Actually, the World Series probably helped to save many lives. During the quake, I was at afterschool care in kindergarten. I remember my teacher freaking out and telling everyone to get under the table. Later at home I dove under the dining room table during an aftershock. My mom half-ran down the stairs to check on me, and I gave her a thumbs up from under the table.

Random anecdote from the day pulled from the Wikipedia entry on the WS:

According to Tim McCarver, when the earthquake hit, he and his broadcasting partners Al Michaels and Jim Palmer immediately grabbed what they perceived to be the armrests. In reality, the announcers were clutching on each others’ thighs and they were left with bruises the next day. Years later, Al Michaels would boldly admit his strong belief that had the earthquake lasted much longer than 15 seconds, he would have been killed.

I was 4 and sitting down to dinner with my family. That’s really all I can remember. I mean, I was 4.

I was in the costume dept at Santa Clara U. The cast all dove under the massive sewing tables.

The trees outside were shaking/bending like nothing i’ve ever seen since.

That evening was the most eerie experience of my life.

We lived in Menlo Park. I just sat on my parents bed to watch the game and the quake hit. I was on the 2nd floor, so I looked out the window and saw the street rolling like waves and the trees on them shaking wildly. I realized it was an earthquake right away and stood in a doorjamb. I’d lived my entire life up to that point on the Peninsula, but it was the first earthquake I ever recall experiencing.

My father worked in the City and took Caltrain there and back everyday. I recall my mother and I being very worried because there was very little communication in those days and he did not get home until late, but he was ok.

Cotati, Sonoma County (Between Santa Rosa and Petaluma). I was 4 sitting in my Grandmas lap watching the WS. My parents were riding their horses in the arena outside and didn’t feel anything, but saw the water in the water trough splash. My sister was under an Oak tree not far away with her friend and our neighbor. They screamed like they were going to die (5 and 6 yo).

When the house started shaking my grandma threw me under the table and freaked out, typical east coaster response. Other than that I remember being really upset that baseball wasn’t going to be on TV. I also believe this is my first memory.

WTF was everyone here born in the mid 80’s?

Lower Box, Section 13, box 3H, seat 3 or 4 (seat #s?)

I was sick, not playing at the time. I remember my friend getting thrown out of the pool (he was near the side) from a wave that had formed, the pool cracking open ever so slightly and a jet of water being thrown into the air.

In Hayward, specifically the Hayward Hills on the fault line. I had turned the game on and was awaiting the arrival of my then roommate, we had soccer practice in Berkeley that night.

When it hit I remember the highschool girls at the tennis courts screaming like crazy, the chain link fence encircling the courts making a hideous noise, and the cat digging herself into the carpet with all claws extended trying to ride it out.

We went in to practice anyway, which was canceled. One of our team mates got into a fender bender in the parking lot by the field and I remember the other lady refusing to let it go, she was adamant that the police come and take a report. We must have spent a half hour trying to convince her that given the state of things, no policeman gave a rats ass about her dented beamer.

The quake was fun. I had friends over. Then we turned on the news and saw I-80. That screwed us up pretty bad.

and sitting down to watch game 3 of the world series. It was the pregame. Suddenly the tv went all static-y. I got up to see what was wrong and then stopped halfway to the television because I started to hear a low rumble. A second or two after the sound came the shaking. It didn’t last that long. Nothing was broken in our house in Vallejo. We had no power and couldn’t get ahold of my grandpa who lived in Santa Cruz. It was boring ’cuz the world series was cancelled and stuff.

At a BART station, and let me tell you, I don’t ever want to see a ceiling moving up and down like that ever again, especially since above that ceiling were tons of steel and building materials. I emerged the station and downtown SF had a cloud of dust billowing through from all the older building’s facades that crumbled. I was leaving work early to catch the WS game and sort of just kept plodding ahead. I caught a diesel powered 71 Noriega on Market Street, which quickly filled up to the point it would not stop unless someone on the bus requested a stop. I was home in record time to Haight and Divisadero, in about eight minutes. All the way home, nobody knew the severity of the damage so everyone was in a jovial mood. When I got home, I learned that there would be no baseball that night, or for many more nights.

