YOUR COMMENTS

Readers remember 30 years ago: The big Bay Area quake

We asked readers if they remembered the effects of the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake that hit the Bay Area 30 years ago. It killed 63 people and injured some 4000 others and caused extensive damage to infrastructure and left thousands homeless.

Here are comments from Facebook friends:

– Lori Wright Storey: We had just moved to Sacramento from Santa Cruz. I was waiting for my best friend to call me. He had to wait until after 5:00 because back in the olden days that’s when the long distance rates went down. I felt my water bed start making waves. I didn’t: realize what made it happen until my mom came in a few minutes later and turned on the news while making dinner. I couldn’t get ahold of my best friend for days but when I finally did, he said I was the first thing he thought of after he caught his TV.

– Kristina Candy: I was in Daly City, holding my couple month-old baby brother in a really, really old brick house. I watched a crack appear above the fireplace and then by the time it ended I had run out the front door, across the porch, down the front stairs through the front yard down more steps out the gate and into the street. My 6th grade self had a panic attack. I never looked at quakes the same. Even now when I feel one my body’s moving before my brain kicks in and is running for a door.

– Jose Duran-medina: I was inside Lil Joes restaurant when the entire bar collapsed and all the 2nd floor balconies glass broke. There was a lot of commotion. I remember the street lights bouncing back and forth to the street. Snapping some electricity poles. It was chaotic.

– Trudy Gerlach Gressley: I was there, very scary. I remember getting my daughter under a doorway and watching the telephone poles swaying. Just hoping my house didn’t slide off its foundation.

– Tillman Bryant: I drove through the lower section of the bridge in Oakland about an hour and a half before it fell!

– Barbara Babbitt: I worked at Beale AFB and was leaving Beale by way of the Doolittle Gate and I felt the shaking but didn’t find out details until I arrived home in YC.

– Rosie Cross Kirkland: It was my son’s 5th birthday.

– Cathey Sturgell-gingrich: Yes, I do... I was working with Dr Bock DDS. We had TVS in the ceiling, the patient’s eyes got so big! We looked up and could not believe our eyes...

– Marissa Tweedy: Yep, my late grandmother had just got off the bridge a few minutes prior. I remember it put a crack in the middle of their swimming pool.

– Kathy Sharpe: Yes we did feel it. Not too big here. Some of the aftershocks.

– Tamra Rogers Elling: was on my way to a concert at Concord Pavilion sitting at a red light, car bouncing all all over the place ... thought I broke it, lol.

– Georgia Lee Deakin: I was under a desk watching a couple of morons stand in front of a brick fireplace in the middle of a huge room watching the pool water waves . ... Grandma had literally just pulled off of the Oakland bridge when it collapsed. Saw it fall in the rear view mirror. Thankfully, God kept her safe.

– Leeta-rose Ballester: I lived in the Santa Cruz foothills, near the epicenter. I was almost 6 and bringing my birthday party invites to the neighbor. Thankfully, I stayed in the doorway between their house and garage when the mom called to me to run through to their backyard.

– Bob Harlan: I remember it well, as the speakers inside the KUBA Radio studios were swinging, alerting us to the quake which received live, wall-to-wall coverage on-air for several hours. My parents were on the golf course on the San Francisco Peninsula and that quake was one of the reasons they left California in the mid-90’s.

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