20 Years Ago Today
5:04pm, October 17th, 1989
Loma Prieta Quake
In 1989 I was working as a Registered Nurse for a temp agency that sent us all over town to fill vacancies at various hospitals. My specialty was Critical Care.
On the day of the quake, I was working in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab at the VA hospital (Ft. Miley, on outer Clement Avenue.) Luckily we had just finished the last case and returned the patient to his room. I hate to think what would have happened if we'd had a wire in his heart when the quake hit. Anyway, I was standing at the sink, washing instruments, when the rumble started. Things started falling off shelves and furniture started falling over. I turned and looked across the room at Abby, who was standing in the closet doorway. We both said, "This is a big one." A third woman, a researcher whose name I don't remember, was just screaming non-stop. It seemed to go on a long time. I knew I should get to a doorway, like Abby, but I couldn't walk - things were moving too much - so I just hung on to the sink and stayed where I was.
The power went out, but an emergency light near the ceiling came on. Good thing, because when the shaking stopped we realized that the only exit was blocked by metal shelving units that had fallen criss-cross in the narrow entry hall in front of the door. Abby and I cleared a path to the door and led the still-screaming researcher out to the hall. There was a window at the end of the hall and we looked out to see all the doctors down on the lawn (we were on the second or third floor) waving at us and yelling for us to "get out of there - it's not safe." I thought, "He must be kidding - the patients can't leave." I told Abby I was going over to the Intensive Care Unit to see if they needed help. She said she was going to take the still-screaming researcher outside and then come join me.
Over in ICU, the nurses had everything under control. There was enough auxiliary power to operate the essential equipment and they had plenty of staff, so I checked in with the Nursing Director and then headed home. Luckily, I lived just a couple of miles away, on the other side of Golden Gate Park, in the outer Avenues. It was a warm, sunny day and it would have been a nice walk, except for the odd stillness, and the bumper -to-bumper (mostly stalled) traffic. I still don't understand where all those cars came from, or where they were all going. This was the outer Avenues - there's never any traffic out here. Even Golden Gate Park was jammed. As I walked through the park along Chain of Lakes Drive, the canyon of trees echoed the sounds of car-radios and I heard snatches of stories about fires, which I believed, and of the Bay Bridge falling down, which I did not believe - I thought it was just typical hysteria.
When I finally got to the house I was renting, I was able to unlock the door, but I could just barely open it enough to squeeze myself in. Stuff had fallen on the other side and partially blocked the door. Structurally, the house (a classic Sunset two story wood frame building) was fine, but the contents were a mess. Everything that had been on an open shelf or table was on the floor. Furniture which was taller than wide had fallen over (and dumped its contents on the floor.) Lots of broken glass... lots of spilled liquids. I started cleaning up, trying to get the worst of it before it got dark.
The day after the earthquake I had been scheduled to work in the Recovery Room at RK Davies Hospital (at Castro and Duboce.) I knew it was unlikely that any surgery would be done that day... my phone was still out, and there was no way to check in with the hospital or with my agency, so I just went anyway, figuring I'd work wherever they needed me. They were glad to see me and sent me up to the ICU. Luckily, the census in ICU was low that week, but due to the unsettled nature of the circumstances, they didn't want to turn away any help. Some of the regular staff had spent the night at the hospital because they couldn't get home. Other staff who had been scheduled that day, had not been heard from. The hospital was still on auxiliary power, which meant that only essential equipment got power - life support machines, safety lights in the corridors and stairwells, and so forth. The patient rooms were dim, with only the light from the windows, and it was hot (no air conditioning, and the windows didn't open.) The intercom and phones weren't working so there was a constant need for message-carriers. Miraculously, there always seemed to be a volunteer when you needed one.
There were no fancy treatments that day - just keeping everybody alive and reassured was the order of the day. Some of the patients had visitors who told us what was going on outside. Some of the patients were worried about family members they hadn't heard from. A few patients told me about their wild rides back and forth across the room in the wheeled hospital beds. Word came up from the kitchen that they were doing their best to put together some meals for the patients (without cooking or refrigeration!) But they didn't have anything for the staff - we were on our own. I knew I had food at home, and I'd be returning there later that day, but I felt terrible for the nurses who had been at the hospital for twenty-four hours. They'd been eating a few crackers and some apple juice scrounged from the Nurses' Lounge. By mid-shift my patients had been transferred out of ICU so I volunteered to go on a food run. I collected money from all of the nurses in ICU and on the surgical floor, and with a visitor who agreed to help me carry things, headed out to look for an open food store. We lucked out - a few blocks from the hospital we found a little corner produce store that was making sandwiches. We returned to the hospital with a couple of big boxes of food and felt like heros. Then I went home to finish cleaning up the mess at my place.