2 years old and in New Jersey

My mom was bringing me and my sister home from somewhere, and so we were at the front door when the quake hit. I don’t really remember the shaking, possibly because my mom lifted me up soon after it started. I just remember the rumbling sound and some guy in the distance yelling “YEEEEEHAAAAAAW!”. We went inside to find only a few things that fell off the shelves, and of course we had no power that night. My dad was out jogging at the time, and didn’t know there was a quake until he got home.

Forum (KQED) had an interesting show about this on Tuesday, here is the podcast of Memories of Loma Prieta

I was 12 years old at the time, we were living in Palo Alto. I was doing homework at the dining table before the start of the game. My mom was vacuuming and I remember the windows rattling and at first I thought it was because of the vacuum. I remember being slightly annoyed. Then of course I felt the shaking and realized what was going on. I jumped under a small butcher block table we had in the middle of kitchen instead of the big dining table I was sitting at. Not sure why. While I was ducking and covering I remember hearing things crashing down all over the place but then when it was over nothing was really broken in our house.

We walked outside and talked to the neighbors. Our relatives from the East coast eventually got through to us and told us the bay bridge had fallen down. I remember my sister and I listening to the radio and hearing that school was canceled the next day.

I wasn’t exactly alive yet, and my parents were in Seattle at the time. But I did have to watch all those documentaries about it for my various science classes every year!

I honestly can’t imagine living through it. There was that 5.4 earthquake near San Jose two or three years ago that caused all the books to fall off the bookshelves at the MLK library, but that was the biggest one I’ve experienced. I feel so young.

Section 14, Row N, Seat 8

I was a blissfully unaware 5 year old living in Ohio.

My DAD, however, was at the game—-avidly awaiting his first game at Candlestick Park as a life-long Giants fan. I remember everyone being really worried about him until he called to say he was OK—-before the days of cellphones.

When I heard that he was in an earthquake, I pictured him standing in a street with giant chasms forming all around him, and him jumping from cliff to cliff to be safe. Obviously it didn’t end up happening that way, but I was pretty proud of him at the time.

Oh, and he never did make it back to Candlestick for an actual game.

I was just searching through a box of old stuff, looking for some way to prove that I went to a certain conference awhile back… I didn’t find what I was looking for, but I did find the front pages of the Chron/Examiner that I had kept from the ’89 earthquake, Bonds hitting 73, Bonds hitting 762, and a pocket schedule from ’02.

I was at soccer practice in Santa Clara. Unfortunately, my parents made me play soccer.

it’s pretty interesting reading all the experiences, especially considering i wasn’t even born yet. LOLYOUNG

I wasn’t here, either. My family was living in London at the time. For geography class, we had to keep a scrapbook of current events and I remember cutting and pasting this SI cover:

I was in my late 20’s at the time, walking home from my job at a cafe on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley with my incredibly fly girlfriend, Wendy. (Yes, young-ins, “fly” was briefly an adjective in the late 80’s and a good thing to be.) The quake hit when we were a few steps from the southeast corner of Haste and Ellsworth Streets. The thing that made that day otherwise noteworthy is that my feet had felt hot all day so I decided to walk barefoot which was the only time I’d ever done so in Berkeley.
 
The ground absolutely heaved and I couldn’t find the sky because instinct had kicked in and I’d dropped to a four-point stance with one knee and hand on the ground to keep from being thrown down. Palm trees were slapping loudly against houses and the overhead (literally) electric lines were turning nearly circular paths like jump-ropes. That seemed like a bad thing — I remember one line arcing slightly where it spliced into a transformer — so I sprinted out into the intersection.

By that time the main action was over and Wendy and I just sort of gaped at each other and mumbled things like “wow”. She was no less impressed as a native than I was a fairly recent import. I decided to put my shoes on at that point fearing shards of glass although I don’t recall seeing windows blown out of houses. Even though a fair number of car alarms were going off I do recall there was also a certain sense of stillness as though all the creatures of the world were in psychic recuperation from being sucker-punched.

We went and watched the police impound garage on Shattuck Avenue burn for a while, but decided to get home as news started being passed by word of mouth and from people with portable radios. We walked the rest of the way back to our place on MLK Way and the power was out when we got there so we threw together a cold meal from whatever was in the refrigerator and waited for the juice to come back on. When we had TV again we more or less just sat there watching endless reports of tragedy, not saying much.

