It was October 1st, 1989 at 5:05 pm. The World Series game was just starting between the Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants in the Oakland, California stadium. A 7.3 magnitude earthquake started at Loma Prieta Mountain, about 3 miles from our home in Soquel, California. Greg and I and Alicia who was about 1 year old were in the Soquel Ice Cream Parlour getting an ice cream. When it started, it looked like a wave coming toward us about one foot high. Greg grabbed Alicia and we went out the front door. A big glass window shattered behind us. I told Greg to run to the right, but fortunately he didn't respond. The whole brick wall on the right exploded and filled the sidewalk and part of the road. We probably would have been killed if we had gone that way. We looked at the bank building across the street and the whole roof collapsed. Fortunately the workers had gone home at 5:00 pm and the building was empty. We wen to our car and drove up to our house. When we got there Kaye, Bonnie and Jimmy were on our lawn.
At the house when the earthquake hit Jimmy who was about 3 years old was outside. He started running to the house and the quake knocked him down and he had a blood nose. Bonnie was running down the hallway to get Jimmy and she was knocked from one wall to the next on her way out of the house. She said that the water in the swimming pool in our backyard had giant waves that sloshed from one end of the pool to another. She ran out and got Jimmy. Kaye was out in the workshop at the side of the gameroom when it started. She started to run past the gameroom and the wave knocked Kaye off her feet. She watched our motor home parked in the driveway sway back and forth like it was going to tip over. Windows in the gameroom and home were breaking. The quake lasted 5-7 minutes. When it was over Kaye, Bonnie and Jimmy sat on the lawn and we drove up.
We were outside on the lawn when the 5.5 aftershock came. It sounded like a freight train coming down the canyon. we had many aftershocks during the next 3 or 4 weeks. We all stayed in the motor home. we had no phone, water, or electricity. Our house had raised in elevation 2 feet higher. We had over $300,000 in damage to our house and pool. Our house was really a mess. Our cupboards came down off the walls. The kitchen was full of broken dishes. Anything that was breakable, broke. Rocks came off our big hexagon fire place.
We were sitting there not knowing what to do a couple of days later when the men from the Elder's Quorom came up to help us. A contractor named Bren't came up and put our cabinets back on the wall. A plumber put our pipes back together. Many elder's came with shovels and wheelbarrows and shoveled up the mess in our kitchen. The Relief Society sisters fed the workers. We were so grateful for all that they did. We piled the broken stuff out in the driveway.
We restored it and it was much more beautiful than before the earthquake. It took many months to pu the house and pool and deck back together. We had to replace everything but the roof on the cabana. Greg and I jackhammered and wheeled out all the concrete in wheelbarrows through our entry hall to the driveway. That was the only access we had to the backyard. There was a pile of concrete 10-12 feet high, 20 feet wide and at least 30 feet long which we had to have trucked away. Bill had done stonework in our bedroom and the gameroom and not one of his stones came out. There was 10 tons of stone done by professional stone masons on our big hexagon fireplace and about half of the stone came down. The rest had to be taken down to repair the fireplace. We got a stonemason from Asland, Oregon, to repair out 16 foot high, 6 feet sides tapered up to a skylight that went all the way around the fireplace. We also had him do our entry hall, hall, cabana, and a study off our bedroom. We had a copper cap on our fireplace chimney. We put new tile counters and floors in the kitchen and bathrooms and family room.
The most beautiful change was the cement work we had done outside. We got a company that made the cement look like real rocks and they put a big set of waterfalls at the far side of our pool and fake rocks as a coping round the pool. They also made many large fake rocks by the pool and deck. It was really beautiful.
Cathy and her family and Marjorie, Kaye's mom, came through the earthquake with very little damage.
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