kennel owners said dogs needed reassurance and attention in the aftermath of the quake but that cats by and large were unaffected.

By mid-morning, virtually every danger area, from buckled sidewalks to shaky buildings with loose facades, was cordoned off neatly with yellow police-line tape.

Perhaps naturally enough, local residents seemed to take the temblor more in stride than San Francisco’s legions of tourists. These residents will be the new generation of “survivors,” replacing the dying few who lived through the 1906 monster quake.

And what will the new survivors tell about their day after?

Some of them tried the light zephyrs of San Francisco Bay in their sailboats. A teen-ager on Telegraph Hill who called herself Maria stretched out on a sidewalk with friends, each wearing shorts and bikini tops.

“Is there school tomorrow?” she inquired, not so hopefully.

One man pulled off the 101 Freeway approaching downtown, got out his fishing pole and tried his luck in the bay.

“Sunday drivers” ignored warnings and created a huge gawkers jam on the roads in the Marina District, where some of the worst damage was reported. Some were in convertibles; virtually all had cameras.

In fact, it was one of those rare days when local residents seemed to be more numerous on the streets and more heavily laden with cameras than the ubiquitous tourists.

Indeed, the main stops on the tourist circuit were sparsely populated, unless you count the outbound ticket lines at San Francisco Airport. Only a few people trolled Fisherman’s Wharf; half the parking spots at Coit Tower were empty.

In the hard-hit Marina District, the gawkers trying to get near and police trying to keep them far formed a ring around hundreds, maybe thousands of the most traumatized San Francisco survivors. On Tuesday night, with flames lighting the skies, some residents clutched each other in tears; others brought out wine and cheese on the porches.

By Wednesday, the mood seemed to be more one of relief as residents were briefly allowed back into their damaged homes to gather prized possessions.

Bob Blaisdell, whose home was near the center of devastation, spent Tuesday night in Mountain View watching news coverage. “I could have sworn from what I saw my place was gone too,” he said.

It was damaged but standing. Blaisdell wheeled away his possessions in a grocery cart, headed toward a friend’s house.

At downtown high-rise residential buildings, the elderly suffered inordinately. With no electricity to power elevators, many were stranded in lobbies unable to tackle the long flights of stairs up to their apartments. They huddled on couches, on floors, and prepared for another night.

Supplies, shortages and fears of shortages quickly became a problem.

Lines at gasoline stations lengthened all day. Many small groceries in the city were wide open, but in the outlying residential neighborhoods the larger markets limited the number of shoppers inside at any one time and lines formed. In high demand were the usual products, drinking liquids, ice, batteries and flashlights. Charcoal briquettes also were a high-demand item. One radio reporter in Los Gatos said he was sure he could detect a haze in the air from so many barbecue fires.

Cash also was in short supply. Bank automatic teller machines were mostly inoperable. But some competitors were ready to do business. The American Express office in downtown San Francisco departed from its usual practice and announced that it would provide cash not only to American Express customers but also MasterCard and Visa cardholders.

As the pleasant afternoon faded to dusk, some of the good mood grew shadowed by anxiety. Another night was coming, a night without lights, another night facing fears, another night spent waiting for aftershocks, waiting for what people don’t know and can’t control.

Psychologists predict that the private dreads of fragile survivors will last for months.

“Sometimes it’s headaches, or inability to sleep or sudden waking in the nights,” said Dr. Doug Moorhead of the Berkeley Mental Health Department. “There will be strains in family relations, fighting among couples who don’t normally fight--husbands saying their wives are getting hysterical; wifes saying their husbands are getting insensitive. There will be more drinking, more drugs, more smoking.”