On that day, many of the Wescotts were at Mom and Dad's house for TGIF, our weekly family gathering. We were watching Al Michaels and Tim McCarver getting ready to broadcast game three of the World Series, ironically matching the San Francisco Giants against the Oakland Athletics from just across the San Francisco Bay. As we watched, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area.
As written on Wikipedia, "Due to the sports coverage of the 1989 World Series, it became the first major earthquake in the United States that was broadcast live on national television. Rush-hour traffic on the Bay Area freeways was lighter than normal due to nearly 62,000 people present at the game at Candlestick Park in San Francisco, and this may have prevented a larger loss of life, as several of the Bay Area's major transportation structures suffered catastrophic failures."
Also, "Viewers saw the video signal begin to break up, heard McCarver repeat a sentence as the shaking distracted him, and heard McCarver's colleague Al Michaels exclaim, "I'll tell you what—we're having an earth—."[53] At that moment, the feed from Candlestick Park was lost.[80]
The network put up a green ABC Sports graphic as the audio was switched to a telephone link. Michaels cracked, "Well folks, that's the greatest open in the history of television, bar none!" accompanied by the excited screams of fans who had no idea of the devastation elsewhere. ABC then switched to an episode of Roseanne which was on standby for a rain delay situation, while attempting to restore electricity to its remote equipment. With anchorman Ted Koppel in position in Washington, D.C., ABC News began continuous coverage of the quake about 5:40 p.m. (Al Michaels, in the process, became a de facto on-site reporter for ABC)... ABC was able to use the Goodyear blimp to capture some images of the damage to the Bay Bridge."
Kevin Fagan, a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, covered the Cypress Freeway collapse at the time, and wrote this recently:
"n 15 seconds of 6.9-magnitude violence that day, the double-decked Cypress Freeway at the edge of West Oakland pancaked, killing 42, and the Marina’s fill-based ground liquefied, collapsing scores of buildings and leaving four people dead. Many feared that the two neighborhoods would never regenerate. And for years, parts of them didn’t."
It was an electrifying moment, experienced with most of the family together. Al Michaels did an outstanding job reporting on the major disaster. It's a happening frozen in time.
1989 was a year of many happenings in my life. I took Brady and Kelli on a three week trip up the Rockies, with my sister Loli and her kids Jessica and Mary. We met our cousin Kay and her daughter Stephanie and two other kids in Rocky Mountain National Park. They had driven up from their home in Houstin. We spent the next three weeks camping in national parks, ending in Glacier National Park, where Kathy and I worked in the summer of 1975. I was ecstatic to take our kids there to experiences its beauty and grandeur.
Just before we left, I had quit my job at Wavetek, where I'd worked for the previous nine and a half years. Wow, that was tough. I'd made many friends there. It was a huge deal for me to leave.
Also in October, Kathy started working for the Red Cross, San Diego-Imperial Counties Chapter, the beginning of a stellar 14 year experience. She, too, made many friends, and progressed to the position of Vice President.
We also moved from the Allied Gardens house we had lived in for six and a half years. After an aborted attempt to move back to Seattle, we lived with my parents for nearly a year.
Here we are today, getting ready to watch the San Francisco Giants start the World Series against the Kansas City Royals. As far as I know, there have been no 'pre-shocks' in the Bay Area, so no reason to expect a repeat of a major disaster. Go Giants!
