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Everywhere people yearned for news of what had happened around them. On downtown California Street, a crowd gathered around a woman equipped with a tiny battery-operated TV. Playing anchorwoman, she relayed the news to those who could not see her screen. When truncated copies of the San Francisco Chronicle appeared at 7 a.m. Wednesday, people threw quarters at the sellers and shoved one another to grab a copy.
On the morning after, some of the giddiness lingered. Entrepreneurs appeared on the streets, hawking $20 T shirts with the slogan I SURVIVED THE QUAKE OF '89, and shops announced half-price earthquake sales. But the mood turned to grimness as the extent of the destruction became clear. Officials estimated that property damage could mount to $10 billion or more, probably surpassing the losses from Hurricane Hugo. Throughout the quake zone, residents awoke to a crazy quilt of destruction in which some buildings were leveled while neighboring structures survived intact. In San Juan Bautista the 125-year-old home of restaurant consultant Becky McGovern is situated only 100 ft. from the San Andreas fault. Although it bounced "from one side to the other," the house did not fall down. At Mariposa House Restaurant in the same town, owner Barbara Kuhl said her building "did the Shimmy, Shimmy Ko-Ko Bop, but we didn't lose a thing." Her porch, however, had "gone out to meet two little old ladies" arriving for dinner.
Others were not so fortunate. Their frustration boiled into anger in the Marina district, where residents who tried to inspect their ruined houses were barred by police. After a shouting match with Mayor Art Agnos, a compromise allowed residents with escorts to enter their homes briefly to collect whatever they could before the buildings were torn down. "Our poor little lives are right here on the sidewalk," said Patrice Gehrke, loading a pickup with furniture and ferns. Diane Whitacre hoisted a drawing board on her shoulder so she could get on with her free-lance work. "The most important thing to me was the stuff I need to make a living," she observed. "Life does go on."
By Wednesday most of San Francisco had returned to near normal. The BART mass-transit system, which suffered only minor damage to its tunnel beneath the Bay, resumed normal service, and airports in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose were operating again. The surest sign that the crisis was over: baseball commissioner Fay Vincent announced that the World Series would resume Tuesday night if local officials decide it could be done safely.
Now comes the long work of reconstruction. Engineers say it may take four weeks to repair the Bay Bridge and up to 2 1/2 years to replace the wreck of I-880. Until the repairs are completed, 343,000 commuters will face a traffic nightmare as they are forced to use alternative routes. But the rebuilt structures are likely to be stronger than those they replace -- strong enough, it is hoped, to survive the dreaded Big One.