October 17th, 1989...

I think the only thing worse than living through
a natural disaster (or...um..DYING in one) is being across the country when a natural disaster strikes your hometown.

I was on the East Coast, 16 years ago today, with my Mom and my now-ex husband. We'd spent the week in Washington D.C., then visiting relatives in Connecticut, and had just arrived in the Boston area. We were spending the evening in Lexington, and were really looking forward to spending an entire day sightseeing in Boston.

That is, until we turned on the TV, to watch the World Series. The Bay Bridge World Series. Ironic? Perhaps.

Obviously, the game wasn't on. And once we surfed around the dial and saw a Weather Channel anchor referring to a "shaker" in San Francisco, the panic set in.

Every collapsed or burning building we saw on TV looked like mine. The national news people couldn't give us enough information so we could figure out what had actually been damaged. I distinctly remember someone saying the Golden Gate Bridge had collapsed (it was the Bay Bridge... and it was PART of the bridge. not the whole thing). It looked like the entire city was in flames.
It was awful.
We cut the trip short, but had to drive back to D.C. to return the rental car, as the assholes at the rental car company wouldn't waive the drop fee, even though we didn't even know whether we had a home to return to. Oddly enough, I got to listen to my station for almost the entire drive, as radio stations on the East Coast were carrying our air live, wall-to-wall. I can't tell you how comforting that was, to hear my friends and colleagues and know they were safe. And to get accurate information about what was what.

Luckily, the damage at home was cosmetic -- though some buildings on our block were red-tagged -- and the kitties were fine. And there's a special place in heaven for my dear friend Cynthia, who actually made the trek across town in chaotic conditions to check on them for me.

The one bummer: someone had turned off the pilot light for my apartment building, as they should have, and that meant no hot showers AND no cooking for 12 days. (We didn't have a microwave at the time.) I came home one day to find a PG&E truck blocking my driveway, and I nearly kissed the guy, I was so happy to see him.

Not looking forward to the next big one...