QUAKE DIARY : It Hit Far Away, Yet So Close to Home

The Great Quake of 1989 might not have been felt throughout all of California, but the jolt definitely shook me on vacation in Italy--via transatlantic telephone.

The jolt, emotional rather than physical, came in the form of an unexpected wake-up call from my brother, Richard, a Santa Barbara dentist.

“First of all,” he began, “Erica and Bob are all right.”

Erica, my younger sister, and her husband, Bob, live across the Bay in Walnut Creek, and as he went on to explain, they had safely ridden out an earthquake--a big one--that had caused serious damage throughout the Bay Area.

My mother’s house in nearby Martinez was standing and evidently unaffected, he added, but news reports indicated that San Francisco’s Marina District was badly wrecked and partially aflame.

The Marina is my neighborhood and the home of many of my friends.

For minutes after hanging up I stood silent and shaking. How bad is it? Who among my friends might have been home at that time? Some, surely, to watch the World Series. Almost everyone I know is a serious Giants or A’s fan. Others, I knew, were probably at the game; I was glad to know that tired old Candlestick Park had taken nature’s punch without hitting the canvas.

Other details were maddeningly scarce. Were all the freeways as ferociously damaged as the Nimitz in Oakland? How much of the Bay Bridge had collapsed? Is Chinatown, a nightmare of aging, unreinforced brick buildings, still standing? What was happening to all of those gleaming new office towers in San Francisco and Oakland? How many had died? How many hurt?

It occurred to me that these were questions I should be trying to answer as a reporter. For a second, I thought about how I was missing out on the biggest story of the decade in my adopted hometown. Then I thought of the difficulties facing my bureau colleagues--working out of an older, damage-prone high-rise, probably without lights or phones, trying to cover a disaster of uncertain but obviously major magnitude that hit almost precisely at the usual first-edition deadline.

I had to know how bad things were. My brother called at 8 a.m. Wednesday in Italy, which was midnight Tuesday in California, seven hours after the temblor had struck. Transatlantic phone lines were overtaxed. Newspapers were empty of quake news because of the time difference. There was no news at all on the one television in the small pensione in which I was staying. The U.S. Consulate in Florence said it knew nothing certain yet. A telephone operator said she could not locate a phone number for The Times’ bureau in Rome; I did not know enough Italian to insist that she try again. It was too early to beg information from a friend at the International Herald-Tribune in Paris.

Reluctantly--and newslessly--I sought to resume my vacation. But even the Renaissance treasures of the Uffizi Gallery were not enough to shake me out of a dense fog of anxiety. Evening news on the Italian television stations was as brief as it was inaccurate: reports, later retracted, of as many as 500 deaths and a hospital collapse in Santa Cruz. But there was that unmistakable shot of the Marina in flames and firefighters struggling with broken water mains.

After a sleepless night, I was able to learn more. Relentless dialing paid off when I was able to reach my sister in Walnut Creek. Despite a few stomach-knotting experiences on the Bay Bridge and in a quake-shaken building, she and her husband were indeed OK. And, she added, a friend had driven down my street to see if my building was still standing. It was.

Details about the rest of the Bay Area were fleshed out somewhat by a fuzzy early morning rebroadcast of the CBS Evening News by a Monaco TV station and a full complement of morning newspapers. The Nimitz Freeway collapse was not the rule but an exception, albeit a grisly one. The Bay Bridge failure was limited to one relatively small, although critical, span. The Marina was hit hard, but the fires were under control. Santa Cruz had not lost a hospital with hundreds of potential victims, but quaint storefronts in which casualties were likely a fraction of that. It was bad, but it was not 1906.

Still, there were some questions that had to be answered by noting what was not reported on that first day. There was no mention of collapsed skyscrapers, even among those built on fill in San Francisco’s Financial District, so I was able to assume none had fallen. Damage in the 95% of San Francisco outside the Marina wasn’t chronicled, so I gathered it was not as extensive. Chinatown was not even mentioned, so I figured its feeble brick buildings surely must stand. Since BART, the subway system, was missing from stories, it was probably still running. Hospitals were not said to be overrun, so I was able to hope casualty estimates would fall rather than rise.

My spirits were further boosted by friendly Italians offering encouragement when they noticed me consuming news of the disastrous “ terramoto “ along with my morning caffe latte or afternoon Campari at local bars. I was reminded that because the city’s history glows with the triumphs of many Italian immigrants, San Francisco’s fate meant almost as much to many of them as it did to me.

The happy coincidence of being seated next to four other San Franciscans at the swank Enotecca Pinchiorre that evening--nothing discourages a serious San Franciscan from long-sought reservations at a good restaurant--was additional consolation. Their less-than-apocalyptic assessment of the damage supported my own.

When I finally returned home last weekend, I was relieved by the drive into the city. San Francisco’s smart skyline was unchanged. Traffic indicated near-normal hustle-bustle. For the most part, the city looked remarkably unaltered. All my friends, I would soon learn, were still a little jittery but safe--and full of stories.

Closer to home, damage was evident. The double-decked length of the Central Freeway was closed until its safety could be determined. Metal police barriers kept rubbernecks off many Marina streets. Brick facades had peeled away from some apartments, while other buildings were simply missing altogether. Utility workers were diligently ripping up streets to replace severed gas lines.

The front of my building was veined with nasty-looking cracks and missing a few chunks of stucco. But a small green sign taped to the front announced that an external examination found the four-story, 70-year-old apartment house safe and habitable. It added, in smaller type, that unsafe conditions inside should be reported at once to authorities.

I am a little concerned about a couple of cracks in one load-bearing living room wall, and when the building inspector’s workload lightens I may soon take the city up on its offer of a second opinion.

But first I have to replace a toppled bookcase, respark a few gas appliance pilot lights and then soak up some more earthquake war stories from family and friends who safely surfed the rolling earth and then helped others pick up the pieces.