Neighbors of Nimitz Faced Disaster, Acted

The scene on my television set caught my eye: A television reporter was sticking a mike into the smiling face of a diminutive man whose giant backpack set his shoulders in a slump.

It was La Pulga, or The Flea, a slightly built Mexican whose ability to burrow his way through rubble of collapsed buildings in search of survivors made him a well-known figure after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

I was in a hotel room, resting after another all-night vigil at the Nimitz Freeway in Oakland, where dozens of journalists were reporting on the collapse of the double-deck freeway that had trapped untold numbers of commuters.

Now La Pulga was here too, and the local television station that had been broadcasting constant news of the quake told of his arrival and his offers to pitch in with the rescue.

It was almost comical, this tiny man armed with only the stuff on his back, perhaps a pickax, a rope and a flashlight hidden in his bedroll, come to save a city that was reeling from a temblor of historic proportions.

But even in my half-asleep fog, when I saw La Pulga on the screen, I understood the universality of a disaster such as this--of what emerges when the world falls apart around you and life seems fragile.

You depend on the kindness of others.

I saw it in Bay Area residents in the aftermath of the Oct. 17 quake. It was the same in Mexico City in 1985, and again in El Salvador in 1986. There, the city of San Salvador shook and thousands of people died. Mud-and-stick homes crumbled, leaving thousands to live on the streets with their children, their few possessions and the hope that somehow life would go on still.

I felt the aftershocks at each of these places, and once ran for cover with a group of poor Salvadorans who had been showing me what was left of their apartment building. When the world stopped shaking, and we were still standing, we all laughed nervously.

But I still can’t imagine what it must be like to face disaster square in the face, and to have no idea if the rest of the world is still in place, or if it is just you and this pile of rubble with its trapped victims.

That is what it must have been like for the people in the neighborhood surrounding the Nimitz.

At an Oakland hospital, one 43-year-old woman who had been trapped on the bottom deck of the Nimitz, told me of rescue workers who reached her within half an hour, but then spent another four trying to cut her loose from the wreckage.

“Those guys went into a place that I wouldn’t go in if you paid, me,” she said. “I don’t know anybody’s name (among the rescuers). I wish I did. There were guys from the neighborhood (next to the Nimitz) crawling into the rubble, trying to help anyone. They were really putting themselves on the line. They were great.”

Most will remain nameless, unsung heroes. The bigger news story told of looters amid the cars in the rubble. I know that that happened, but there were others who did not hesitate when they saw the black smoke rising from the bottom deck, obviously from burning cars.

During the first few hours after the quake, I had seen television footage of the Nimitz, the ribbon-like roadway that had been two decks of traffic. From my home in Long Beach, I was moved by the reports of people trapped underneath the top layer.

But it was nothing close to what I felt when I actually saw it for myself the next day. To stand beside the broken defeated freeway, like any that supports you day and night, is to comprehend the fragility of things we take for granted.

There were iron and steel wires jutting from broken columns and the edge of the road, seeming as delicate as the threads from cornstalks. The top deck, throughout the 1 1/2-mile collapsed portion, was draped like pie dough over the lower deck.

I could not help but think of proportions--how this great broken structure compared to myself, standing there steady and alive, glimpsing the tiny cars caught between the two layers of concrete and steel.

But people in the surrounding neighborhood of decaying turn-of-the-century homes crowded between public housing projects and factories, and the countless others who helped in the rescue effort, could think only of the life that might still be in hidden in the rubble.

That’s why on Saturday, when Buck Helm was lowered down amid cheers of 200 workers, a feeling of elation washed over everyone who looked on.

“They have found a man alive,” said a beaming Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson as he emerged from the section where Buck Helm had been trapped.

To hear that, four days after the disaster, was euphoric.