Rescued From a Parking Lot in the Sky

Of all the striking images of Monday’s devastating earthquake, the sight of Sharon Adams’ stranded 27-foot motor home will endure as one of the loneliest.

Perched on a road to nowhere--a raised stretch of the Golden State Freeway, sheared off on both ends and supported only by a few wobbly looking pillars--the vehicle was a stark reminder of the powerful force of nature. And on Wednesday, a daring rescue transformed the Class A cruiser into a symbol of something else: human ingenuity.

With a huge crane, a sturdy yoke and more than a little courage, a team of professional rescue workers harnessed Adams’ motor home in its precarious parking space about 60 feet above Old Road in the Santa Clarita Valley. Then, ever so slowly, they lifted it over the freeway guardrail, swung it away from the overpass and lowered it to the ground. Working through several strong aftershocks over four hours, they also rescued an Oregon trucker’s 65-foot rig and a Newhall man’s pickup truck.

“I can’t believe it--there’s hardly a scratch on it,” said Adams, a 51-year-old grandmother from Reno, who had been en route to an Arizona vacation when the Northridge quake hit, knocking a hole in the highway.

Ervin (Nick) Nichols, 49, the Oregon trucker, was equally impressed. “I haven’t had this much excitement since my first divorce,” he said.

Three days before, all Adams and Nichols had had in common was a stretch of road. Heading south on the Golden State Freeway, they had struck up a conversation on the CB radio. Adams admitted she wasn’t familiar with the route. Nichols, whom she knew only by his handle, “Windwalker,” suggested that she follow him over the Grapevine. They were in the slow lane, going about 50 m.p.h. up a slight grade, when Adams saw Nichols slam on his brakes.

Adams’ first thought was that Nichols had spotted an accident. But as she hit her brakes, she heard Nichols’ voice over the CB radio. “Earthquake! Earthquake!” he yelled.

Nichols’ truck, filled with 46,000 pounds of particle board, jackknifed twice before he could stop it. He flung open his door, stepped onto the still shuddering pavement and realized he was parked less than a foot from the sheared edge.

“My first thought was, ‘Get the hell off this bridge,’ ” Nichols said Wednesday as he waited for his rig to be lowered from the overpass. Dave Farley, an electrician for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority who lives in Newhall, had precisely the same thought. He had brought his aqua pickup truck to a frantic halt just behind Nichols. And he was afraid the worst was not yet over.

“I thought I was going to die. I’ll be honest with you. I thought the bridge was going down,” he said.

Farley’s fears were justified. A little south of where he stood, an LAPD motorcycle officer flew over the edge of a severed ramp where the Antelope Valley Freeway meets the Golden State, plunging to his death. And on the northbound side of the overpass on which Farley and the others had stopped, two vehicles toppled over the side. Miraculously, the passengers survived.

Luckily for Farley, Nichols and Adams, they had an escape route. To their north, the roadway had dropped about a foot where the overpass connects to the road, but it still seemed sturdy. Nichols went to the motor home, where a rattled Adams was trying to decide which belongings--her silver fox fur jacket? her Christmas presents? her cellular phone?--she should grab to take with her. Farley told her possessions wouldn’t matter much if she wasn’t around to enjoy them. Then they ran.

As it turned out, their escape route would hold fast for hours--it gave way Tuesday, and only then because Caltrans workers knocked the section out to relieve pressure on the overpass.

But in the pre-dawn darkness, all Nichols, Adams and Farley wanted was terra firma underfoot. When they reached it, Farley headed for home--he was worried about his wife and two children, four miles away, and was determined to walk to them if he had to.

But Nichols and Adams were far from their families. They had nowhere to go, no one to stay with. A CHP officer offered them a lift to a Valencia hotel, but when they arrived they found the place closed because of damage. Then, in the hotel’s parking lot, they met Danny and Jeannie Scoggin. The Scoggins were transporting a 40-foot motor home back to their Portland, Ore., home. But they, too, were stranded: Before leaving, they needed to pick up another vehicle in Saugus at a company that had not yet reopened its doors.

The Scoggins invited Nichols and Adams to temporarily move in with them. For two nights, the group shared the six-bunk motor home, eating potato chips and snack cakes and watching repeated reports about Nichols and Adams’ stranded vehicles on television.

On the first night, a refugee from the damaged hotel stayed there as well: a coffee salesman who donated his samples to keep the motor home well stocked with caffeine. Water was a precious commodity--the Scoggins, Nichols and Adams melted cubes from the hotel ice machine to brush their teeth.

They passed the time telling stories. Nichols admitted that this was actually his fourth earthquake on the road. During the 1989 San Francisco-area quake (magnitude 7.1) he had been on U.S. 880. Then there were last year’s two magnitude 5.9 earthquakes in Klamath Falls, Ore.

His new friends teased him about being cursed.

“God wants you,” said Danny Scoggin, 45, patting Nichols on the shoulder.

Nichols smiled a tired smile. Maybe he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, he said, but Monday’s magnitude 6.6 quake was the worst he had ever felt.

“We were just rocking and rolling all over the road,” he said. “I’m not a religious man, but I think I’m going to start carrying some religious tapes to listen to. I’ll have to throw all that country-Western out.”

Adams, too, said a divine force must have looked out for her and her wide-bodied cruiser. “Somebody has to be watching,” she said. “A split second and we would’ve been off the side.” When the crane first lifted Nichols’ rig off the overpass, Adams crossed herself. “You cross your heart and hope,” she said.

Curt Gillette, a general field supervisor for Penhall International who was overseeing Wednesday’s vehicle rescue, appreciated the prayers. His crew was experienced, he said--they had hoisted vehicles off the Embarcadero Freeway after the Bay Area quake. But big vehicles, particularly ones like Adams’ mobile fortress, were easily damaged.

“The problem with a motor home is it has no structure. They’re like a beer can: They just crush from the outside,” he told her, delivering what turned out to be an unnecessary warning about possible damage. Gillette’s crew won applause by getting all the vehicles down unscathed.

After everyone had been reunited with their vehicles, talk turned to planning another reunion--of the survivors of the Freeway to Nowhere and the people who helped them survive. They exchanged addresses and phone numbers and took snapshots of one another.

“I’m going to be sad to see you go,” Jeannie Scoggin, 48, told Nichols.

“Oh, we’ll keep in touch. After something like this, that’s what you do,” Nichols said, pointing up above to where his rig had been perched just a few minutes before. “We’re going to get together every year and have a barbecue up on that span.”