BAY AREA QUAKE : QUAKE DIARY : Not All the Cheers Are Cheerful

Cheers went up for the President. But some were Bronx cheers.

Small civil disturbances erupted. Reporters fought excitedly and shamelessly for position and camera angle.

The lordly and venerable Mark Hopkins Hotel put out a call for 20 Coleman camp stoves, please.

The 80-degree Indian summer weather disappeared. Skies turned gloomy and damp; the wind began to bite.

Advertisements returned to newspapers and radio. Shoppers returned to the city center. Football and the World Series returned to conversations. Restaurants returned to saying they are booked, too bad.

And so the San Francisco Bay Area passed another long, strange, difficult and uneasy day this Friday, Day 3, on the road to recovery.

“There are still bodies in there! And families waiting to find out if their husbands, wives and children are dead! Now it’s all political,” said a bitter Stan Miller.

The pipe cutter and rescue worker stopped his weary hours of labor at the collapsed Oakland freeway. He and the others stood by while Bush made a high-profile inspection.

“Big deal,” scowled cabbie Robert Vitcha, when Bush next touched down for 15 minutes at the San Francisco Presidio.

Here, Bush chose not to tour the disfigured Marina District nearby where workers also remained wearily preoccupied. “I’m not surprised, that’s about what you expect from a politician,” Vitcha said.

Driven by intense news media coverage, the President, his squadron of helicopters, his motorcades, his retainers, and his accompaniment of sundry lesser politicians--all of them--dominated the day like no one thing since the 15 enduring seconds of Tuesday evening.

Regional officials understood the importance of the presidential visit. Santa Cruz Mayor Mardi Wormhoudt said Bush needed to “see the plaster dust . . . to develop the emotional commitment to this problem that we need.”

This was particularly important to places like Santa Cruz, last stop on the presidential tour.

Devastation was great there. But, as usual, even in their suffering, cities big and small here have had to suffer in the shadow of San Francisco. History had already recorded this as San Francisco’s earthquake. This is where the television news shows set up their stages. Here was the newspaper dateline. And the city’s sage chronicler for the last half-century, Herb Caen, gave the quake its name: The Little Big One.

There was probably no chance Bush could emerge unblemished from this day in this city.

For sure, he would have been damned had he not come. His standoffish response to two preceding disasters, the Exxon Valdez and Hurricane Hugo, got him nothing but grief. Better, it seems, to come and suffer some damnation for getting in the way.

Certainly the press seemed eager for the President to come see what was staring the Bay Area in the face.

“Things are getting real crazy here,” said KCBS radio reporter George Harris, broadcasting live and breathless as Bush hit Oakland. The shouting and shoving of the media mob was broadcast live throughout the morning and into the afternoon. One reporter described it as being in a “a hockey game.”

There was another worry looming in the background of Day 3.

San Franciscans started complaining that outsiders were forming impressions of death and destruction which exceeded the facts. Likely, this was more the result of repetition of news than of exaggeration. But locals grew edgy nonetheless.

“Will you please write that some of us are alive out here?” asked one Avis rental car clerk as a fresh batch of journalistic replacements arrived at the airport.

Almost everyone had a story of a long-lost relative calling and expressing surprised relief. How did you live through it?

The ripple effect of the worry could be measured in phone calls. General Telephone said volume went up 50% in Southern California in the aftermath.

Some residents were a little sheepish. Columnist Caen wrote: “Without minimizing the death and destruction, the quake for most of us is an inconvenience.”

Which is not, however, to minimize the inconvenience.

“We need underwear--men’s, women’s, children’s. Clean!” an Oakland Red Cross worker pleaded. “We have people here with nothing.”

Across the bay at the San Francisco Salvation Army shelter, the needy got what was available, possible needs notwithstanding. Relief packets sadly contained a pair of white shoe laces, a bar of soap and a penny.

As millions endured these persistent and many disruptions of their lives, they found themselves freshly annoyed and wondering Friday. What suddenly happened to the high-spirited, civic-mindedness that pulled them together in a split-second Tuesday? Why did people choose today to start leaning on their infernal car horns?

Yes, it seemed as if the shock was wearing off fast.

Other big California earthquakes, such as the Sylmar shake of 1971, resulted in widespread stories of people vowing to leave a place where the earth can ruin your life in an instant. Such stories were rare here. People prided themselves that they were psyched for it. They knew it was coming.

At the Armed Forces Center, not a single would-be recruit looked for a fast ticket out of town. “We’re waiting for another tremor. Then maybe we’ll get some business,” joked a Marine gunnery sergeant.

Downtown, taxi driver Elwyn Peckham was among the many who kept telling themselves, “Remember, this wasn’t the big one that we’ve been waiting for.”

Peckham was typical. Had The Little Big One made him more confident or more apprehensive in facing the prospects of a giant quake?

“I’m just fatalistic. I’m going to have to deal with it when it comes. It’s part of the choice I made when I decided to live in earthquake country.”