After Shocks

People go about their business. But for almost everyone who lived through the biggest earthquake in California since 1906, life remains different a year after.

The differences can be subtle. People may jump when a truck rolls by, or when the washing machine spins and shakes the house. Many people need more time to gain their composure when a small temblor rumbles through. Some people still won’t cross the Bay Bridge. Some people have moved away. No one who survived the earthquake on that warm evening last Oct. 17 ever wants to experience another one like it. For people who came close to death, whose homes are no more, who saw up close the destruction the quake wrought, the effect will remain forever. Times Staff Writer Dan Morain talked with some of those people. Here are their stories. . . .

The ‘instinct to help’ took over.

The dust was thicker than any fog that ever rolled off San Francisco Bay. The deeper Robert (Raven) Majors ran into it, the more unbelievable it became.

Only moments before, he and his wife had settled back in their West Oakland home and turned on a video. When the roar and shaking stopped, he could hear a neighbor shout: “The freeway fell.”

He ran outside out of curiosity. Once he saw what had become of the Cypress Viaduct, what he called the “instinct to help” took over. Majors, a 37-year-old musician and artist, pressed through the choking dust, running from car to truck to van looking for people who were alive.

He reached a man trapped in a four-wheel-drive truck, his skull split open. The man was still conscious. Majors threw off the blocks of concrete that held the man inside the truck. But one 10-foot chunk would not budge and he moved on.

He looked up and saw a woman emerge from a cavern formed when the upper and lower decks collapsed. He told her to jump, and promised he would break her fall.

“I’ll die if I jump,” she said, her leg broken, the bone jutting out.

“You’ll die if you don’t,” he shouted back.

In an instant of fear and trust, she let herself go. He was there to break her fall. Her fall strained his shoulder and broke his thumb. But he did not stop.

From the upper deck, two men caught his attention. He climbed a eucalyptus tree toward them and they pulled him up onto the freeway. A man called for help. His truck was burning. There was no way for Majors or anyone else to reach him.

Majors did reach a commuter van carrying eight nurses from the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center. He felt for pulses. Five of the nurses had died. He was able to pull one of them to safety. She called not long ago and continues to recuperate. The two plan to get together for dinner soon.

Majors remembers the many others who helped. A neighbor brought over ladders so people could climb to the decks where the other people were trapped. A man who had medical training told people how to care for those who escaped death.

Majors’ wife, Chris, comforted people on the ground with blankets, pillows and water she brought from their home. Their son, Cody, 10, helped by telling motorists who were trying to leave town that their old route no longer existed.

Majors estimates that it took firefighters and paramedics half an hour or more to reach his end of the Cypress Viaduct. Once they arrived, one of the police officers told him to get off the freeway. When he started to say that he was helping, the officer threatened to arrest him.

Majors isn’t sorry the freeway is down, though he grieves for the people who died. Long before it collapsed, he resented it. People would drive on it and not even notice his neighborhood, one of the poorest in California. If they considered it at all, outsiders viewed it as one that was overrun by criminals. Perhaps things will get better in West Oakland without the freeway.

He doesn’t spend much time talking about what he saw that day. He rarely brings it up. But he still sees images of bodies distorted by the tons of concrete.

“I have a lot of trouble right now, thinking about these people up there,” he said.

For much of the past year, he had nightmares about the woman who jumped. In the dream, the woman repeats: “I’ll die if I jump.” He tells her she will die if she doesn’t. He wakes up midway in her fall, not knowing whether she lived. But a few weeks ago, he heard that she did live, and he hasn’t had one of the nightmares since.

Two weeks after the earthquake, a police officer came by and pointed out that Majors’ picture was in Newsweek. Pictures of him helping were in Time, Jet and the Oakland Tribune, too.

A Highway Patrol officer stopped by and gave his wife a plaque lauding his “meritorious conduct.” Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson also gave him a plaque in a ceremony.

He never sought any of the attention.

The events that evening made Majors value life even more. He pushes himself harder to be a better musician and artist. He also is trying to get a gas stove repair business going.

He thinks about the 42 people who died in the viaduct collapse. They all had family, friends.

A few weeks back, he met a young man whose father perished in the collapse. From time to time, the son returns to where the freeway once stood.

“In 15 seconds it was over,” Raven Majors said, “and it can happen to anyone.”