BAY AREA QUAKE : WITNESS / ADRIENNE GAINES : ‘It Was a Tragedy--but There Was Compassion’

It was the end of a long business day, and Adrienne Gaines of Corona del Mar had a few minutes Tuesday afternoon to browse in the Nordstrom department store at 5th and Market streets in San Francisco.

“All of a sudden everything shook,” Gaines said, recounting the experience as her flight arrived at John Wayne Airport Wednesday.

Clothes flew off racks, flames shot from electrical devices. People grabbed onto one another to hang on for dear life, she said.

Gaines said she and about 500 other shoppers scrambled down the halted escalators and into the street.

They watched building facades “crumble like cookies” and trolley cars crash into one another, she said.

“I ended up walking all the way to Nob Hill,” she said with a bit of pride in her voice.

Then she turned pensive. As she waited in the baggage claim area, Gaines tried to explain how the experience put life into perspective, how she had lived through an event that will be as much a part of history as the great San Francisco quake of 1906.

“It was a tragedy, but there was compassion,” she said of the reactions of those around her Tuesday. “People you’ve never known just grabbed you and hugged you.”