8902110943
DETROIT FREE PRESS
891018
Wednesday, October 18, 1989
METRO FINAL CHASER
1A
MITCH ALBOM
QUAKE OF '89;SEE ALSO METRO FINAL EDITION
Copyright (c) 1989, Detroit Free Press
HUNDREDS DIE IN SAN FRANCISCO
A FESTIVE ATMOSPHERE RIPPED APART
SAN FRANCISCO -- I am writing this column in the most frightening
position I have ever been in, some 200 feet above the ground in Candlestick
Park, which just moments ago was shaking as if the entire stadium were on a
wagon being wheeled over cobblestone. An earthquake, they call it out here,
with some regularity, and even as I type these words, the stadium occasionally
rolls -- aftershocks -- with the concrete, the steel supports, everything
shaking, as if suddenly there is no such thing as sturdy, not anymore.
There are people running across the field, players heading for the exits,
grabbing their wives and their families, the festive atmosphere of this World
Series Game 3 suddenly ripped apart. And yet, such is the nature of sports
that when the initial quake hit, at 5:04 p.m. Tuesday, rumbling the stadium
and swaying the field, some fans roared, they raised their fists, they made
jokes. "It's God. He's a Giants fan!"
What do you do when the very ground beneath you begins to tremble, when
you are in the upper bowl of a mammoth stadium with no hope of an exit -- and
suddenly there are reports of cracks in the concrete? I was on the phone with
an editor in my office, discussing the night's work, when the roller coaster
feeling hit.
"Tom," I said, "the stadium is . . . moving."
"What?"
Suddenly the TV screens went out. The phones were gone. The rumbling
continued for 15 seconds, and, in an instant, every little tidbit of
earthquake advice came splashing back. Find an open space. Get away from
overhead. Avoid doorways.
Stay alive.
It happens elsewhere, right? Brett Butler was running sprints on the
outfield when the earth began to quiver. "I felt like I was drunk or
something," he says now, holding onto a member of his family. "Then I looked
up in the stands for my wife. My mother. I was screaming for them, to get out
on the field. I still don't have everybody."
Suddenly there are no players here, no fans, no reporters; there are just
people, and many of them are streaming down the ramps, leaping over the
walls. Some are bare-chested, raising their beer cups and screaming "WOOH!"
Others are crying, running to people with transistor radios, asking, no
doubt, about the homes of their loved ones.
I have a little television plugged in my ear and the first pictures are
coming across. They are, for someone who does not live with the daily threat
of earthquakes, terrifying. The Bay Bridge is missing a chunk; it is dangling
in the water. The Nimitz Highway that runs along the Oakland side of the bay
is split in crooked lines, with cars stacked up. There are fires blazing and
buildings have collapsed and they are now saying it is the worst earthquake
since the big one of 1906.
On a local radio station, people are calling in, reporting the damage,
defining the breadth of this disaster with every call.
"This is Sue from Oakland. We really felt it bad here. Our cable TV just
blew out."
"This is Sam from Napa. I have a 55-gallon fish tank in my living room,
and this quake just sent 20 gallons of water splashing all over my dang
floor."
It is the kind of thing you hear about, but never envision yourself
involved in. It happens elsewhere, right? You have a cousin or an aunt who
told you about "the time I was in an earthquake." But it was usually a rumble
of the bed, a little shake. Not a stadium rocking. Buildings don't fall down,
do they?
Players pointing to the sky Out on the field now, the players are
collecting their loved ones, counting heads, streaming for the exits. "I've
never been involved in anything like this," says Pat Sheridan, the Giants
outfielder, who once played in the friendlier confines of Tiger Stadium.
"Butler said to me, 'You never been in an earthquake. You're in one now.' "
The lights went out. The network broadcast was lost. Players such as Jose
Canseco and Carney Lansford were pointing to the sky, as if the rumble had
come from the heavens, and others such as Giants manager Roger Craig and his
pitcher Mike Krukow were heading for the safest ground, centerfield. In the
Giants dugout a fan, reportedly suffering a heart attack, was being given
oxygen by the team doctor.
Madness. The whole thing seems so crazy. An earthquake? I can only
describe the feeling as the noise of a jet plane, combined with the shaking of
a bumpy bus ride. That is the outside feeling. What you feel inside depends,
I suppose, on your level of courage.
Darkness is beginning to fall. I suddenly realize that we are without
power, without lights. A voice comes over a bullhorn.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THOSE IN THE UPPER LEVEL ARE BEING ASKED TO
EVACUATE THE PREMISES IMMEDIATELY." 'Everybody's homeless now' There is no
more writing. What you are reading now, I am speaking into a telephone, one
of the few that seem to be working on these suddenly crumbled streets. The
game, of course, was postponed; baseball hardly matters right now. And the bus
that took us from Candlestick into the gnarl of panic traffic along Highway
101 could get us no closer than a half mile of our hotel.
On the little television screen, scenes of this suddenly ravaged city
were coming fast now, one more incredible than the next. Cars crushed between
levels of the collapsed Bay Bridge. A raging fire in the Marina area, which
fire fighters could not contain because the water pipes beneath the ground
were crushed in the quake. So fast? Can all this destruction really happen in
15 terrible seconds?
This city has always been beautiful, a favorite place to walk the streets,
and yet now we are walking these streets and there is something ungodly about
them, dark, eerie, no lights anywhere. People wandering with no place to go
and no way of getting there.
We passed 9th Street and it was covered in glass. Broken glass from
shattered windows forming a jagged blanket that glistened in the light of
street flares. We passed a tall white apartment building. "Call the police,"
came a woman's voice. "Call the police."
Who could you call? What could you do? There were reports of looting and
reports of people trapped in houses that were, hours ago, two stories tall and
now were in the street. It was like a scene from one of those nuclear war
films, people wandering aimlessly, the distant sound of alarms and sirens.
"Everybody's homeless now," mumbled a colleague.
Can it be that this night began with a baseball game? That seems so long
ago.
Years from now, people will talk about where they were during this
earthquake. It will become a war story, a badge of courage in the sports
world, a yarn that may grow larger and more horrible with each retelling.
It is hard to imagine that now. Something harsh and terrible has happened
here, smack in the center of the nation's biggest game.
I am hanging up the phone and walking to, God, I really don't know where.
It is the night the earth shook, and nobody seems to know much anymore.
EARTHQUAKE;SAN FRANCISCO;CANDLESTICK PARK;BASEBALL;GAME;WORLD
SERIES;EFFECT