October 17 is the 20th anniversary of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake centered in Northern California. Like any event in one’s life that is out of the ordinary day-to-day flow of experience, anyone who experienced this event has indelible memories of the moment it happened. Here is mine.

Buried under a mountain of work for an upcoming event at Redwood Day School, I decided to leave my two daughters in After School Care while I finished my day’s work. My husband had called and said he would be coming home from San Francisco early to watch the World Series on television and wanted us to plan to eat dinner watching the game.

I remember looking at my watch at 5:00 p.m. and thinking I would write one more letter before walking down the hall to pick up the girl’s and head home. Within minutes the room lurched and rocked and rolled. I knew immediately what was happening. Bay Area earthquakes were nothing new to me. They were startling, but in my lifetime experience nothing more than a little earthshaking. Never all that serious. I knew the children would be frightened and my first thought was for them. Before the pitching even finished I had raced down the hall to help corral children under tables and doorways.

Joyce Evans, our Head of School, joined me in the sprint down the hall and we both lunged under tables with our arms full of six, seven and eight year olds. I remember looking out the open door to the playground and actually witnessing the undulating ground. Objects crashed all around us. Cupboard doors flew open and toys and books and supplies emptied themselves on the ground. This was not like any earthquake I had ever experienced.

Then the sirens started. We could hear them from all corners of the city. And they went on…and on. The children’s hushed silence turned to cries as their  shock turned to fear. Once it was apparent that the earth was still again we rounded up our charges and began to talk with them and quiet their anxiety.

It didn’t take long to assess that we were without water, electricity and phone service. As soon as we were could we took the children outside. Parents who could find a route made their way to the school to take their children home. One family brought us a portable television set and we saw for the first time the horror of the  Bay Bridge and Cypress Street collapse. Soon we began to realize that many of our students would have to stay in our care until their parents could find a way to the school. My own anxiety was very high. Although I had my two youngest children with me, I knew that my husband was on a bus that would have traveled the bridge and Cypress ramp and my oldest son was at Candlestick Park for the ballgame. It was late that night before I knew they were both safe. Both have their indelible memories of this event.

Late that night my husband was able to pick up the girls while I stayed with my colleagues to wait for parents to eventually arrive and reunite with their children. One of our teachers who was unable to make her way home stayed with us that night. Several of the children went to classmates’ homes. Eventually everyone was accounted for and we all had many blessings to count.

Life was altered for all of us in the next weeks as we waited for things to return to normal. Routes had to be changed, buildings were closed as we all learned about retrofitting, and people lost in the devastation were mourned. Somehow there is resilience. Life goes on and memories take shape.

For tourists to our great City by the bay it was a night they will never forget. No matter where they were from, the Marina District to the Santa Cruz mountains, no one escaped it. On Pier 39 where our production of The San Francisco Experience highlighted the 1906 Earthquake the full theater of visitors had to be forcefully ushered out of the theater when they thought what they were feeling was a “special effect!” Soon we added documentation of the 1989 earthquake letting those who missed October 17 feel the full experience of 15 seconds of earth shaking.