I had just gotten to my west Santa Cruz home from the beach area after scouting out sites for a proposed Surfer statue with two other city council members. I wanted to be home in time for the first pitch of the World Series game between the Giants and the A's.
I plopped onto my bed, turned on the television �" and it jumped at me. I knew right away it was an earthquake, and a big one. It turned out to have been centered in the Santa Cruz Mountains just a few miles away.
I shouted through the house to my roommate Thomas, "get out, get out." As I ran through the kitchen the dishes were pitching out of the cabinets and I just missed getting hit by a huge potted plant falling from the top of the refrigerator.
When I got to the backyard I had to dodge an old clothesline swinging wildly, and I became strangely transfixed by the palm tree down the street as it waved from one side to the other.
Thomas had been on the phone to his brother in New York. His brother heard Thomas's expletive about the earthquake, me shouting to get out, the phone bouncing on the floor, and the sound of glass breaking in the background �" and then the line went dead. He couldn't reach us for days, and he had no doubt we had been seriously hurt.
When the shaking stopped, our world in Santa Cruz had changed dramatically. Sixty percent of the buildings in our downtown were damaged beyond repair. Most routes in and out of the county were closed. Communications were out. It's hard to recall that 20 years ago what passed for cell phones were these huge boxes with a shoulder strap �" and that virtually nobody had one.
I eventually got to my car radio, and heard the first reports that a freeway in the East Bay had collapsed, part of the Bay Bridge was down, and fires were beginning to rage in the Marina. We had no television for days, and until the first newspaper arrived the next day �" printed out of town and trucked in �" I had trouble visualizing these situations.
At the time I was a member of the Santa Cruz City Council, having finished my second mayor's term the November before, and was also chair of the transit system's board of directors. The City Council met almost every day at first. Downtown was fenced off and closed. The first President Bush came to town to walk our main street and see the damage.
Despite the numbness, people kicked into action. We were still years before the HIV drug cocktail, and the Santa Cruz AIDS Project sent staffers to the house of each client to see how they were doing.
Remarkably, only six people were killed in Santa Cruz County. But that first night, two of them were buried in the rubble at the site a downtown coffee shop with no one knowing if they were still alive. Emergency personnel suspended digging at dark, because of the fear that the rumble of the generators providing light would bring damaged brick walls down on the first responders and create an even bigger tragedy.
One of those missing was believed to be a member of the gay community, and I was contacted frantically by friends who were outraged that the digging was stopped for the night with the chance that there were people underneath that could still be alive. When they were eventually found, it appeared they had died at the time of the quake �" but no one knew that during that first night.
The Highway 17 commute route between Santa Cruz and San Jose carried 20,000 cars a day prior to the quake �" and was closed to regular traffic for a month and a half. In the first days after the quake, the Santa Cruz transit general manager and myself were escorted by the California Highway Patrol to the summit. Zoe Lofgren, Rod Diridon, and the Santa Clara transit manager were similarly escorted up from the Santa Clara side. On a handshake, we began an over the hill commuter bus service �" to be escorted through the one passable lane by the highway patrol �" a service that continues to this day.
A week or two after the quake, I appeared on a KQED television show on the earthquake with Mayor Art Agnos and other Bay Area leaders. They all were in the studio. I sat on my bed on the phone with the television on. Every time I spoke, I could see my picture flash up on the screen.
My first time away after the quake was to the annual meeting of the gay elected officials in the Midwest. On the way there, any time the plane hit turbulence I instinctively ducked. I could not stop talking to my gay colleagues about the war zone we were in.
It's hard to believe it's been 20 years. I think Californians have once again grown complacent about the idea of a big quake. Responding to the 1989 quake was a daunting challenge, and one we met. Our tumultuous community was pulled together in ways I did not think possible. Our downtown was rebuilt, and it is even more vibrant than before. As an elected official I grew up during that period, but I hope never to see another quake of that magnitude during my life.
John Laird served on the Santa Cruz City Council from 1981 to 1990 and in 1983 became one of the first openly gay mayors in the country. He was also one of the first two gay men elected to the California Legislature, serving in the state Assembly from 2002 to 2008.