Remembering horror, heroism of Loma Prieta 30 years on.
Oakland: Cypress collapse victims, heroes remembered
Margaret Gordon knew to take cover when pictures started falling off the walls of the Berkeley Hills home she was cleaning.
Gordon, now 72, stepped off a bus that evening 30 years ago and found neighbors she didn’t know greeting her with flashlights and guiding her to her home at 12th Avenue and East 18th Street in Oakland. When she got inside, she found candles to illuminate the space and settled in for the night.
By morning, with the power restored, the devastation of the 6.9magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake was apparent. In total, 63 people
were killed and more than 3,000 were wounded. More than 1,000 people lost their homes.
“I was shook up,” Gordon said. “The uncertainty of being in that type of disaster is traumatizing to individuals and families.”
Gordon and Oakland city officials, including Mayor Libby Schaaf, gathered Thursday morning at Cypress Freeway Memorial Park in West Oakland to remember the 42 people killed when the freeway collapsed, and to honor first responders and residents who worked to clear the rubble and save lives.
Schaaf said she will never forget finding every window shattered in her Lake Merritt apartment, along with a crack on the wall big enough to see through to the lake. She said the destruction and loss of life was sobering and saddening.
“And yet to see how this community came together in the face of that disaster is what makes me so proud to be Oakland’s mayor today,” Schaaf said.
Former Oakland fire Deputy Chief Mark Hoffman remembered it being a normal day, with the exception of a looming World Series game. Then “things started to shake and we went to work,” he said.
When the temblor collapsed the Cypress Freeway, it swallowed cars and sent plumes of smoke into the air through cracked concrete.
Hoffman and other firefighters used a ladder to climb to the bottom of the wreckage and search for survivors.
Seared in Hoffman’s memory — beyond the taste of smoke — is how community members without ladders or proper emergency equipment came to help.
“My takeaway is very little of what I did that day,” he said. “It’s what I saw others doing . ... The community was resilient.”
A couple of smaller quakes this week prompted city officials to remind Bay Area residents to take precautions, because it’s a matter of when — not if — another big earthquake will strike.
Gordon, now the codirector of West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project, an environmental justice organization, has been assessing infrastructure where people may go in a natural disaster. She knows all too well the importance of being prepared.
“We have a new normal with the fires, with the disasters, with climate change,” Gordon said. “We have to find systems — develop internal systems and external systems — to be more resilient.”