Loma Prieta earthquake shook Central Coast 33 years ago. See pictures of destruction
Sometimes a fortune cookie reveals a deep truth.
A former Tribune reporter had a slip of paper taped to her computer terminal that read “Gather all the information remotely apropos.”
Gathering information on a large chaotic event is a little like assembling a puzzle without having the picture on the box top to help.
That was especially the case 33 years ago, when the Loma Prieta earthquake shook California.
The 6.9-magnitude quake hit the Bay Area hard, destroying freeways, collapsing a major bridge and damaging San Francisco’s Marina District.
Television reports from San Francisco showed that Game 3 of the 1989 World Series had stopped before it began.
The Telegram-Tribune was an afternoon paper at the time and it was clear what the front page story was going to be the next day.
Unfortunately, our Associated Press photo printer had stopped dropping prints every three minutes. The quake had been large enough that the telephone network it relied on was broken.
Back then, photos were shot on black-and-white film and hand-printed in a darkroom. We didn’t have cell phones, Google maps or laptop computers.
We had roughly 12 hours to go to where we thought there was a story, gather what information and pictures we could and get back to San Luis Obispo in time to make deadline.
Our best guess was to go to a Central Coast town on the San Andreas Fault line: the Monterey Bay Area community of Hollister.
Without access to constantly updating social media, we didn’t know that Santa Cruz and Watsonville had been slammed in addition to Oakland and San Francisco, resulting in 63 deaths and thousands of injuries.
Fortunately for our readers, the AP wire service photo printer and text link came back online as we were returning to the office.
Telegram-Tribune reporter David Wilcox wrote this story the morning of Oct. 18, 1989, after an all-nighter in Hollister where the streets were dark except for flashlights and lanterns.
Hollister clears debris
HOLLISTER— As midnight struck in Hollister, curiosity had replaced concern as flashlights flickered from cars slowly circling the rubble-strewn downtown streets.
With reports of about 50 minor injuries and no deaths in the town of 12,000 residents about 150 miles north of San Luis Obispo, sleepless residents surveyed their darkened, damaged city and recalled the terror only hours earlier.
“It was a madhouse. It was a zoo,” said a member of the Hollister Fire Department who declined to give his name.
Reports of gas leaks and broken water mains throughout the city kept emergency workers busy all night.
Power wasn’t expected to be restored for at least two days, according to city spokesman John Hodges.
It wasn’t clear how many residents were homeless, said Hodges, but a Highway Patrol officer reported about 30 people sleeping at the only open shelter — the San Andreas School.
Many residents, however, seemed content to wander downtown.
“I just couldn’t sleep,” said Mario Sanchez as he stood in front of the International Order of Odd Fellows Hall. The building’s front wall was now a pile of bricks scattered across the sidewalk and crushing parked cars.
A gymnasium on the hall’s first floor and second-floor rooms were completely exposed. Pictures hanging on second-floor walls appeared only slightly ajar.
“We could’ve lost 10 people right there,” said Craig Cochran, publisher of the weekly San Benito Sun.
Cochran said he was inside the newspaper’s office across the street when the earthquake hit. He saw the back wall of a jewelry store collapse as he ran outside, then turned and saw the lodge wall tumble down.
About 10 people inside the gym were trying to flee through the front doors he said.
“They couldn’t make it (so) the cars were unoccupied” when the wall crushed them.
“We lucked out. It was pure luck.”
Next door to the newspaper, Jim Robinson said he watched the devastation from inside his bar, The Office.
“Everything was a cloud of dust. Bricks and dust — it was a mess.”
His customers weren’t just shook up.
“Everybody got wet,” said Robinson. “Their drinks went flying everywhere.”
Crews had cleaned up much of the shattered glass that covered downtown sidewalks, but boarded up windows served as a reminder of the jolt.
Thousands of cans of tomatoes toppled inside the Tri-Valley cannery warehouse, breaking through the corrugated metal building and spilling onto a pickup truck parked outside.
Less than a mile outside downtown in a residential park, about a half-dozen tents glowed, illuminated by lanterns. Families — mostly residents of Powell Street — chose to spend the night outside their damaged homes.
“It’s like somebody had stuff in a box and shook the box around,” said Sanchez after walking through a friend’s home. “There’s glass everywhere.”
Less than 200 yards away, the San Andreas earthquake fault cuts through the park forming a small ridge in the grass.
After living so close to the notorious fault for 12 years, Terry Gray is not easily excited.
“It doesn’t bother me,” he said as he sipped beer with friends outside a tent trailer. “It’s not bad as we expected when we moved here.”
It couldn’t get much worse for Seth Irish.
Irish was planning to paint his Victorian home on Powell Street after spending two years and $200,000 renovating it.
“It’s totaled,” said Irish as he watched gas company workers dig in the street directly in front of his house.
He said the house moved 3 feet north and split into three sections.
In nearby San Juan Bautista, a half-dozen exhausted members of the town’s volunteer fire department gathered around a pickup truck and watched news of the quake on a battery-powered television.
The town’s adobe mission appeared to weather the quake with little or no damage.
