It’s hard to believe it’s been 16 years … so many images of that late afternoon are still so vivid.
Mid-October, and it was still bloody hot in San Jose. Doesn’t start really cooling down until November. Joe and I, engaged and living together (we were married a year and three days later) were working at a wholesaler of marble, granite and ceramic tile. It was time to go home, and we were both wrapping up the tail end of the work day when the shaking began.
I froze first, waiting for it to stop.
It didn’t. So I ran — with several of the others in the office part of the building, out the front; as Joe and the rest of the warehouse crew came out the back. The floor-to-ceiling windows at the entrance of the building were rippling like sheets being tossed over a bed.
We all met up outside the warehouse area, as the ground had finally stopped moving. Joe had a Walkman — one of the few things that helped him get through the grind in those days — and had already tuned in KGO, relaying the reports that had already started coming in from almost 100 miles away in all directions.
“The Cypress Structure has collapsed,” he said. I don’t think he believed it himself. It was hard for any of us to believe.
We made our way home, slowly, across surface streets with traffic lights out — even with the traffic jammed, things were eerily quiet. Our room in a second floor apartment hadn’t escaped unscathed; the top half of our board and brick bookshelves had collapsed, and the medicine cabinet had popped open, the bottles falling and smashing a crystal goblet I used to hang my earrings on. But we had power, so we turned on the television, and saw the pictures for the first time.
The San Francisco Marina District, buildings collapsed and burning. Cars running off the fallen section of the Bay Bridge.
And the Cypress Structure. What seemed like miles of double-deck elevated freeway, pancaked, slabs of concrete and steel lying atop and askew. It was still hard to believe. Even as I write this, with the freeway long since gone, it’s hard to believe.
A new park is being dedicated in Oakland today, where one of the Cypress off-ramps once ran. Story from the SFGate website