By Bruce B. Brugmann
Yes, that is correct. I put my trusty old Royal typewriter to work in the deadline emergency of the l989 Loma Prieta quake and it helped get the paper out on time. The rescue confirmed my argument that my typewriter was much more reliable than a computer in an earthquake emergency when the power goes out. But first let me give you some quake context.
Somehow, when the quake hits, I am always on the couch and get the full force of the jolt. Tuesday night, I was sitting on our couch in our West Portal home watching the Democratic presidential debate when the 5.6 quake hit at 8:04 p.m., several hours after our deadline and after our paper was safely in bed at the printers. The quake rattled the room a bit but there was no damage and nothing stirred in the neighborhood. On Oct. l7, l989, I was sitting on a couch in our old Guardian building, at l9th and York Streets in the Mission District, when the quake hit on our final deadline late in the afternoon. We had one page left to finish, a hole on page 4 for the “In this issue” column by Executive Editor Tim Redmond. The truck driver was anxiously standing by to drive the pages, or flats as we called them, four hours up the freeways to our printer in the northern California city of Paradise.
The issue was a classic Guardian investigative story with then Mayor Art Agnos on the cover, holding a blank check from Bob Lurie of the Giants, and a head that read “Blank-Check Mayor.” The subhead read, “If you still think Art Agnos’s downtown stadium is a good deal for the city, you haven’t read the fine print. Jim Balderston exposes the hidden details of a deal that could rival the Candlestick Park Swindle.” Another front page head introduced “Bay Area Censored,” the first annual Bay Area Censored project and six big stories that “were too hot for the local media to handle.” Normal Guardian fare. Obviously, we wanted the issue to come out on time the next morning, even though it was too late for us to do any real quake coverage.
Our building was rattled but there was no damage, though it was a two story unreinforced red brick building.
But the phones went dead, the power went out, our computers were down, and we had to stop work. So the staff poured onto the street, a little scared but in good spirits, to reconnoiter and figure out what to do next.
That meant heading to the Jay ‘n’ Bee Bar, our local pub, down the street a block. Balderston, then our city hall and investigative reporter, caught the spirit of the moment: “We better get down to the bar and get our drinks before the ice melts.”
Joe the Bartender, as he was known, began rolling out the drinks for us with his usual panache (he shook splendid martinis with flourishes, no stirring). The television set was down, but a pub regular from a local machine shop brought in a generator and fired it up.
We watched the tv in growing shock. The news was grim and dramatic. The Marina was burning. The Oakland Bridge had collapsed with cars on it. The Giants/Oakland Athletics World Series game at Candlestick Park was hit and sportswriters suddenly became action reporters and put the story out play by play all over the world. Damage appeared to be extensive all over town and the area and fatalities and injuries were coming in.
We had our own problems. Among them, how to finish up the paper and get the flats in the truck and up to Paradise.
I offered my trusty Royal. Executive Editor Tim Redmond came back to the office and grabbed my typewriter and started batting away on the In This column. “There are times when modern technology just doesn’t make it,” he pecked out. “Like now.
“It’s about 6:45, and the sun is almost gone. I’m catching the last few rays of light through the front windows of the Guardian building, and Patricia (Filingame) is adding the glow of a flashlight to make sure I don’t make any typos.”
Tim typed on and ended up by writing that “By the time the shaking had stopped, there was no electricity at all–not to turn the typesetting machine, not to light up my windowless office…nothing to do but find the one functional office machine in the place, Bruce’s old Royal typewriter.
“We had a bit of trouble with the technological details (manual ribbon winding…) but it actually works. Remarkable.”
The page was pasted up, the flats were bundled into the truck, and the trucker headed out for the Golden Gate Bridge, which had held, and then up the freeway to Paradise and safety.
Balderston led a delegation back to the bar. Sfaffers who lived in the East Bay figured out whether to say in town or go home by way of the San Mateo Bridge, which had held. Julia Loftus, our classified director who lived in Silicon Valley and worried about a dangerous Bay Shore freeway, wingled and wangled her way slowly down the El Camino Real.
I drove Iris Maher, our circulation director, through intersections without lights and volunteer civiian traffic facilitators, to her apartment building on the slope of a Nob Hill illuminated against the sky by the blaze and smoke of Marina fires and God knows what else. People were streaming in and out of the Fairmont Hotel. So we decided to take a look. We spent the rest of the evening sitting on the floor of the lobby, chatting with hotel guests who were exchanging stories about what they were doing when and on what floor when the quake rocked the hotel. I bought a lot of drinks because the hotel wasn’t taking credit cards and the guests wouldn’t go back to their rooms to get cash. Some got a kick out of being part of earthquake history. Most of them were scared to death and trying to figure out how to get out of town fast.
The Chronicle, we heard, had no real backup generator and the word was that its staff was putting out the paper by flashlight. The driver made it to Paradise, the Guardian got printed, and the delivery trucks rolled into town the next morning on schedule over the Golden Gate Bridge. And we even had a few typewritten paragraphs of quake coverage.
And so, through the years between the quake of l989 and the quake of last Tuesday, 2007, I have kept my trusty Royal typewriter behind my desk, always at the ready for emergency duty. It still is. B3
