Last week there were five quakes around the Pacific Rim and several volcanic eruptions. Seismologists warn that this scenario is linked to impending quakes of huge magnitudes. One seismologist says that up to four disastrous quakes could hit the rim in short order. That’s more than a little scary for those of us who live there.
In 1989, I shared a home in the Santa Cruz Mountains of central California with my late husband, a pack of dogs and a pride of cats. On October 17, The Loma Prieta quake hit with the force of between 6.9 and 7.2 on the Richter scale. The following is the true story of how we survived.
My husband, Tom, was released from the hospital the day before after heart surgery. He was hugely relieved to be home and looking forward to watching the World Series that evening. I rose before dawn, as was my habit. A few months before I had moved my psychotherapy practice to an out building on our property, so I could be available to Tom while he struggled with his declining health. Several of our dogs worked with me as co-therapists. I got up early so we could all have a good run before our workday started.
That morning the dogs were goofier than usual. I noticed, but attributed it to their reaction to Tom’s return home and how compromised he was. In retrospect, I see that for transference instead of an accurate assessment. As we started down the fire trail that ran along the periphery of our property, I noticed several snakes lying across the path. It was too early for them to be out sunning themselves. As we continued on, more and more snakes appeared. They showed up in an astounding array of sizes, shapes and colors, many of which I hadn’t seen, in twenty years of hiking there. I was transfixed.
About a mile below our house was a creek where I was in the habit of doing Yoga while the dogs played. When I got to my spot, I noticed a bright turquoise snake with about a four-inch circumference and about nine-inches long draped across a log that spanned the creek. Its coloring and shape were magnificent and completely new to me. It didn’t move, though it watched me intently. As I returned its gaze, an emaciated cat wobbled out of the woods on the far side of the creek and headed for the log. I sat on the other side and watched as that poor, ataxic creature climbed onto the log, looked me dead in the eye and made his weak way across. He walked around the snake, who just watched, and kept coming towards me. When he arrived he climbed into my lap, threw his forelegs around my shoulder and began a deafeningly loud purr. His eyes were so crossed that I was astounded that he could see at all. He lit up the mommy thing in me so strongly that I was surprised that I didn’t start lactating on the spot. I carried him back up the mountain. The dogs took the lead, jumping over or going around the snakes. They seemed to be remarkably unfazed by them.
When we got home, Tom was up. He was furious that I had “dragged home yet another rescue critter.” It was an old dance we had performed many times before. Tom was a surgeon. When he looked more closely, he told me that the cat’s eyes were crossed because he was starving. He trundled into the kitchen and came back with a bowl of cat food laced with butter and placed it on the mantle. I was still holding the cat, as the rest of our critters were seriously interested. I wanted the new guy to be able to eat and hydrate before he had to deal with them. When I put him on the mantle, the cat unhinged its jaw and shoveled the food in like a backhoe. As we watched, I noticed a single tear roll down Tom’s cheek. I sighed. That was the sign I needed to know that Tom would be the new fellow’s friend for life.
I had to get ready for work. In the confusion, I forgot about the snakes. Every critter needed reassurance that their places in our hearts were secure, even though another had joined the family. Tom needed emotional and physical support. Everyone needed stuff and I had a full slate of clients scheduled from nine until four. When I checked in at noon, Tom was napping with the new guy sprawled across his lap.
At four, I went back to the house to prepare snacks for the game Tom had been talking about for a week. Tom came into the kitchen to keep me company. We were joking around when an ear-splitting scream from the living room stopped us. Ani, my elderly Siamese cat was leaping between the ceiling beams with each hair straight out screeching. We stood transfixed for a moment. I grabbed Tom’s boots. He refused to take them. Ani jumped off the beam, marched across the living room and pissed in his slippers. While she was doing that, I got my boots on. Tom was yelling, but he threw off his slippers and put on his boots while Ani raced around the house gathering up the dogs and other cats into a tight circle around us. Then, she herded us to the fire trail. When any of us broke ranks, she raced around us until we reformed our tight pack. She moved us to an open meadow a couple of hundred yards from the house.
That’s when it hit. There was a crashing explosion, and then we were all flying through the air. While still airborne, I saw the mountainside ripple like the belly of a woman giving birth. We fell back to earth with a resounding thud. Tom and I had been holding hands when it hit. When we came back to Earth, I was holding his ankle. Tom was shaken, but he reached into his deep well of reserves, got to his feet and calmly told me that it was “just and earthquake.” Not being a California native, I had thought it was an atomic blast. Across the canyon, a grove of second-growth redwoods was slamming in unison against the hillside, popping up and then slamming in the other direction. I had a hard time catching my breath as we watched.
We made our way back to the house. The mortar had given out on the rock wall that formed one side of our home. The boulders had crashed through walls, appliances and furnishings. Tom yelled at me to get out of the house; we had work to do. I found him outside staring at the propane tank that had come off its moorings and landed on its shut-off valve. Propane hissed into the air. He told me to lie down with my butt as close to the tank as I could get it and to use my feet to roll it off the valve. He knelt so he could get a hand on the valve. His plan worked. We set off to check on neighbors. We found few humans but lots of overturned propane tanks and freaked out critters.
It was still early. The commuters hadn’t made it home. There were just a few folks around. Fortunately, several were strong teenagers. One of them spotted a fire. I found rakes and shovels while Tom instructed them on how to put out a fire with them. We gathered the handful of adults and decided to break into pairs to go house to house turning off propane tanks and looking for the injured. Tom and I set up a makeshift infirmary outdoors.
Time passed. The commuters weren’t showing up. One of the kids found a generator and plugged in a television. We watched replays of the Bay Bridge going down. We recognized the car of one of our neighbors teetering over the broken bridge. After dark, another neighbor showed up. He told us that there had been a major slide that only a strong hiker who knew the territory could get around. We were cut off.
Tom wasn’t surprised but he was running out of steam. He had fixed a dislocated shoulder and set a few bones. I didn’t know where he was drawing his strength from at this point. My love for him and gratitude for our marriage ballooned. Being cut off frightened us both. Tom’s health was enormously precarious at the time. He was the only M.D. within reach. There were others with injuries that would have been better served in hospitals.
Everyone in our community survived. There were injuries, but in the scheme of things, none were serious. Several houses went down. The community’s water system was destroyed. This turned into a miracle. Our water system was old and falling apart before the quake. We were on the water board. Another member found a way to get the quake damage to pay for a new, state-of-the-art system that our tiny community would not have been able to support. We, and several others, eventually rebuilt our homes. Life went on.
Tom and the dogs and cats, except for Seymour the earthquake cat, eventually died. I moved 120-miles north with Seymour. He has since passed too. I now live in a fishing village poised over the San Andreas Fault with two cats. From my perspective, it’s silly to live in an active fault zone without some good cats. My habit of a daily hike now carries an extra dimension: keeping an eye out for snake conventions. I do that morning and night now. I figure that if the snakes surface again, I’ll have at least 12 hours to inform folks, batten down and get my critters to safety. By nature, I’m the belt and suspenders type.
Surviving an earthquake is easy, if you pay attention to what the wildlife and your critters tell you. I didn’t get the significance of the snakes at the time. They are our friends. They absolutely get that we’re all in this together. At no point on that fateful morning did I witness any hostility between species that normally prey on one another. I will never ignore such information again.
Be safe. Please let your friends and families who live on the Pacific Rim know about the snakes’ reaction to an impending big quake. It could save their lives and yours. Good luck to us all.
