I See by the Papers...

Imagine (or remember): It was near the end of that day in 1969 and you were winding down, watching TV and planning to stay up late - a Johnny Carson anniversary show was coming up and everybody would be talking about it tomorrow. You were deciding between the 10 o'clock news on channel two, Hawaii Five-O or that new NBC series by the former Press Democrat reporter. 

Then too much happened all at once.

"And then came the jolt and the furious shake, lasting for seconds but seeming like minutes. Everyone could feel it but many couldn't see it: the lights were the first to go," said Dick Torkelson's article in the Press Democrat the next day.

Earthquake! A bad one. Sharp flashes of light from outside flooded the dark room as if the house was struck by lightning, only there was no sound at all. Omygod, had Santa Rosa been hit by an atomic bomb?

"Books and dishes cascaded down," Torkelson continued. "Shouts filled households as parents groped in darkness for their children. Residential streets filled instantly, everyone wondering if there would be more."

Such were the first few terrifying moments of the Santa Rosa Earthquake of October 1, 1969. Earthquakes, actually, as another one followed about eighty minutes later and was just about as violent (see sidebar).

No one was killed and while many buildings were damaged, none fell down. Now more than a half-century later, it's only remembered for the unusual double shake. But that event changed Santa Rosa's future dramatically, as it became the driving justification for the city to later bulldoze 30 acres of downtown in order to build the shopping mall - the worst mistake in the long list of planning mistakes made by the City of Roses. How this tragedy unfolded will be told in upcoming parts of this ongoing series, "Yesterday is Just Around the Corner."




The rest of this article can be read at the SantaRosaHistory.com website. Because of recurring problems with the Blogger platform, I am no longer wasting my time formatting and posting complete articles here. I will continue to create stubs for the sake of continuity, but will be publishing full articles only at SantaRosaHistory.com.

- Jeff Elliott