Earthquake Weather

There was no chill in the air this morning. It was warm and a little hazy, and it's going to get hot and hazier. Something about the combination of warmth and haze and low-angle light makes me edgy. I don't think I'm the only one.

Today is the 16th anniversary of the Loma Prieta quake. Everybody has their stories. My father and younger brother were at the ball game, and made their way to the Examiner office (where my father worked). I was in Palo Alto on a temp job, and it took seven hours to get home to my wife and 4-month-old son in Oakland. I remember waiting for a ferry and watching the full moon rise over the East Bay, a weirdly beautiful deep yellow-orange from all the smoke. I walked from Jack London Square to my home on the north end of Lake Merritt, and just a few blocks from home a crazy man started walking with me and babbling about how his body was California. It was that kind of night.

Yesterday I had to drive to the East Bay and the two main onramps to the Bay Bridge were closed as part of the earthquake retrofit of the west span. 16 years later, the quake lives on.