5:04

If twen­ty-five years and a day ago you had asked me whether a seis­mic event mea­sur­ing 6.9 on the Richter scale would change my life, I am sure the answer would have been «of course.»

Two days lat­er, I would have laughed and said it was sil­ly, that it was just an earth­quake. While a lit­tle excit­ing it was­n’t some­thing that changed me. There were oth­er peo­ple whose lives were real­ly and direct­ly affect­ed by the Loma Pri­eta ‘quake, and you should be more con­cerned about them. I was fine, noth­ing to see here, move on, thanks for asking.

Today it is hard to look back twen­ty-five years into the past and see any part of my life that was not sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed by that event. Being there dur­ing the ’89 ‘quake invest­ed me in the Bay Area, and invest­ed me in San Fran­cis­co. I’ve seen the City before and after Loma Pri­eta, and the City is a much dif­fer­ent place: in some ways much bet­ter, and in oth­er ways not. But that day I was present for San Fran­cis­co’s his­to­ry. It’s about more than just being able to tell the sto­ry and say «I was there.» In any rela­tion­ship there will come a dif­fi­cult time when it becomes clear that love means tak­ing the good with the bad.

I mark this as the twen­ty-fifth anniver­sary of becom­ing a Giants fan. On that day, base­ball saved hun­dreds of lives. If the Bay Area traf­fic had been as con­gest­ed as usu­al, the ini­tial death toll esti­mates (over 300) would have been clos­er to accu­rate. Instead, almost the entire Bay Area was at home or in a bar wait­ing for the start of the Oak­land A’s play­ing the San Fran­cis­co Giants in the 1989 World Series. Six­ty-three deaths is six­ty-three too many, but if it weren’t for the «Bay Bridge Series», there would have been many more to mourn.

I was in a paint­ing cri­tique at the San Fran­cis­co Art Insti­tute when the earth­quake hap­pened. I’ve joked that God must have real­ly hat­ed that paint­ing. I real­ly don’t remem­ber what paint­ing we were talk­ing about or whose it was, but it’s a dumb joke anyway.

My first thought when I felt the move­ment was, «aha! the fresh­men get to freak out because it’s their first earth­quake.» I’d expe­ri­enced some small­er tremors since I moved to San Fran­cis­co — tremors that felt no big­ger than a truck going past out­side. But this kept rolling and went on much longer than I thought it would. Oth­er peo­ple were get­ting up and going to stand under the door­way, and I could see the enor­mous win­dows in the paint­ing stu­dio mov­ing like giant trans­par­ent tram­po­lines. The cen­ter of the win­dows were going back and forth an entire foot. I decid­ed that I ought to fol­low and go stand in the doorway.

Being the last to get to the door in a class of more than a dozen art stu­dents, I was only near the actu­al door­frame. I ques­tioned the wis­dom of stand­ing where I was as I looked up and saw the giant met­al paint­ing racks with many large stretched can­vas­es rat­tling back and forth above me. Noth­ing col­lapsed and all was fine. The lights went out, every­thing got qui­et except for the sounds of car alarms, and we all made a brisk path for the near­by exit.

Reports came in spo­rad­i­cal­ly from peo­ple with radios. Things sound­ed worse than they were, which was trou­bling even with the warn­ings that we were get­ting third­hand infor­ma­tion and we did­n’t real­ly know what was hap­pen­ing. Some­one said that the Bay Bridge had col­lapsed. There were reports of wide­spread pow­er out­ages and fires. Every­thing seemed qui­et in the fac­ul­ty park­ing lot, but there was a lot of ten­sion about what might have happened.

The teacher of the class in which we’d been hav­ing the cri­tique was a young and tal­ent­ed painter named Ann Carter (see the sec­ond sub-arti­cle). She must have been twen­ty-eight. She had tak­en me to a cou­ple of exhi­bi­tions out­side of classtime and we’d had some great con­ver­sa­tions. She’s one of the few instruc­tors at the Art Insti­tute who actu­al­ly gave me sug­ges­tions about tech­nique. I had a major school­boy crush.

Ann was (not just lit­er­al­ly) shak­en. The bridges were closed and she lived in Oak­land. This turned out to be a pret­ty com­mon prob­lem and a plan was hatched to all go to the flat of one of my class­mates, over by Duboce Park. Ann did­n’t want to dri­ve and asked if any­one had a dri­vers license and felt capa­ble of dri­ving her pick­up for her. Eager to impress, I stepped up. I also knew how to dri­ve a stickshift.

Look­ing up over Russ­ian Hill, I saw dark clouds with a red­dish glow from beneath. It looked strange — the clouds were much dark­er than San Fran­cis­co fog usu­al­ly is. I assumed that it was sim­ply a trick of the set­ting sun behind the clouds.

I was wrong. As I crest­ed Russ­ian Hill it was obvi­ous that we were look­ing at smoke, and then that we were look­ing at flames. There is no moment in my life etched more indeli­bly into my mem­o­ry than see­ing the Mari­na Dis­trict burning.

I had seen fires before, and footage of build­ings on fire where look­ing up there is a build­ing vis­i­ble with flames com­ing out from it. This was total­ly unlike any image of fires I’d seen. There were no build­ings vis­i­ble; entire city blocks were ablaze and what build­ings were burn­ing were impos­si­ble to see. The flames rose above the neigh­bor­hood in an infer­no twice or three times the height of the build­ings that burned.

