November 12-18: EARTHQUAKE!!!!!!!

Earthquake

The year was 1989 and I had taken my ‘78 Ford Fairmont, pointed it west, placed my foot on the throttle, and, by the time I looked up, found myself in California’s bay area, just south of San Jose, in a farm town called Gilroy.  Through my father’s younger brother I was able to get a temp job in the stockroom of a computer company called Amdahl.  My commute to and from work was one hour each way.

October of that year was big for the Bay Area.  Both baseball teams were in the World Series and for Game 3, our company treated us to catered food at a local sports bar.  In an outside beer garden, moments from first pitch, while I dug into an avocado BLT, the entire ground rattled like a high hat.  I mean it really shook for 20 seconds (look at a clock, 20 seconds is longer than you might think).

As I watched the ground roll it dawned on me I was the only at my table.  The protocol of running to the clear, during a quake, was lost on me.  By the time I stepped outside the majority of people were returning and we gathered around the TV’s inside which, as many of you might remember, began to show vivid pictures of destruction at The Bay Bridge, The Marina District, and remote areas of Northern California namely the town of Watsonville, the epicenter, which is just across the mountain from Gilroy, where I needed to return via Interstate 5.  All the way home they only lights were headlights as power outages and blackouts were rampant.    

Wikipedia Article on Loma Prieta Earthquake

Last Sunday at 5:40 a.m., in a driving rain storm, the ground shook once again for me and brought the entire town of Phede to a rousing beginning of the day. My host mother barreled out of the house yelling “Bhainchaalo” “Bhainchaalo” “Bhainchaalo” (pronounced: BUN-CHAI-O) which is Nepalese for Earthquake.  This was a smaller event than the Loma Prieta quake of 89 but it was big enough to get folks from this mountain up and at’em.  My host brother Bijaya, checked the news later and the official word was 5.0 on the Richter scale and no damage on the mountain or in the city of Kathmandu. 

Later at school the kids and I talked (as best we could with the mixture of English and Nepalese) about the quake and they were all awake when it hit.  All of it provided a nice slice of energy for the start of the week.