A Charred Scent Is Filling Air

You could smell the smoke half a mile away from the Marina. Carried by a clean morning breeze, it drifted up the steep hill from San Francisco Bay, and hung there lazily like a cat sunning itself in a window box.

If it wasn’t for the charred scent in the air, you could walk for a while down Divisidero toward the water and not know anything was wrong. The houses, sponged each day by the fog, were sparkling clean, brilliant in the pristine blue sky. But then you’d begin to see the evidence of Tuesday afternoon’s upheaval, the telltale splits in the sidewalks, the shards of glass, the crumbled bricks, the garage doors folded down upon themselves like accordions.

And then ground zero at the corner of Divisidero and Jefferson, where city police and military police from the Presidio in camouflage fatigues had crisscrossed the intersection with yellow barricade tape: On the northwest side, firemen, pumping water from the bay, were directing water cannons into the blackened remains of a 21-unit apartment house that literally blew up in a gas-main explosion. On the northeast side, what had always been a three-story home, had slid into the street as if it had dissolved -- enameled kitchen pots and pieces of broken lamps peeking out from under the wood frame like shoes at the foot of a bed.

Crowds of people, some from the neighborhood, others from miles away -- accidental tourists, with cameras, out for an unforgettable souvenir snapshot -- had gathered to gaze at an earthquake’s calling card. Residents of the Marina knew this could happen; their houses were built on landfill, and “landfill,” in the words of Deputy Fire Chief Mike Farrell, “does not behave very well in an earthquake.” But knowing something could happen is not nearly the same thing as having it happen. “I’ve lived here all my life,” said Bill Sullivan, whose own house, two blocks away, got off with nothing more than a buckled sidewalk. “Usually you just get a little rattling of dishes; no damage, nothing. You get so you take it for granted. This is going to be very sobering.”

Most of San Francisco escaped with little or no damage other than the psychological trauma of going through a major earthquake, feeling the earth not quite beneath your feet, like you’re on a trampoline with the mean heart of a juvenile delinquent. But the Marina, an exquisite, pricey area with a breathtaking view of the Golden Gate Bridge, had no such luck.

A four-block by six-block interior section had been cordoned off. I.D. was required to pass beyond the barricades. Some residents were sneaking into their own homes to pack a suitcase and grab a prized possession, often a stereo, and flee. But on-site building inspectors were warning residents not to re-enter their own homes; the risk of structural failure was too daunting. “Why can’t we go home, Daddy?” a small girl was overheard asking. “Because the building is broke, baby, it’s broke real bad,” was the sorrowful reply. At least four people were known to be dead, and specially trained dogs were on the streets trying to sniff life inside the flattened houses.

Overhead, helicopters circled -- one was said to be carrying Vice President Dan Quayle -- and the streets were swarming with boutique thrill seekers. Mike Kenny, an enterprising disastermeister, drove 170 miles from Fresno to place leaflets on Marina doorsteps, advertising “experience in earthquake repair-cleanup.” Kenny cataloged his services, left a telephone number, and vowed to “call hourly and respond that day.”

People were busy snapping pictures of the roadside attractions, the shattered cornices and buckled sidewalks. Brazenly, they tramped on private lawns to get a sharper view, as if the damage superceded all rights of privacy.

I remember how after last June’s furious thunderstorm my own neighborhood was overrun with people taking pictures of houses with their roofs sheared off and their sidewalks overturned where trees snapped off at the roots. What is there about natural disasters that demands this almost ghoulish recording for posterity? Isn’t it because they humble us by showing us the limits of our technology, and leave us gaping at how little we can truly control?

Before long the tourists will depart the Marina and leave the cleanup to the residents. The horror of all those highway deaths will recede into the self-protective numbness that insulates catastrophe, and people will gratefully shift their attention to the more sanitary accounting of the astronomical property damage. One night had come and gone, the next day was flexing its muscles, and still Sechser stood, as if she was anchored there on her corner, watching the water cannon hose down the rubble she so recently called home. A few blocks away the rest of San Francisco, the most beautiful city in America, glistened under a postcard sky interrupted only by the faint smell of smoke.