Quake Solemnly Remembered in Bay Area

Church bells pealed while many people briefly lowered their heads in silence at precisely 5:04 p.m. as Northern California solemnly marked the anniversary Wednesday of the deadly, devastating Loma Prieta earthquake.

Remembrances began early with the blessing of a rebuilt home in the hard-hit farming community of Watsonville 100 miles south of here and continued with the midday planting of nine trees along the route of an Oakland freeway that collapsed and killed more than 40 people.

Official events concluded with scores of residents singing a chorus of “San Francisco,” the city’s spirited official song, while a grim-faced Mayor Art Agnos presided over the raising of an American flag on a new pole atop the venerable Ferry Building. The old flagpole was broken by the temblor.

As the flag-raising ceremony started, so did many private earthquake-themed parties, a testimony to the area’s traditional spunkiness and also a catharsis that psychologists said could help people deal with lingering fears.

The magnitude 7.1 temblor, which occurred live on nationwide television when it hit shortly before the third game of the 1989 World Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics, killed 63 people, injured at least 3,757 and caused nearly $7 billion in damage.

Untold damage was done to the psyches of some people. As the anniversary approached, telephone help lines run by county mental health departments reported increased calls from people recounting their personal tales of discomfort or terror.

A greater number, however, seemed able to cope. When the flag rose up the Ferry Building, cheers rose from the crowd and people shook hands and patted one another on the back. When pressed about the day’s significance, they said they wanted to mark the event and get on with their lives.

While many hard-hit areas, such as Santa Cruz, hosted events both to recall and to try to forget last October’s quake, other areas prepared for the next major quake that scientists say is likely at any time in the next 30 years.

Populous, suburban Contra Costa County, for example, staged a morning drill based on a magnitude 7.5 quake on the Hayward Fault, which runs beneath much of the East Bay metropolitan area.

Gov. George Deukmejian, attending a national earthquake conference in town, praised the efforts of Northern Californians a year ago and in the year since. But he added that more is needed for quakes to come: From streamlining federal aid programs and establishing “urban heavy-rescue strike teams” to providing affordable earthquake insurance and encouraging individual preparation in each home.

“The horror and heroism of last Oct. 17 will never be forgotten,” he said, “but we must also pledge never to forget the lessons we learned from this great tragedy.”

Former San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat now campaigning to succeed Deukmejian as governor, echoed that theme. She listed nine steps that she pledged to take, from speeding up the quake-proofing of unreinforced brick buildings to retrofitting state highways and bridges that do not meet current safety standards.

But for the most part, Northern California spent the day looking back, not forward.

In San Francisco’s Marina District, where crumbled apartment buildings and flaming wreckage became the most visible symbol of the destruction, residents gathered in small groups at the now-bare sites of their former homes. Holding back tears and laughing at the same time, they shared champagne and reminisced about the quake, its immediate aftermath and the days-long effort to salvage what they could from their wrecked homes.

On a chain-link fence outside one vacant lot, where once a three-story Victorian apartment house stood, someone posted a simple sign: “For neighbors who died, who survived, who grieved for our loss.”

In Santa Cruz, hundreds of people collected around the central clock tower, where the anniversary moment passed with neither cheers nor tears. A banner, “Keep the Downtown Alive,” hung from the tower, marking the seaside city’s determination to rebuild its once-charming central shopping district.

One of the most touching ceremonies occurred earlier in the day in Oakland, where two quake survivors watched squads of schoolchildren plant trees on the right-of-way formerly occupied by the Cypress Viaduct of Interstate 880 (the Nimitz Freeway).

The two women, Nicaraguan immigrants Arianoba Hurtado and Ethel Lira, were trapped for more than two hours in their subcompact car after more than a mile of the double-decked freeway collapsed during the 15 seconds of shaking. Two of Hurtado’s sisters also were in the car; one of them, Rosalpina, died before rescuers could remove them.

“I’m very glad there is no overpass here now because I’m so terrified of overpasses now,” Hurtado, still on crutches, said in halting Spanish. “I’m afraid that the next quake that is coming will happen when I am on an overpass.”

Before Hurtado and Lira left the Oakland ceremony for another event in San Francisco, they insisted that their driver, a social worker who has spent a year helping them cope with their trauma, take a circuitous route avoiding the Bay Bridge, which partially collapsed in the temblor.