[OT] 10/17/89: Where were you then and how will you commemorate it?


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Hmm... I was 11, in Austria, and didn't have much of a tv.

So I learned about it only later, I guess...
 

While I am an American I was in Dundee Scotland at the time. I didn't hear about it until the following day and I don't remember British TV giving that much coverage.
 

I was at Disneyland, eager to get back to the hotel and see who won the game. It hit while I was in line for the Haunted Mansion, but that's about all I remember.

Of course, it's the days that follow I remember best. Seeing the collapsed freeway was the worst.
 

I was tossing a frisbee around the quad at the University of California at Santa Cruz.... less than 10 miles from the epicenter of that quake. The (small) quad was surrounded by four dormitories, and we ran to the middle of the quad as the red clay roof tiles came raining down off the dorms, impacting and shattering on the cement pathways below.

The shaking lasted a really long time, or so it seemed, but I don't remember how long it really was (maybe 25 seconds?). As I recall, the University didn't take too much damage, although the students in my dorm had to spend the night elsewhere as the engineers tried to figure out if the huge crack that had appeared along the base of our building was just cosmetic damage, or a visible sign that our dorm would have to be condemned. Thankfully for us, they let us back in the next day (and even more thankfully, the building did not fall down on us later).

The town of Santa Cruz suffered much worse, though. Most of the heart of downtown was wrecked, with buildings either collapsing or having to be condemned and torn down later anyway. It was a real shame, and although it took a really long time for the city to get downtown rebuilt, it is a really cool place again these days.

My remembrance of that earthquake is probably more of the night after, or maybe it was 2 nights... it was a long time ago! There was an R.E.M. concert scheduled in Concord (which is just north of Oakland) that many of my friends had tickets to go to and had been looking forward to for a long time. Unfoirtunately, the main highway over the mountains from Santa Cruz (Hwy 17) was closed while they cleared off all the rockslides, so we had to take a much longer, one-lane route (Hwy 9). Of course, everyone else had to take that same route as well.

I remember driving for over 3 hours (for what normally would have been a little over an hour), getting to the concert literally minutes before R.E.M. took the stage, dancing like crazy for 2 straight hours (ah, youth!), and then hopping right back in the car and driving 2 hours back to Santa Cruz. Damn, was I tired. I'm pretty sure I missed some classes the next day.

Goodsport, I wouldn't even have thought about that earthquake once today if you hadn't started this thread. Certainly not something I have ever "commemorated." For me, just something that happened a long, long time ago, in a state far, far away.

Cheers,

-War Golem
 



Well, I remember it fairly well as I was at the game with a friend of mine from school and his sister and dad. We were in 7th grade.

We had been at the park for about 20 or 30 min and were just hanging out waiting for the game to start.

When the quake hit, at first we didn't realize what it was. I heard it more than felt it at the begining and thought it was a WHOLE lot of people stamping their feet, but quickly realized that was not the case.

The best part was almost right after it stopped, the whole stadium started chanting "WE WILL ROCK YOU" alla Queen. Of course no one realized at that point how big a quake it was and just thought, "hey we live in CA, its what happens here".

We very quickly realized, as people started getting the news reports on their radios and small TV's that it was much worse than we thought.

People stayed calm and someone came out on the field with a bull horn to tell us what to do if their were aftershocks and such, and to just hang out for a while.

With in about 45 min we were told to go home as the game had been cancelled.

It only took us about 2 1/2 hours to get home that night.

JDragon
 


I was in class my first year of college, and I didn't even hear about it until later, when I went to hang out with my girlfriend and some of her friends. We were getting really drunk (as people often do in their first year of college) and it was prolly about 9 pm, and she mentioned in passing that there was a big quake in the bay area. That's where my dad and stepmom live! Oh Crap!

So, drunk drunk drunk, I called their house, but naturally I couldn't get through... I was worried for another day and a half until I finally got ahold of them.
 

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