The other thing I recall is that the daily paper was exceptionally thin the following morning, perhaps only 16 pages or so. Certainly their printing and distribution had been affected like the rest of Bay Area life, but it seemed odd that such a slender publication would have to bear so much bad news.

Lower reserved, Section 11, Row 7, Seat 9

It was nearly game time, of course, and the crowd was jazzed. At first I thought everyone was stamping their feet, which I had never heard at Candlestick, and then I noticed that no one was stamping their feet.

What was especially striking was how nothing in the stadium seemed to move in concert. The seats swayed one way as the underside of the upper deck swayed in a different rhythm, or arhythm, and the light standards in still a different motion.

The other thing I remember is the crazy-quilt pattern that appeared on the scoreboard right before it went dark.

Afterward, everyone cheered. I was pretty upset and went out to the concourse, where eventually word spread that the Bay Bridge had “collapsed” and we could see a large cloud of smoke coming from somewhere around San Leandro.

The series against the Cubs is to this day the pinnacle of my years as a baseball fan. I’ve never had a whiff of nostalgia for Oct. 17. It’s not a very profound observation, but the experience was an instruction in why you treasure the good days, because they can end abruptly.

I was napping and my dad was getting ready to watch the game. When the quake hit he ran to get me and then he and my mom stood in an archway in our house for safety. They always tell the story of our wood floor hallway making waves.

Also, my dad’s friend’s sister tells the story of working in an office building in SF on a conference call with people in an office building in SJ. The people in SJ said “We’ve got to go we’re having an earthquake,” then the people up in SF had a few seconds to just sit there and wait.

I really don’t remember what happened, but apparently my grandfather brought my out of the house.

Good thing the World Series saved so many lives on that day.

I was seven years old, eating soup with my three year old brother in the kitchen. When the quake hit, we ran for the doorways.

My dad was working in San Francisco at the time so seeing the Bay Bridge collapsed upset me quite a bit.

Nothing broke, although a small TV did fall off a dresser (it was saved by the shag carpeting).

What I also remember was that afterward it got very very dark that night since all electricity was out for 50 miles on every direction. Really pitch black. Primeval, one might say.

just 9 years old, I thought the ground shaking and the trees waving was like a super fun bouncy castle. The seriousness of the occasion started to sink, in when I saw a little car accident on the way home – the crossing arms of a railroad crossing had fallen on a car and smashed it up. Thankfully, everyone in my little world was okay, but man the destruction you saw on the news is really quite striking, and maybe especially so for a kid just learning about the world.

in El Cerrito. I was 8. Didn’t feel a thing. Then i heard a couple of the dads yelling “did you see those trees shake?!?!” and I was like, “huh?” Pretty soon it became clear there had been an earthquake and some of my teammates were yelling about how the bay bridge fell down. In my mind I imagined the entire bridge having literally toppled over. My mom was walking our dog and at first thought the dog was just tugging really hard, then realized what was happening. I remember spending all night with my brothers in my parents’ bed and watching news coverage of the aftermath. Also, I think we could see light from the Marina fires all the way across the bay.

I can’t remember how long it took for my dad to come home – if memory serves I think he was at work, and he very well could have been on the cypress structure, except just as he was about to leave he got a phone call or something and he ended up leaving 5 minutes later and wasn’t on the structure yet when the quake hit. I think our school was open the next day but my mom let us stay home anyway.

So I delete it and put my commentary here:

When the Loma Prieta quake happened, my family had just moved to New Jersey a couple months earlier, and I still remember watching this live footage on ABC with my dad. I think it was probably scarier to not be there than it would’ve been if we were – especially because we couldn’t get in touch with anyone and, on the east coast, a lot of the initial reports were inaccurate and incredibly negative – that the Bay Bridge had collapsed, that there were huge fires everywhere, etc.

It’s still hard to watch, even twenty years later.

The Youtube video I was linking to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOAP8p7ux_Y

Then, as now, I lived in Alabama, so this played out on television for us.

Twenty years ago tonight, at 7:04 p.m. Central Time, my family sat down in the living room to watch Game 3. It was my mom’s birthday.

Though I was only four years old at the time, I remember very vividly what happened next. The picture jumped and cut out. Al Michaels said, “I think we’re having an earth—” before the audio was lost. A green “WORLD SERIES” title card was put up on screen and remained there for several minutes.

