The following story is a true account of my experience of the 1989
Loma Prieta earthquake and is not meant to belittle the loss of
surviving family members or the hero’s involved if the rescue and
recovery efforts.
It was about 5:00 pm and like clockwork my dad walked in the door
from work. Dinner wasn’t ready yet so in rare form the old man
cracked a beer and waited for the dinner bell. It was 5:04 when he
stood at the counter to drop a heaping spoonful of spaghetti on his
plate when the plate shifted about a foot to the left leaving his
evening meal all over the counter. He looked at my mom and said
"damn I only had one beer!" It was then in my 17 year old
exuberance I yelled out "IT'S AN EARTHQUAKE!" and out the door I
ran. By the time I reached the street in my home town of Napa Ca. I
saw the ground slowly roll as the cars on the street were rolling
back and forth. It soon came to our realization that this was no
minor quake. None of the TV or radio stations were broadcasting and
the local telephone service was down as well. It wasn't until about
7:00pm that night when we saw the first pictures of the devastation
that this 6.9 magnitude quake had caused. This really made me
REFLECT on just how lucky we were to be so far from the epicenter
and not be among the 62 that did not escape with their lives. The
PICUREs we saw on the news were truly horrifying. AT the Cypress
section in Oakland an acquaintance of my fathers was caught RIGHT
in the middle of the whole collapse in a wine delivery truck stuck
in the evening commute and was among those unlucky 62 and over to
the west the was the bay bridge collapse that left a section of the
upper deck sitting at an ANGLE to the lower deck.
It's always nice to find a travel bug so be sure to log if you
take one, to keep our fellow cachers from having to chase ghosts.
Thanks for visiting our cache and good luck!
You can check your answers for this puzzle on
Geochecker.com.
We enjoy reading everyones logs when they find our cache hides and
appreciate when they say more than TNLN or THX.
Have fun and happy caching
