From California Trip!
One cannot even begin to consider oneself a Californian until one has been through at least one significant earthquake. The first one I felt was in the late 1970’s in downtown San Francisco. I was working on the 30th floor of a building when I looked outside and noticed the men worked on the construction of the building next to ours were swaying. Then I felt it myself. I had a mat knife in my hand and my first thought was to get rid of that so I wouldn’t stab myself.Someone announced we should leave the building and we all calmly walked down 30 flights of stairs. Along with hundreds of others,we waited on the street for 30 minutes and then returned to work
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The next major earthquake I felt in Northern California was in 1989 when the Bay Bridge collapsed. At the time we had an advertising photography studio in Berkeley and Richard was photographing a pyramid of cans os stewed tomatoes. The art director was agonizing over whether a few fresh cherry tomatoes at the bottom of the pyramid would take the viewer away from the main event (the cans). It was driving Richard crazy. It was almost five o’ clock and he still hadn’t shot a sheet of film. Sometimes even if you are getting paid well by the hour,enough is enough. Richard said to the client, “There’s going to be a big earthquake, the lights are going to go out and all the cans will fall down. Why don’t I shoot it now, with and without the tomatoes?” The client looked at him as if he were insane but agreed. So he shot the set up every which way and then retired to the bathroom to read the newspaper. The art director continued to fuss. The next minute the toilet bowl started to sway. The bathroom was well constructed so Richard thought it would be the safest place to stay. He shouted to the client to get under a doorway. After it was over, everything was as he had predicted - no power, the 12 foot high mono pod and camera had jumped six feet and the cans were all over the floor. The client was screaming and looking at Richard as if he were the devil. She ran out of the studio never to be seen there again!
“I thought she would be happy that I called the earthquake and got the shot, but I think somehow she thought I was to blame for it” Richard said ruefully
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I meanwhile had gone to the most southern part of Alameda to deliver a job. As I drove back towards the freeway I heard an announcement on the radio saying there had been a toxic spill on the Nimitz Freeway. I decided to drive back to Berkeley using city streets so I drove about 10 miles on East 14th Street (something I had never done before) Consequently I was well away from the Cypress overpass when it collapsed. When the earthquake started, I lost control of my car and thought I had a flat tire until I noticed all the telephone poles were swaying. The strange thing is that I was unable to trace the source of the radio announcement I heard. Somethings in life are inexplicable. Anyway after the earthquake, I made my way back to the studio. We then picked up Anne, Richard’s mother, who understandably was quite upset. We decided to go sailing. We thought it would calm Anne down and Richard had the somewhat naive idea that someone might need rescuing in the bay! We didn’t rescue anyone but we got some unusual pictures of the bridge.
©Kathleen Goodwin
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