Excerpt: Earthquakes and You

Prologue

October 17, 1980, Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, 5:04 pm

Caitlin Tesla was four almost five years old and she was strapped into a small seat in the back of the car just like several other children in other cars. Her mother was swearing at the traffic. This time of day the bridge was filled with cars full of people rushing home from work. The smells, the noises, the rushing was just too much for Caitlin.

“Mama, Mama,” she cried.

“Not now, Cait,” Mama said. Caitlin could see the back of her head. She could see the mirror as mama looked up and smiled at her. Caitlin smiled back. She looked out the window to her right, seeing the blue blue blue of the water below.

Caitlin tried to remember many times later, her mother, the scene, even what she did when the earthquake shook the Oakland area. Later she read all the reports on the Loma Prieta earthquake, but dry reports and even pictures do not describe the utter terror of losing all control when an earthquake shakes the ground under your feet. Or in this instance, shakes the bridge under the car.

So Caitlin’s first memory was the shaking and then the falling. She could hear the screams of her mama and feel her heart beat hard in her chest. Then in seconds or eternity, which ever came first, the bridge and the car landed—hard.

Caitlin was crunched inside her seat. She could see her mother reach for her, tell her, “it’s okay, it will be okay.” For hours they were in the car, waiting for someone to notice them. It grew darker and darker. Caitlin began to cry. She could hear the murmurs from her mother.

The pictures do not describe the blood, the pain, the terror of one small girl. At the time, she didn’t know how close she came to losing her mama.

The fire crew had to carefully climb down the infrastructure of the bridge to find them still strapped into the car. The mother babbled in gratitude. Her injuries included broken ribs, concussion, and several contusions. Cait had none. Just a scratch across her forehead. They would live will others wouldn’t. Sixty three people died. 3757 people were wounded.

The crew carefully put Mama on a stretcher, carefully strapped her in, and lifted her to the waiting ambulance. They carried Catlin up. She remembered being strapped to the back to a fireman. She wasn’t scared as she smelled the sweat of a working man and saw the land around her. She would remember how fascinating it was to be a passenger when another climbed. It helped her in her work. She would remember being strapped into the ambulance and watching her mother being cared for by the paramedics. They became her heroes.

She would remember sitting in a hospital chair waiting for her mother. The nurses would bring her water and food. They would show her around the hospital. And the next day, when her mother was ready to go home, she already knew that one day she would work in a hospital. These memories would be seared into her brain. She would never forget. Never.

By the next year, they had moved to Reno to be near Caitlin’s grandparents. Mama used to say that she had learned a hard lesson. Then she would smile at Caitlin’s grandparents.

Caitlin grew into a young lady. It was then that her mama knew that the Loma Prieta had affected her child when she joined the National Guard and became a health care specialist, which was very similar to being a paramedic.

“I need money for college,” she told her mother. But, Mama knew that it was not only money. And mama worried that she would lose this bright wonderful girl to either Iraq or Afghanistan. Mama kept quiet. And when Caitlin was sent to California to work as a paramedic for wild fire fighters, she breathed a sigh of relief. And when Caitlin came home from her first tour of Iraq, maybe a little quieter, but sane, she was even happier.

But only Caitlin knew the ambition that burned inside her. She was going to travel. She was going to save people. It was her mission. Only she knew how deeply the earthquake had scarred her that bright autumn day in 1989.