A Rude Awakening

San Diego jolted awake along with the rest of Southern California early Sunday.

But the city soon resumed its placid weekend rhythms, largely unscathed by two major earthquakes that wreaked destruction elsewhere.

Despite the force and duration of the tremors, damage was minor:

* There were cracked walls, ruptured water pipes and frightened guests at a high-rise hotel in Mission Bay that was evacuated for three hours.

* There were power outages in the central city, chipped building facades, interrupted railroad service.

* And there were the inevitable psychological aftershocks, worsened this time by official warnings that a new quake was possible.

Tranquil scenes in sunny parks and beaches provided a surreal contrast to televised images of the intense damage in desert and mountain communities east of San Bernardino where the earthquakes were centered.

The cumulative effect left locals wary and some visitors packing their bags.

“The ceiling was crumbling and all the water in the toilet came out on the floor,” said Millard Tarkington, a 25-year-old Norwegian tourist staying at the 18-story, 423-room Hyatt Islandia hotel overlooking Mission Bay.

“I wanted to see an earthquake, but not on the sixth floor, and not while I’m sleeping,” he said. “It was terrifying.”

Tarkington and his friend Nina Gran-Henrikson, 21, checked out of the hotel Sunday, one day earlier than planned. They intended to fly to Florida.

When the 7.4 tremor hit at 4:58 a.m., many alarmed guests evacuated on their own, then decided to go back to bed. After the second tremor at 8:04 a.m.--which measured 6.5 on the Richter scale--Hyatt staff conducted a formal evacuation of close to 1,000 guests at about 8:15.

The Hyatt was built in 1972 and is designed to rock, general manager Jerry Westenhaver said.

“It did what it was supposed to do,” said Westenhaver, who in 1989 was manager of the Hyatt Oakland when the 7.1 Loma Prieta quake struck the San Francisco Bay Area.

The Hyatt Islandia “moved because it’s on rollers,” he said.

The overall damage was mild, Westenhaver said: Several pipes cracked and caused slight water damage to about five rooms. A few floors bubbled. Lamps fell over. Ceilings and stairwells suffered superficial cracks.

“There’s really no structural damage,” he said. “The fire marshal and I erred on the side of caution” when they decided to evacuate rooms.

Guests milled about in the hotel parking lot, some wearing bathrobes, pajamas, shorts. They ate breakfast served by hotel employees. They eyed the building and asked to be relocated to ground-floor rooms.

“If I can’t get a room outside the tower, we’re leaving,” said 50-year-old Elaine Stam of Gallup, N.M. “I won’t go up there, even to get my stuff.”

Stam had abandoned her room after the first quake and sat in the coffee shop for 2 1/2 hours. Recovering.

She finally decided it was safe to take her 4-year-old granddaughter back upstairs. And the second quake hit while Stam was in the shower.

“My granddaughter ran into the bathroom and she was just screaming. I jumped out, hugged her, jumped back in to get the soap off, and out the door we went. It was terrible. I just can’t describe how petrifying it was. I thought it was over. I thought we were going to end up in a rubble.”

Guests were allowed to return to their rooms after about three hours.

Elsewhere, the quakes caused power outages in about 5,000 households in central and south San Diego, according to San Diego Gas & Electric Co. The outages hit sections of Otay Mesa, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, downtown and Southeast San Diego, SDG&E; reported.

Power was restored to those customers, as well as 19,000 affected SDG&E; customers in southern Orange County, by about 11:30 a.m., according to utility spokesman John Britton.

The San Diego Padres-San Francisco Giants baseball game proceeded without a hitch after engineers inspected San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium for structural damage, officials said.

The Del Mar Fair and San Diego Zoo also opened for business, but zoo officials suspended operation of an aerial tram known as the Skyfari, citing the risk posed by potential aftershocks.

Amtrak postponed all train travel out of San Diego until 2:45 p.m., while Santa Fe Railway personnel inspected tracks for damage.

Throughout the morning, about 125 passengers on the San Diegan were instead placed on buses, Amtrak ticket agent Marisol Munoz said.

The tracks were reportedly undamaged and Amtrak planned to continue running trains on schedule after the inspection, although at restricted speed--about 20 m.p.h.--over bridges and other sensitive areas as a precaution, Munoz said.

In response to the quakes, the city Office of Emergency Management activated its emergency management center in the basement of City Hall on Sunday morning. Officials were checking the aftermath and hoping their services would not be necessary, although they noted that seismologists have predicted that aftershocks are possible over the next several days.

“We’re pretty much monitoring the situation,” spokesman Chris Bach said.

SDG&E; also activated its emergency operations center in the auditorium of the company’s downtown headquarters building, Britton said.