We didn’t know the extent of the disaster when the picture and audio came back, though we learned it quickly. I remember watching ABC’s coverage long into the night, transfixed by what I saw. I recall seeing smoke spewing out of the pancaked Cypress Viaduct, the Marina fires and that section of the Bay Bridge that collapsed. Even at four, I understood the enormity of the situation.

When a Reader’s Digest account of the ’quake was published, I read it over and over again. I remember really wanting to watch the NBC made-for-TV movie Miracle on I-880 when it aired in 1993.

For whatever reason, that memory is seared into my brain. I can’t remember much about my kindergarten year, but I’ll never forget Loma Prieta.

I was 11 years old & looking at baseball cards with my cousin at his house getting ready to watch the game. He was a Canseco & A’s fan. I was a Thrill & Giants fan. We didn’t think much of the earthquake when it happened, until they cancelled the game. My priorities as an 11 year old were kinda outta whack.

lying on the floor of our living room in Hayward while my dad snoozed on the couch during the pre-game show. I remember being tossed in the air because the shaking was so violent. My dad initially thought it was me being a three year old and shaking the couch while he was sleeping then he realized what was happening and picked me up. Afterwards we went to the hospital to welcome my new baby cousin who was born at 7:02 that evening. It’s a running joke in the family that the world had to get ready for her.

4 years old, excited beyond belief for the World Series.

My mom screams for my sister and I to get out of the pool, so we do and hide under the benches we had. At that point, we see whitecaps in the pool, which was surreal.

Amazingly, my grandpa had a beer on the edge of the table and it stayed exactly where it was.

I was 15 yrs old at football practice at SI. Fully padded, open field, helmet on. Our press box looked like it was going to snap off and fly into the ocean. Whe waves were going sideways. No school for the next four days.

I was not quite 9, waiting to be picked up at day care after school. Fourth grade and still in day care! WTF!? My folks wouldn’t let me be a latchkey kid even though we lived all of a block from the school.

I was out in the middle of the playground at Theodore Judah Elementary, where the play structure was surrounded by not sand, not woodchips, but gravel. I dunno either. Anyway, I was slowly piling the gravel onto the slide, trying to see how high I could get it up the slide before gravity pulled it down. I wish I could say that all the gravel came sliding down abruptly, but I neither saw nor felt anything.

My mom, on the other hand, was working for State Parks & Rec on the 14th floor at 10th & N, and her wheeled office chair went sliding around her cubicle.

I was still about two years away from becoming an embryo

so i guess my genetic material was still half inside my mom and half inside my dad

im sure it shook though, I just dont remember

I was sleeping in a crib.
My parents were out shopping, while my grandma (first time in America, nice intro to CA) was watching me.

My mom and younger brother were in the front room watching the pre-game—they were A’s fans—so I took my self back to my parents bedroom to watch Club MTV until the game started. (Was not in the mood to hear about the Bash Brothers, etc., and as a teenage girl I would have been remiss to miss that day’s half hour of cool dancing.) When the earthquake hit, I ran down the hallway and my mom, brother and I took refuge in a couple of doorways. My dad was just leaving from work and thought a few students were pranking him by bouncing up and down on his bumper to make his car shake. We lived in Santa Rosa, and from the jolt we all assumed the quake was on the Rogers Creek faultline; were floored when we found out the epicenter was so far away and of course by the magnitude. We watched the TV coverage and just sat in shock as they started to show footage of the Cypress. Still unreal that it was 20 years ago.

We were WAY up in the right field upper reserves. I was eight. I dove under my seat just like the earthquake drills in school. Does anybody remember those?

I was 12 at the time, and at the Columbia Park Boys Club. We were playing handball in the yard, when the fences started moving in on us and then people started running out of the building yelling “Earthquake!” I turned towards 17th street, because I heard someone yell – and saw a roofer falling from the roof of the hose across the street. Everyone came out of the Boys Club, and they didn’t let us leave until they had made sure the building was clear – then they said “go home” - so I RAN my butt home the 4 blocks to my Grandma’s house. Windows were breaking, the streetlights were out, and people were generally feaked the fuck out. We listened to the radio because the power was out, and I remember the smoke and the haze pretty vividly. I also remember thinking “how did the whole bridge fall”? The news was so crazy at that point – saying that the Cypress Freeway had fallen, and that there were thousands dead under there… it turned out to be much less horrible, but horrible none the less.