Today I saw a pho­to­graph¹ of the fire. Twen­ty-five years lat­er the low-res­o­lu­tion gif gave me an unex­pect­ed sense of pan­ic that brought me to tears. I mused for a moment whether the statute of lim­i­ta­tions had run out on post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der, but of course such a thing nev­er «expires» if it still affects peo­ple. Also, it’s not some­thing that haunts me dai­ly. Post-trau­mat­ic stress is nat­ur­al. The dis­or­der is when it con­tin­ues on past its healthy life­time. When see­ing a pho­to­graph that brings back a vivid and trou­bling mem­o­ry, pow­er­ful emo­tions are prob­a­bly appropriate.

That was the first time I learned some­thing about my capac­i­ty for courage. It was­n’t a large thing, but in the face of this hor­ri­fy­ing sight, I was respon­si­ble for safe­ly pilot­ing the pick­up truck. Was it because I want­ed to impress the woman I was infat­u­at­ed with? Per­haps. But I very quick­ly real­ized that it was nec­es­sary to feel the shock and stay present with my task. More impor­tant­ly, I learned that was some­thing I was capa­ble of.

I observed some­thing else mar­velous dur­ing that dri­ve. Traf­fic was the most man­age­able I’d ever seen in San Fran­cis­co. There were not traf­fic lights, yet at every inter­sec­tion, every dri­ver stopped and took turns going through the inter­sec­tion. Every dri­ver I saw on the streets that day was cau­tious and con­sid­er­ate. One could take that as a lib­er­tar­i­an fable of the unnec­es­sary nature even of the basic reg­u­la­tion of traf­fic, or one could take that as an illus­tra­tion that peo­ple come togeth­er in a cri­sis. I believe that there is some truth to both but that nei­ther is a com­plete answer.

We drank wine on the grass at Duboce park and watched the Goodyear blimp go back and forth in the dis­tance. Tele­phones were most­ly use­less but I was able to get a quick phone call out to my fam­i­ly back East. I kept it brief and gave instruc­tions to pass the word along.

That night I slept on the floor in a room with Ann. We lay fac­ing one anoth­er hold­ing each oth­er’s hands as though we were pray­ing with only one set of hands between us. In a way, I sup­pose we were. Of course noth­ing roman­tic ever hap­pened between us, but that too is a night marked indeli­bly in my memory.

A dozen years lat­er I went back to the Art Insti­tute to take a cou­ple of class­es. At the Reg­is­trar’s office I looked at my old tran­scripts and asked whether Ann Carter was still teach­ing. The woman looked up at me from her desk and qui­et­ly said, «Ann Carter isn’t with us any more.» Ann com­mit­ted sui­cide only a few months before I asked about her. She suf­fered from depres­sion as I do. While I don’t pre­tend that I could have changed what she did, I wish I’d asked after her ear­li­er. I wish I’d had the chance to hold her hands once more to reas­sure her that she did­n’t suf­fer alone. I know that she had oth­er peo­ple in her life who could and did tell her that. I regret that I could­n’t have been one of them.

I went down to the bus stop at Colum­bus and Chest­nut in shock. I wait­ed in front of a liquor store that used to sell me vod­ka when I was under­age and a bar that I used to be able to sneak into. It had been four years since my last drink and it was vital­ly clear to me that I did not want anoth­er one. Avoid­ing the grief I was feel­ing would dis­hon­or her mem­o­ry. The loss was real and the pain was because some­thing pre­cious was gone. To not feel that would mean it was­n’t precious.

So many of the threads that run through my life start­ed on that day that the ground shook. I can’t imag­ine what a dif­fer­ent per­son I would be today if it had not hap­pened. It would be wrong to fol­low the above sto­ry with sto­ries of less mean­ing­ful changes, but they abound.

Dam­age makes us heal stronger and bet­ter than we were. It’s not always true, but it is amaz­ing to see when it is. I’m remind­ed of this when I walk or run on the Embar­cadero which today is a beau­ti­ful prom­e­nade instead of the oppres­sive­ly dark and dingy under­side of a free­way it was before the Embar­cadero Free­way was dam­aged and torn down. The 880 con­nec­tor from the Bay Bridge which replaced the Nimitz Free­way is a great improve­ment in terms of traf­fic flow, and Man­dela Park­way with its cen­tral esplanade is spa­cious and strange­ly sooth­ing. Cypress Street was nev­er either.

I will add this one thing: I am very for­tu­nate to live in a place where the archi­tec­tur­al and struc­tur­al resources exist to make build­ings which with­stand earth­quakes bet­ter than they do in most parts of the world. It was not as per­son­al, but it gave me great sad­ness in 2003 when an earth­quake in Bam, Iran which at the time was esti­mat­ed as a 6.9 — the same as Loma Pri­eta — killed 26,271 peo­ple and injured anoth­er 30,000.

So it is bit­ter­sweet to observe this anniver­sary. It reminds me how sig­nif­i­cant the events in life are, no mat­ter how much in the moment they appear to be just life going on and pro­vid­ing its occa­sion­al sur­pris­es. The events in our life have mean­ing far greater than any­thing we can know until we look back lat­er. As ordi­nary as any moment might seem they are con­nect­ed and inter­twined. The crises we face have to be dealt with in the moment, but are ulti­mate­ly defined by the ways they change us, both seen and unseen.

I’ve light­ed a can­dle here in the apart­ment. It’s a tiny ges­ture but it’s here to remind me of the twen­ty-six thou­sand far away, of the six­ty-three clos­er to home, and the one whose hands I held.

You are remembered.