I was 7 years old in my families upstairs 2nd floor 1 bedroom apartment cutting out Kool Aid points (or something like that) when the bed I was kneeling at began to move violently. I looked out the window and the giant tree across the street was moving left to right like it was made of rubber. The rest of my family was in the living room and we all gathered in the only archway of the apartment. We all huddled for was seemed an hour. Outside we could hear our neighbors running down the stairs during the earthquake (they were new to California). We were lucky. Our family was only shaken and our birdcage spun our parakeet around but he was fine too. Because it was overcast that day I believe in earthquake weather. Many people that day driving on the bridge were not as lucky I am sad to say. Living in San Jose we heard all the news reports from the city. We heard it all from deaths to price gouging. It was a very somber holiday season that year. And there were aftershocks all week if I remember correctly. Anyone else remember?

I was born the day before.

I was working on my homework at the kitchen table!

The moment it struck, my soccer team had just finished running some warm up laps around a field out in the east bay. Definitely, the safest place to be… out in the middle of a damn field. It was quite the ride and remember thinking and hearing vocalized, “this is a big one folks.”

luckily i was a 7 hour drive away south. i hate earthquakes :( ask me about the northridge one though..

I hardly felt it. I thought it was just bad gas.

I remember exactly what I was doing when the earthquake hit. I was outside playing with one of my childhood friends. All of a sudden it was difficult to keep balance and i looked at the ground to see the concrete moving in a wave like fashion. 2 seconds later i see my dad run out yelling my name. Damn the next big earthquake is going to be so much worse. People shouldn’t take that litely. Its important to be prepared.