Most of my specific memories of the '89 quake are associated with my friend and coworker at Runaway Tours, Dorothy Eccleston.
Dorothy was a charming affable woman in her 70s who was very much comfortable as a peer among us 20-something pseudo-bohemians. She lived with her mentally challenged adult daughter, Andrea, in a small tidy apartment in San Francisco's Tenderloin.
Her husband, Dr. Eccleston was deceased. He had been an obstetrician who, Dorothy attested, would say of every baby he delivered-- not matter how ugly---, “Now THAT’S a baby!”.
Dorothy and Andrea subsisted on Andrea's social security and Dorothy’s meagre earnings from Runaway. As reservation agents, both Dorothy and I were entitled to a commission over a certain threshold--- I don't recall ever making commission but Dorothy's cheerful attentiveness in her dealings with travel agents who were the company’s clients made her one of their favorites.
Undoubtedly, Dorothy netted commission frequently. Nevertheless, she often spoke with dread about being only a paycheck away from the street,
Despite any existential concerns Dorothy Eccleston was the purest version of a bon vivant: she still kept up her season tickets to the San Francisco Opera and spoke rapturously of the performances she attended. She had gentlemen friends: I recall her giddy account of an outing on the weekend to one of the local race tracks. She laughingly recounted how-- after a few glasses of champagne-- she’d applauded a race finish so enthusiastically her rings flew off her fingers.
We were all at work late in the afternoon October 17, 1989 when the Loma Prieta Earthquake entered our lives.
Our offices were then on Union Square and the building, 291 Geary, was actually two buildings somehow lashed together. The building was quite “live”. In describing it to my cousin, I once mentioned that the office seemed to move when one of the “big girls” walked through the office. My cousin chided me for making a sexist remark-- I replied in SF, “big girl” didn't apply exclusively to females.
I was on the phone with a travel agent in San Jose at a few minutes after 5 o'clock
Out of the blue she said, "Oh my God. We're having an earthquake!"
At the second she said that, all was calm in SF but before I could say "Really?", suddenly our building started shaking violently.
The quake was 17 seconds of sheer terror--- as if the building that you were in suddenly an airliner in the midst of horrific turbulence. It went like this: shakeshakeShakeShakeSHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKEShakeShakeshakeSLAMSHAKESHAKESHAKESHAKEShakeShakeshakeshakeshakeShakeShakeshakeshakeshakeshake.
As it began someone yelled “Get under your desks” and we did. Dorothy cries of worry for Andrea who pealed out and each of us-- imagining she was running about-- yelled back, “Dorothy, get under your desk”.
After the fifth such direction to her, she rather bluntly replied “I AM UNDER MY DESK!!!”
When the shaking stopped, we evacuated into Union Square and milled about unsure of what to do or where to go as San Franciscans must have in 1906. People asked, “Are you
okay?” and said “oh my God” a lot. Someone with a transistor radio cried out, “The Bay Bridge collapsed!” and I wondered how since from the Square I could still see the top of one of the suspension section’s towers.
Dorothy was understandably anxious to get back to her apartment to check on her daughter. A handful of us accompanied her up Geary Street into the Tenderloin. At her building we climbed five flights of darkened stairs to her floor.
When we reached Andrea, I recall her being fortunately quite calm, more concerned about her mother-- I guess it runs in the family.
As the initial relief of the reunion ebbed and I announced I was going to head to my boyfriend's apartment, Dorothy turned to me. She and Andrea owned two flashlights and I was about to be sent on a mission of mercy.
“Donald,” Dorothy urgently explained, “You have to take this flashlight to my friend upstairs on the sixth floor. She’s an elderly woman and with the power out she must be terrified. Bring her this flashlight and tell her it’s from Dorothy.”
I agreed to do so, silently marvelling at Dorothy’s perception of her neighbor as bing “elderly”. I climbed another flight of darkened stairs and peered down the sixth floor hallway.
As I proceeded along in the twilit quake-shook dusty space, it seemed that every apartment door was wide open and in each stood an at least somewhat terrified elderly lady-- partly terrified from the quake, and probably by the fact that, in its wake, a strange man was stalking down their hall, peering in their apartments. Regardless, I felt I had to solve the puzzle of just to whom I should deliver the flashlight.
I received the incentive to solve the puzzle as the quakes first powerful aftershock hit. As the building shimmied, I turned to the nearest elderly lady, pressed the flashlight into her hands and yelled, “Dorothy wants you to have this!”. With that I fled, exiting to Geary Street and made my way to the home of my boyfriend-at-the-time.
For weeks after that day such aftershocks continued happening at uncertain intervals, morning noon and night. The random terrestrial echos of Loma Prieta wore nerves down and going to stand in a doorway for protection got to be rote and annoying, I recall watching a segment on aftershocks on the local evening news during which an aftershock struck.
But I must note that, on the day of the quake I witnessed a sort of shell-shocked benevolence from everyone I saw from Union Square to the Western Addition to Alamo Square. Out of a newly discovered sense of shared frailty people began looking out for each other; for example. as there were no traffic signals operating civilians even stood in intersections, directing traffic. This I witnessed.
The quake shook common purpose out of us all and ruptured the lines that alienated one from the other. A lot of good was unleashed on October 17, 1989. Years later, I heard a phrase that rang out most truth listening to a CD I'd bought outside a supermarket from an aspiring hiphop artist. “The only time we deal with one another's when there's an earthquake”.
The Loma Prieta Earthquake, of course, took lives and those aftershocks left scars.
Ten days after the quake my friend Robin Dolan and I took BART into Oakland to see Eurythmics at the Kaiser Auditorium. The train rolled past the collapsed Cypress Freeway where several lost lives-- their l. As the concert began, Annie Lennox strutted on stage asking us all “How are you doing Bay Area”?
We were okay just then-- some of us. Qr just starting to begin to be okay.
After the quake, Dorothy became even more anxious about Andrea and phobic of going pretty much anywhere.
She stopped going to the opera. She offered me her tickets to a performance of Tannhauser and wished me well.
As I climbed all the stairs to her nosebleed seats, I recall seeing the many cracks running through the walls of the Opera House stairwell.
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Self Assessment
This was hard.
I began this account about a traumatic experience while waiting in Oakland's Housing Assistance Center-- ground zero for anxiety. I had paperwork to fill in to challenge a capricious rent increase but I have made an appointment with an attorney and will fill in the paperwork with her. I'm writing this to step out of the stress of the moment.
The attorney appointment this Wednesday was the victory I sought on Monday.
My city's current rental plight is this day's earthquake of greed, taking lives and leaving many unsheltered.
I completed this Tuesday afternoon.
In the morning I attended a poll workers' training and, although I'd had a full night's sleep, an hour and a half in, I became sleepy and was almost unable to concentrate.
After a short break two and quarter hours in, the course went on for another hour and I grew edgy and-- internally-- upset.
I was ravenously hungry when I got home so I cooked and ate lunch then wrote for an hour and a half but grew weary.
I posted this in the evening, after wrapping up just before 7pm.
It'll undoubtedly will need clean up.
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