Ausborne Blog

Today marks the 17th anniversary of the Loma Prieta Earthquake. I was at my friend, David’s, house when it struck, and remember not being too worried when it started, but then it just wouldn’t stop. We all huddled in various doorways in the house in case things fell.

If I remember right, Mark (or maybe it was Kenneth) was playing a game on the computer and even made sure to save the game before running to the doorway. He ended up moving just a few seconds before a big bookcase toppled over and landed right where he had just been sitting moments before. A fish tank in Kristin’s room fell over and shattered, with all the water flooding her room and spilling down the wall directly above us in the doorway. We ended up taking the carpet out to the driveway, I think, and only found MOST of the fish that had been in the tank.

The power was out, so we all went out front with the radio to see what was going on around the Bay Area. We were getting reports that the Bay Bridge had collapsed* and that there was major damage at Candlestick Park**, where thousands were gathering for game 3 of the World Series. We also heard something about a freeway collapse in Oakland which had trapped a number of people.

I decided that it was time for me to go home because my family would be worried about me. Apparently, that wasn’t the case. Nobody was even there. I stayed there by myself, cleaning up the small mess***, for a couple of hours until people got home. There was no school the next day, for obvious reasons, and I don’t remember if we went to school the day after that.

Around the corner from my house, there was a house with a pool in the backyard. Apparently, the water from the pool splashed out pretty forcefully and destroyed a section of their backyard fence. I’m not remembering any more damage to my neighborhood, at this time.

* Early reports were talking about a collapse of the bridge, while it turned out that one upper deck section collapsed and damaged the lower deck section below it, causing some casualties.

** The damage to Candlestick Park wasn’t major, but I do remember going to Giants games that next spring and seeing where they had patched up a bunch of the concrete that had been damaged. In fact, it always intrigued me so every time I’d attend a game, I’d look for more spots where the damage had been repaired.

*** The small mess at my house involved an antique candy dish family heirloom falling and breaking. If I remember correctly, it had belonged to my grandmother’s grandmother, Lillie Mae Hunn Osgood, and had been passed to my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Helen Osgood Trost, then to my grandmother Eleanor Beverly Trost Taylor. I think about this now and how nice it would have been to have been able to passed it along to my daughter, Betsy, or my niece, Lauren. The only other mess at the house that I can think of was just a number of cracks that had appeared in the walls of the house, both interior and exterior. We also couldn’t use the fireplace for a while because we had to get it inspected for cracks.