Loma Prieta Quake
In 1989 I was working as a Registered Nurse for a temp agency that sent us all over town to fill vacancies at various hospitals. My specialty was Critical Care.
On the day of the quake, I was working in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab at the VA hospital (Ft. Miley, on outer Clement Avenue.) Luckily we had just finished the last case and returned the patient to his room. I hate to think what would have happened if we'd had a wire in his heart when the quake hit. Anyway, I was standing at the sink, washing instruments, when the rumble started. Things started falling off shelves and furniture started falling over. I turned and looked across the room at Abby, who was standing in the closet doorway. We both said, "This is a big one." A third woman, a researcher whose name I don't remember, was just screaming non-stop. It seemed to go on a long time. I knew I should get to a doorway, like Abby, but I couldn't walk - things were moving too much - so I just hung on to the sink and stayed where I was.
The power went out, but an emergency light near the ceiling came on. Good thing, because when the shaking stopped we realized that the only exit was blocked by metal shelving units that had fallen criss-cross in the narrow entry hall in front of the door. Abby and I cleared a path to the door and led the still-screaming researcher out to the hall. There was a window at the end of the hall and we looked out to see all the doctors down on the lawn (we were on the second or third floor) waving at us and yelling for us to "get out of there - it's not safe." I thought, "He must be kidding - the patients can't leave." I told Abby I was going over to the Intensive Care Unit to see if they needed help. She said she was going to take the still-screaming researcher outside and then come join me.
Over in ICU, the nurses had everything under control. There was enough auxiliary power to operate the essential equipment and they had plenty of staff, so I checked in with the Nursing Director and then headed home. Luckily, I lived just a couple of miles away, on the other side of Golden Gate Park, in the outer Avenues. It was a warm, sunny day and it would have been a nice walk, except for the odd stillness, and the bumper -to-bumper (mostly stalled) traffic. I still don't understand where all those cars came from, or where they were all going. This was the outer Avenues - there's never any traffic out here. Even Golden Gate Park was jammed. As I walked through the park along Chain of Lakes Drive, the canyon of trees echoed the sounds of car-radios and I heard snatches of stories about fires, which I believed, and of the Bay Bridge falling down, which I did not believe - I thought it was just typical hysteria.
When I finally got to the house I was renting, I was able to unlock the door, but I could just barely open it enough to squeeze myself in. Stuff had fallen on the other side and partially blocked the door. Structurally, the house (a classic Sunset two story wood frame building) was fine, but the contents were a mess. Everything that had been on an open shelf or table was on the floor. Furniture which was taller than wide had fallen over (and dumped its contents on the floor.) Lots of broken glass... lots of spilled liquids. I started cleaning up, trying to get the worst of it before it got dark.
The day after the earthquake I had been scheduled to work in the Recovery Room at RK Davies Hospital (at Castro and Duboce.) I knew it was unlikely that any surgery would be done that day... my phone was still out, and there was no way to check in with the hospital or with my agency, so I just went anyway, figuring I'd work wherever they needed me. They were glad to see me and sent me up to the ICU. Luckily, the census in ICU was low that week, but due to the unsettled nature of the circumstances, they didn't want to turn away any help. Some of the regular staff had spent the night at the hospital because they couldn't get home. Other staff who had been scheduled that day, had not been heard from. The hospital was still on auxiliary power, which meant that only essential equipment got power - life support machines, safety lights in the corridors and stairwells, and so forth. The patient rooms were dim, with only the light from the windows, and it was hot (no air conditioning, and the windows didn't open.) The intercom and phones weren't working so there was a constant need for message-carriers. Miraculously, there always seemed to be a volunteer when you needed one.
There were no fancy treatments that day - just keeping everybody alive and reassured was the order of the day. Some of the patients had visitors who told us what was going on outside. Some of the patients were worried about family members they hadn't heard from. A few patients told me about their wild rides back and forth across the room in the wheeled hospital beds. Word came up from the kitchen that they were doing their best to put together some meals for the patients (without cooking or refrigeration!) But they didn't have anything for the staff - we were on our own. I knew I had food at home, and I'd be returning there later that day, but I felt terrible for the nurses who had been at the hospital for twenty-four hours. They'd been eating a few crackers and some apple juice scrounged from the Nurses' Lounge. By mid-shift my patients had been transferred out of ICU so I volunteered to go on a food run. I collected money from all of the nurses in ICU and on the surgical floor, and with a visitor who agreed to help me carry things, headed out to look for an open food store. We lucked out - a few blocks from the hospital we found a little corner produce store that was making sandwiches. We returned to the hospital with a couple of big boxes of food and felt like heros. Then I went home to finish cleaning up the mess at my place.
Comments
she insisted! We opened our front door when it subsided and half the water from the outddoor pool of our apt. complex poured in to our apartment...people were running around screaming...64 dead in that one but it could have been a lot worse.