Napa Quake: A Personal Account
Saturday, August 23, 2014. I wasn’t feeling well that night. I was up until just past 1:00 am when I finally gave in and took prescription pain medication. At 3:20 am on Sunday, August 24, deep in drug-induced sleep, I was stirred into half consciousness by a rumbling I thought must be thunder.
But there’s never thunder in Napa.
The thought hadn’t even fully formed before my bed pitched forward, snapping me upright. I couldn’t figure out what was happening with the bed; it was bucking like a horse, at times completely airborne and hovering above the carpet. It didn’t occur to me until a good three seconds later that it was an earthquake.
I have to crawl under my desk, I thought, recalling years of earthquake education and drills Californians are subjected to. But it was immediately obvious that I wasn’t going to be moving anywhere but where the earth wanted to take me. I could barely stay seated in bed much less try to get across the room to my desk. Besides, it sounded like my desk was about to fall over on me. I stayed where I was, clutching the blankets on either side of me. I was too shocked to scream. All I could do was hold on and wait for it stop.
I heard my neighbor screaming, car alarms wailing all up and down the street. In the dark, things were crashing around the room. The power flickered and died; the fan I had running to stave off the heat of the summer night cut off, and the streetlights went out, plunging me into total blackness.
The shaking stopped. My neighbor was still screaming, but not as urgently. My heart beat in my throat. I couldn’t see anything. Not a sliver of light streamed through the part in my bedroom curtains. Before I could even move I heard my dad at the bottom of the stairs calling up to me, asking if I was all right. My breath shaking, I managed to answer, “Yes. I’m scared, but I’m okay.”
I didn’t hear him on the stairs. He’d probably already rushed away to turn off the gas line and start checking on our neighbors and the house. I slowly climbed out of bed on shaky legs, trying to make sure I didn’t step on or trip over anything. It was so incredibly dark. I couldn’t find my glasses or my flashlight. Both had been on the nightstand by my bed. They must have gone flying somewhere across the room. The only coherent thought I had was “find a flashlight.”
In my stupor, I stumbled across the room, through the hallway, down the stairs and into the kitchen, where I knew a flashlight was stuck to the fridge with a magnetic strip. I was incredibly lucky I didn’t get hurt during my idiotic journey. In the dark, I could’ve easily tripped over something and broken my neck. As it was, I stepped into the kitchen and onto broken glass. Again, I was lucky. Though barefoot, I wasn’t wounded. I thank my tough ugly feet for that.
I clicked on the flashlight and pointed it at the floor. Water glasses had been launched out of one of the kitchen cupboards and shattered all over. Mom came in the kitchen and said Dad had, indeed, run outside to turn off the gas and check on the neighbors. We were both uninjured but terrified. I suddenly realized I hadn’t seen or heard the cats. Flashlight in hand, I ventured back upstairs to search for them and my glasses. Though my vision was blurry, I saw that, miraculously, none of the pictures lining the stairway walls had fallen and the big bookcase in the hallway was upright. Books and a framed photo of my niece and nephew had flown off the shelves. The glass in the frame was broken but not littering the carpet.
In my bedroom, once again I was in awe that more things hadn’t fallen. The quake was so violent, how did the window not shatter and the air conditioning unit fall on the roof? How was the TV still on the table, my dresser and desk still in position? Later we realized it was the direction of the shaking that had kept more things from falling. Files and boxes lining my closet shelves had crashed to the floor, but other than my bedside lamp, that was about it in my room.
I rummaged around and found my glasses and flashlight on the floor. I started calling for the cats and looking under the bed. Downstairs, Mom called that she’d found Piggy under the couch and Eve was under her bed. But we couldn’t find Kuma. We walked around the house calling for him. Later I found him hiding under my bed, so tightly squished into one corner I hadn’t seen him before. He was uninjured, but refused to move. I had to pull him out and put him and the others in their carriers and set the carriers near the front door in case we had to leave the house.
Dad returned and said the neighbors were okay, just scared, and as far as he could tell the house didn’t seem to have any major damage visible from the outside. Mom swept up the glass in the kitchen. The TV in the playroom/den had flown off the shelf, yanking the cable out of its socket. We righted the TV, which somehow was not broken, and scouted the house for significant damage. We found nothing besides a few fallen and broken items. Since it didn’t appear we were going to have to evacuate, Mom and Dad went back to bed but I was too shaken—literally and figuratively—to sleep.
I kept the cats in their carriers to keep them calm and contained and put them in the upstairs bathroom. But there was no way I was going back into my room to try to rest. Shaking on upper floors is always more violent than ground floors, and I didn’t want to feel any aftershocks up there. I settled on the couch in the living room and tried to close my eyes. I did feel one aftershock: a quick, violent jolt that only lasted a second. As soon as there was light outside, I went out to look at the house and around the neighborhood. I couldn’t see any visible damage anywhere. Everything looked normal.
The power came back on later, but it ran at lower voltage than normal all day and flickered off and on occasionally. At first we couldn’t get any channels on the TV, but eventually a few local stations came in. The earthquake was all over the news. We were hoping it wasn’t too bad, given that our house was relatively unscathed. We were wrong. Much of west Napa and downtown had been heavily damaged. There were no fatalities but lots of injuries, although most were minor. Everyone kept saying how lucky we were that the quake hit in the middle of the night when people weren’t roaming the streets. If the quake had hit at any other time, rubble falling from buildings would have killed people. Flying broken glass would have acted as shrapnel.
The next day I ventured downtown with my camera. I was shocked. Businesses and houses were destroyed. Churches were damaged. Historic buildings like the downtown post office were in shambles. It was insane. Everywhere people were working to clean and stabilize and repair, and many were wandering the streets like me, eyes wide and teary. I didn’t expect to have such an emotional response, but this was my hometown. Seeing the center of it so damaged hurt my heart. I knew we would recover, but the wounds were deep. It would take time.
As I walked down Third Street, I passed a small business with their broken windows covered in particleboard. Someone had written, in bright red paint, “We <3 Napa.” That sign was photographed numerous times, published in newspapers and posted all over the internet. And it was true. The community banded together. We rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We donated time and money and supplies. We comforted each other and shared our earthquake stories. We learned to smile and go on.
