First, we are and were city people, but when our kids went off to college we got carried away with this romantic 2 1/2 acre former Christmas tree farm about 1/2 mile west of Hwy 17 and Lexington Reservoir in the lower Santa Cruz mountains.
We moved into a reinforced adobe brick home 4 minutes drive from downtown Los Gatos in Oct 1988. One year later, Oct 17 at 5 pm I was about to fix dinner. DH had been assigned to audit the Honolulu office of his CPA firm and we were to leave the next day. I had dropped off the dog and 4 cat to be boarded and had mani-pedi.
Then the earthquake hit--back and forth, up and down. I jumped in a doorway and look up toward the 31-ton tile roof and thought: "It's going to be hard to get out of here when the roof collapses."
What follows are just a few of my photos from the next day. Our 500-gallon propane tank, recently refilled for approaching winter, went over and I saw propane running down the hill and driveway. I jumped into my can drove to the fire station 1/2 mile away. I saw several plumes of smoke rising as I looked up toward Summit Rd on Hwy 17. All the fire engine were gone, one man remaining was closing up. He told me that propane is heavier than air and not to light a fire or candle and it would be okay.
I had a small portable battery TV so I could watch what was happening in SF, but nothing local. Phones out, no cell phones. Two closest neighbors away, I went to see the one still there, she was loading her kids and dogs into her car and I was left alone. DH was in a meeting in his new office building in downtown San Jose--built on rollers so it just swayed back and forth, so he wasn't too concerned until everybody slipped away and he was the only one left.
His trip home took several hours because Hwy 17 was covered with boulders and destruction, but he got to our house at 9 pm. I packed my car with a few photo albums and clothes for both of us an left it on top of the driveway in case a fire started or aftershocks brought more damage. He laughed because I packed a lot of clean underwear for him, but mostly tops, no bottoms.
First phone call was from AA at 1 am telling us our flight was delayed 24 hours. DH had a car mobile phone and we were able to reach my sister in Saratoga later that evening. They had had little damage. She called my parents and my sons, who were at college in LA.
When we got to Hawaii and I put on a tank top, I discovered I had bruises on both shoulders and upper arms where I was thrown back and forth against the doorway.
Highway 17 was closed for a month--our house cleaners couldn't get through but the leak finder company could. We had radiant heating under the tile floors, and several pipes broke. Fortunately we had bought a new fireplace insert that gave us some heat and there were electric heaters in the bedroom. When we returned from Hawaii a week later we had no water. The water main had broken, but wasn't too difficult to repair.
Many more photos of damage--the worst was hard to see. Our pool wasn't damaged other than the tile.
In memory of that day:
1 Our aerial and roof. $17K damage. The top tiles were tossed up and fell down on the bottoms, and many of them broke. Chimney was okay.
2-4 Breakfast nook. 3 is where I was standing when it hit. We'd just put in a new oven behind me--old oven was never attached--we wisely attached new one, which might have landed on me. 4 is where I stood and wondered how I'd get out.
5 is our pool. Fountain knocked over. About 10" of pool water sloshed into back room/office you can see. Window slid open and water went in.
6 DH cleaning up some of our fine china which had been on display. Also other china and his grandmother's crystal which he believed came with her when she came over from Russia. (I think she bought it in Chicago.)
7 My younger son's bedroom. 3 6-ft bookcases went over on his bed. In our current house we have attached tall bookcases to the wall.
8 No electricity for 24 hours. Only an electric can opener to open tuna for my dinner. I think I got it open using a beer opener.
9-10 Our propane tanks. 13 gallon for spa slid off base, if it had gone over it would have rolled down the hill. The other is the 500-gallon tank--you can see why it went over upside down onto its controls so I couldn't turn off propane. The company installed a new one bolted down to a concrete base.
11-12 All our Mexican margarita glasses and a lot of pottery smashed. We had an antique chest but the top and bottom were separate pieces. The dealer that sold it to us claimed it came from the basement of the Stanford Estate basement, but I never got proof from her. It has the date stamped that shows it was imported to the US in from Europe. We had the top repaired and it now stands in our entry hall. For fun and I hope not bad luck it's #13.
We were very lucky. In our hotel in Honolulu I watched the earthquake coverage, which was worsened by the rainstorms that followed.
One more edit:
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