her, hurtling her to the floor. Behind her, a waterfall of bricks and mortar erupted through a paneled wall from a stairwell leading to the roof.
Chunks of concrete and heavy ceiling moldings crumbled, filling her mouth with the chalky taste of plaster dust. The drawing she’d painstakingly completed slid to the floor, which was blanketed with gravel-sized chunks of rubble.
Amelia’s worries of material loss were soon replaced by the gut-wrenching fear that she was about to lose her life. Her world kept shaking as terror gripped her insides and left her gasping for breath.
What of Father? Did he finally go home? And Aunt Margaret… all alone in Oakland. Will I ever see Mother again?
She heard herself scream with fright as a water main burst through a baseboard like a broken bone puncturing skin. On her next breath, she inhaled a foul-smelling stench as the nine-story office building’s principal sewage pipe fractured and hemorrhaged its rank contents in all directions.
I’ll never have a child! I’ll never see the Bay View again.
Then, years of training suddenly drew her fragmented thoughts to the inside stairwell spiraling to the lobby.
The center core of the building’s the strongest… get away from the windows… get to the center!
Blindly, she inched along a floor pitching as violently as the deck of a boat in a midwinter storm. Her hands touched the threshold opening onto the ninth floor foyer at the instant the glass transom over her head exploded into a thousand pieces. Reflexively, Amelia cast her right arm in front of her face, but not before blood spurted from her scalp and ran down her checks. She crumpled beneath the doorframe, curling into a ball.
Amelia screamed again as a twenty-five-foot expanse of wood paneling and masonry pitched outward and plunged nine stories to Montgomery Street below. She knew that no structure on landfill, no matter how well built, could withstand much more shaking without collapsing.
Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions subsided.
For several long minutes, Amelia clung to the doorjamb, her mind drifting like a seabird’s flight. She gazed beyond the missing wall on the ninth floor at several buildings now visible across the street. Their facades too had disintegrated into heaps of rubble. Desks where accountants once sat were exposed to the elements. Bathroom urinals were immodestly revealed, and entire office floors were twisted into a jumble of metal girders.
The gray sky in the east had deepened to a rosy pink interspersed with streaks of palest blue. Incredibly, though, the Ferry Building’s clock tower was still standing above the roiling salt water below, hands frozen at 5:14.
Amelia’s entire body had started to tremble uncontrollably as if she, like her father, had been trapped in an ice cave in the Sierras. Her gaze skittered from crumbled cornice to buckled ceilings to the flag still flying from the top of the Ferry Building as she tried to absorb the chaos of her surroundings. Miraculously, she was still alive, but what of the rest of the city? What of her father and Aunt Margaret? Julia and the colleagues she hardly knew? What of people across San Francisco asleep in their beds?
She struggled to her knees and then fell once more against the doorjamb. A light breeze blowing gently through the missing wall lifted a few strands of hair from her bleeding forehead. She stared vacantly at the sky beyond the line of wounded buildings ringing the shore.
April 18, 1906, had dawned eerily clear and mild in the City by the Bay.
Chapter 5
Amelia had no idea how long she remained crouched in the doorway with her back to the open gash that had been the ninth floor’s east wall. Bruised, bleeding, and coated with plaster dust, she willed herself to stop trembling as she listened to the unnatural quiet, wondering if she were the last person alive in San Francisco.
Fine plaster particles still hung suspended in the air, making it painful even to breathe.
Chunks of concrete and heavy ceiling moldings crumbled, filling her mouth with the chalky taste of plaster dust. The drawing she’d painstakingly completed slid to the floor, which was blanketed with gravel-sized chunks of rubble.
Amelia’s worries of material loss were soon replaced by the gut-wrenching fear that she was about to lose her life. Her world kept shaking as terror gripped her insides and left her gasping for breath.
What of Father? Did he finally go home? And Aunt Margaret… all alone in Oakland. Will I ever see Mother again?
She heard herself scream with fright as a water main burst through a baseboard like a broken bone puncturing skin. On her next breath, she inhaled a foul-smelling stench as the nine-story office building’s principal sewage pipe fractured and hemorrhaged its rank contents in all directions.
I’ll never have a child! I’ll never see the Bay View again.
Then, years of training suddenly drew her fragmented thoughts to the inside stairwell spiraling to the lobby.
The center core of the building’s the strongest… get away from the windows… get to the center!
Blindly, she inched along a floor pitching as violently as the deck of a boat in a midwinter storm. Her hands touched the threshold opening onto the ninth floor foyer at the instant the glass transom over her head exploded into a thousand pieces. Reflexively, Amelia cast her right arm in front of her face, but not before blood spurted from her scalp and ran down her checks. She crumpled beneath the doorframe, curling into a ball.
Amelia screamed again as a twenty-five-foot expanse of wood paneling and masonry pitched outward and plunged nine stories to Montgomery Street below. She knew that no structure on landfill, no matter how well built, could withstand much more shaking without collapsing.
Then, just as suddenly, the convulsions subsided.
For several long minutes, Amelia clung to the doorjamb, her mind drifting like a seabird’s flight. She gazed beyond the missing wall on the ninth floor at several buildings now visible across the street. Their facades too had disintegrated into heaps of rubble. Desks where accountants once sat were exposed to the elements. Bathroom urinals were immodestly revealed, and entire office floors were twisted into a jumble of metal girders.
The gray sky in the east had deepened to a rosy pink interspersed with streaks of palest blue. Incredibly, though, the Ferry Building’s clock tower was still standing above the roiling salt water below, hands frozen at 5:14.
Amelia’s entire body had started to tremble uncontrollably as if she, like her father, had been trapped in an ice cave in the Sierras. Her gaze skittered from crumbled cornice to buckled ceilings to the flag still flying from the top of the Ferry Building as she tried to absorb the chaos of her surroundings. Miraculously, she was still alive, but what of the rest of the city? What of her father and Aunt Margaret? Julia and the colleagues she hardly knew? What of people across San Francisco asleep in their beds?
She struggled to her knees and then fell once more against the doorjamb. A light breeze blowing gently through the missing wall lifted a few strands of hair from her bleeding forehead. She stared vacantly at the sky beyond the line of wounded buildings ringing the shore.
April 18, 1906, had dawned eerily clear and mild in the City by the Bay.
Chapter 5
Amelia had no idea how long she remained crouched in the doorway with her back to the open gash that had been the ninth floor’s east wall. Bruised, bleeding, and coated with plaster dust, she willed herself to stop trembling as she listened to the unnatural quiet, wondering if she were the last person alive in San Francisco.
Fine plaster particles still hung suspended in the air, making it painful even to breathe.
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