Actually we had left our seats to go get dogs and beers. My buddy Gordy was looking out at the parking lot and told me to look at the cars (which were doing the wave), but I was too late and only felt the earthquake.

At the time after the inital quake, the power went out momentarily, then back on with a back up generator. The crowd roared with delight when the power kicked back on and we actually got our beers and went back to our seats to await the start of Game 3. We sat in the seats and wondered why the players were milling around on the field. Finally we found a guy with a small portable TV, and the first two sights we saw were the collapsed section of the Bay Bridge and the Marina on fire. You would’ve thought the whole of San Francisco was in flames.

It took the Candlestick park management about 30 minutes to make an annoucement the game was cancelled.

Candlestick got and still gets a lot of grief, but that great old park held fast against the 7.1 that rocked the Bay in 89.

I remember when I was 31, and the “Grant Appreciation Day” thread was knocked off the recommended FanPost list by a diary about the ’89 Quake. It was awful. I can remember it as if it were last week.

An A’s fan I worked with got great seats about 10 rows up from 1st Base. We arrived early for BP and were shooting the breeze when the quake hit. It started with a low rumble that sounded like everyone in the Park were pounding their feet in unison. Then the row in front of us jerked one way and our row jerked the other. We looked at each other like “WTF?” and looked up to see lights popping out all around the stadium. The players ran from the dugouts and started milling around the diamond. Within a few minutes wives were allowed onto the field and I’ll never forget how stunning Canseco’s was in a red leather dress that looked like it was painted on.

I think everyone thought the game was going to be played; we certainly did until a guy a couple of rows in from of us who had a handheld TV started showing images of the Bay Bridge. At that point we sat down and pulled out a smoke (cig for me; a “victory” cigar for him… yes, it wasn’t illegal to do so in those days) because we knew it was going to take forever to get home. We sat there until we were politely asked to leave around 6:30. Even then, it took me 4 hours to get home (Mountain View at the time).

I sent a letter afterwards to Lurie and the Mayor Agnos because I felt that Candlestick Security and the SFPD did an exemplary job of handling the situation.

One of the oddest things I recall is that the fellow who invited me wasn’t even a friend. We shared the USF “school tie” (different classes), but we were actually rivals at work (big company politics). He later told me that he thought it would be more fun to go with a Giants fan than with another A’s fan; and that I was the most diehard Giants fan he knew. I haven’t seen him in at least 15 years, but I still appreciate the gesture.

Lived then where I live now. A few months earlier, I met the base of this on the ground, about 100 yards away off the highway, right before it moved into the area where the video was shot. I had my old pickup floored, doing about 90, wife and daughter terrified. Very freaky to be that close to one. Got to town and got four flat tires from all the shingle nails in the street.

At any rate, I came home from work to watch the WS and got the news reports. Just stunned to see places I knew from my time out there as a kid, Bay Bridge, I-880, Marina District. The quake I was lucky enough to miss out on, the few I went through were reasonably tame. I have a niece who lives in Seattle who is phobic about tornadoes, I tell her, hey, if I know where a tornado is and what direction it is going, worse comes to worst I can drive away from it. I’ve done it. You’re stuck in an earthquake, there’s nowhere to go.

Roughly a year and a half away from being born.

I was 2 but I remember this quite well. At home. Mom was on the phone with dad(who was at work). My brother and sister were outside. Apparently(now I don’t remember this) while mom was on the phone with my dad and the quake had just started, I ran up to her yelling “earthquake! earthquake!” Afterwards some neighbors came by and checked up on everyone. My dad worked security at Children’s Hospital and didn’t come home until the next day. I remember being extremely upset over that.

I also remember a few days after when we could make phone calls again and my dad’s family in Michigan calling panicked, thinking the Bay Area had separated from the rest of the states. heh

I was 21, and in radar school at Mare Island. We were on an evening schedule then for some reason. I was playing ping-pong at break when it hit. We looked out of the window at this huge lawn that was next to our building and it was rolling like water. I had seen this before so this time I believed it. Then the Marines piled out of their barracks on the other side of the lawn, obviously freaked out. We had a good laugh at that.

We then went to a different building for some hands on stuff, and there was no TV or radio there. It was not until about 11pm that night when we were done that I heard all of the news about the Cypress Freeway and the Bridge. They were estimating that as many as 3000 people had been killed, and that was very surreal. That moment, and the beginning of the first gulf war (when I was getting ready to go there), and 9/11 are some of the most vivid, sobering moments of my lifetime.

I was studying for the LSAT in Davis. I thought someone behind me was kicking my chair and was annoyed. Then I realized that no one was sitting behind me. In 1994, I was in LA during the Northridge quake. During that quake, i learned from past experience that no one was kicking my chair.

I was in my college dorm, a few of us were arguing in our living room suite about changing the channel from the Playboy channel over to the W.S. (I was arguing in favor of watching the game). All of the sudden the 3 story building started rocking in a violent manner. One roomate literally ran through the screen window on the sliding glass door. Being a veteran of many earthquakes, I grabbed my one roomate who was from the Seattle area and probably had never felt an earthquake before and told him to calm down and pulled him under the kitchen dining table.

When the shaking finally stopped everyone was ok. The power and phone lines were obviously out. There was no way to contact our families and tell them that we were ok. I remember the immediate announcement that the college campus was closed down for a handful of days and they warned us not to use the days off to get drunk and have wild parties, as we had to be ready just in case another big quake hit (yeah right!). Our campus suffered some minor structural damage, but that was about it.

I suffered a much worse butt kicking during the Northridge quake!

vr, Xeifrank

My regular seats were down in the lower section, section 9 (I think), middle of that area, 1st base side, so that I could just zoom straight on a line to my car when the game ends, where I parked near the gate so that I wouldn’t have to wait for a million cars to cut in ahead of me trying to get out. But since I was just a partial season ticket-holder, I guess that got me pushed above. Thank goodness, I am not sure what my thoughts and actions would have been had I been underneath.

I think the World Series game saved the lives of the many who normally would have been in the freeway sections that collapsed in Oakland. As someone who took that route many a time at that time, it was normally a parking lot at that time of day. It was relatively sparse that day, I guess due to people either leaving early for the game or leaving early to avoid the traffic.

And that’s what I did, I took the day off so that I could relax and leave early for the game. I was excited, had my new handheld TV tuned in, sitting next to my brother, who was not a sports fan in any sense possible, but who knew the significance of the game (Bay Area World Series) so he took up my offer to go to a historic event. Little did he know how historic. I was just being nice in offering, because I love my brother, but I never thought in a googol-plex years that he would accept due to his absolute total lack of interest in sports.

Since we got there early to avoid the traffic, we were up there for a while, tuned into the TV broadcast and talking. Not a lot of people were in the stadium yet, at least not in my memory, or maybe it was just that upper upper section (we were basically near the lip of the stadium). I don’t remember there being that many people around me.

I remember when it hit. First, you’re wondering “what the hell?”, then you’re wondering “what the f*ck!”. I had been through a number quakes before, my first about 10 years prior, but this one just shook and shook, longer than any I had felt before. At one point, I saw one of the light fixtures break off and fall a bit above our heads, but still secure. When it stopped, I stood up and gave off a great yelp of excitement and relief.

Then the fear set in.

The broadcast of Al Michaels et al ended, but other news streamed in about the damage. People would come in from the parking lot and one man told us about how the ground liquified during the tremor and he saw a low sports car rise above the large van/truck next to it in the parking lot. Lots of death and destruction reported, and we had no way to check on our family or friends in the East Bay or SF.

We decided to stick around and not fight the traffic, so we just wandered around the stadium, seeing what others had to say or report, plus somehow it seemed better to be on the move than sitting there waiting. We learned of damage in parts of Candlestick and people would share when some news came up.

After many hours, we finally decided to leave and the freeways were relatively clear. We first hit my brother’s girlfriend’s family home and they reported no damage of any sort. We called home from there and found out that nothing happened to our family’s home either.

Which I found utterly unfathomable, my mom and sister collected a lot of junk that was all over the place, and there were items that I would have bet would have fallen over and perhaps hurt someone.

Aside from some piles of stuff falling over, there was no visible effects of the quake at home, we were very lucky, very thankful.

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