Daly City Earthquake of 1957: Personal Accounts, Page 3

This is the third page of personal accounts of the Daly City Earthquake of 1957. The first page can be found here, and the second page is here.

If you experienced the Daly City Earthquake and wish to have your recollections included here, feel free to email them to me!

Carol Abbate

I stumbled upon your website and thought I'd add my story to your collection. At the time of the 1957 earthquake I was a student at Balboa High School. Both the foreshock and the big one happened at passing time between classes. Probably few of the students felt the first one, but I did as I had been at counselor the and was returning to class. Since it was only a few minutes before class was to end, I stopped off at the bathroom. While washing my hands in front of the mirror, the bell rang and immediately all the doors opened, hit the wall, and the students began to fill the halls. The mirror in front of me was shaking and I thought how weird it was that just all the doors opening at the same time would shake the mirror. A few seconds later all the students were in the hall and the mirror was still shaking. For a brief moment it seemed strange but as I dried my hands it stopped, and I went on my way to the next class and forgot about it.

The next class was right at the end of the main building close to the gym. When it ended a friend and I who both had gym the next period walked under the archway to the gym. To get to gym class you had to walk through the middle of the building and down a few stairs to outside, across the corner of the volleyball court to the locker room. The girls' was to the left and the boys' to the right. The only students in this building were those going to the two gym classes. When we were about half way through, before we got to the stairs, there was this horrible loud noise, like an explosion, and it froze us all in our tracks. That was the one and only time that I ever thought about "The Bomb," but for a split second I did, and I think someone in the crowd even said it.

Maybe a few seconds passed and then the shaking started. Violent shaking. My friend grabbed me by the arm (I was still frozen) and said, "Earthquake, the door, we gotta stand under the door". And she pulled me down the stairs. I didn't even feel my feet hit the stairs and when we got to the bottom, the door, (those heavy steel things with glass windows and the push bars to open them), was slamming open and closed right in front of us and I froze again. I guess my friend got through the door when it was open, because she disappeared and there was frozen me standing in front of a slamming door and right in front of me was the most awesome scenario I'd ever seen.

I could only describe it as a giant that I could not see, but was somewhere over to the right on the other side of the building and this giant was waving a huge flag with four horizontal stripes, blue on the top, green next, then white and green at the bottom. Because that's exactly what it looked like, everything was undulating violently, the green hills of Daly City against the blue sky, the white houses and the green football field, just like someone was waving a giant banner as hard as they could. And, in the foreground was the volleyball court being contorted completely out of shape. Alternately stretched and shrunk by the second. The concrete squares were jumping out at crazy angles just like waves on the ocean, each one all by itself in its own direction, just dancing. This dancing, of course tilted out the volleyball poles and stretched the nets taut, and the next second they were flung inward, almost touching and the nets were spinning around, and this went on all during the violent shaking, and all that time the door kept opening and slamming closed in front of me. I suppose that the ground was liquefying (Islais Creek is nearby, if not directly underneath), but I didn't know anything about liquefying then. When the earthquake stopped, everything just went back in its place, and I thought, "Am I nuts, I know what I saw but now everything looks the same as before." Then there was dead silence. All of us just slowly walked out onto the football field, met up with our friends and just stood on the grass. We didn't see any teachers for a while, and then one of the boys in the crowd yelled out, "Hey 51 years and we're still here" and spontaneously we all cheered.

When the teachers showed up they told us to just go home, don't come into the buildings for anything, they had to have the buildings inspected to make sure they were safe. Of course that made us all scared that maybe something awful happened in one of the other buildings. Since I just lived a block up the hill from the side of the campus I was on, I went the other direction out to the front just to see if Balboa was still standing. Everything looked ok to me. The buildings were still standing, no noticeable damage on the outside and all the students were heading out quietly, with no signs of panic or anything, so I turned around and went home.

When I got home, the front door was open. My mother said that you should leave the door open just in case there is another one and the door might get stuck. Earlier in the day she had thought of going out on the roof to clean the windows of the upstairs room, but decided not to, and to wax the floors instead. When the earthquake was shaking, she was in the upstairs room on the floor and she could hear the tiles on the roof scraping and scrunching, and the piano downstairs was playing by itself. The stuff in the kitchen seemed to be pretty much in the middle of the room, and coffee from a mug had splashed all over, but not much was broken, just a few things in the spice cabinet. Her crystal stemware in the china cabinet landed one up and one down across the shelf, but none broke. Other things moved to the edges, but didn't fall off. The round mirror in the entry hall had moved sideways, but still hung on, the decoration on the top center being where a four would be on a clock. The house held up ok.

Although I had no appetite for lunch, my mother insisted and made tuna sandwiches. As soon as I took the first bite, there was an aftershock. After that, the appetite was completely gone. Then I remembered my boyfriend who was in the Horticulture class that was held at City College up the street. This was a two period class, and I realized that they were all going to be coming back to school soon, and they probably didn't know the school was closed. I went out on the front stairs and waited. Little by little they all came down the street and I gave them the message that the school was closed. Seemed like they were forgotten. When my boyfriend came back he told me that the earthquake flattened a glass greenhouse and broke a water pipe. Also there was a streetcar lying on its side on Ocean Avenue.

I'm a third generation San Franciscan, my father and his family survived 1906 but got burned out. In my life I've experienced three scary ones, 1952 Tehachipi (we were in Yosemite), 1957 Daly City, and of course '89.

Ira Bray

My name is Ira Bray and I was seven years old in 1957 when the earthquake hit. I was in the second grade at St. Cecelia's elementary school on Vicente Street near 18th Avenue in San Francisco. As I recall after it started to shake I remember the round hanging lights swayed and the statue of the Virgin Mary teetered on it's pedestal. We went down on our knees to pray. Now, it may be that Sister asked us to get down and under our desks, but I thought she wanted us to pray. As I clasped my hands together and began to recite a Hail Mary a loud slam right behind me caused me to jump in supplication. A poster board had come off the wall and fell flat onto the floor within inches of the heels of my shoes! I don't remember much else about that day or how our house 3 blocks from school on Rivera Street fared but I will always remember my close encounter with the poster board.

Brent Rusert

I was in the 5th grade at Colma Elementary: We were on the playground. Dogs began to bark and horses neigh - yep, had working teams and boarding stables in Colma/DC in those days - the mountains to the west started to shaking & vibrating, a rumble became audible and as the shaking moved toward us and through the yard, unsteady kids and adults were knocked over by the unexpected movement of the earth. Many maintained their balance, not me. Lighting in some classrooms swayed and broke lose. Classroom contents were a shamble.

Everybody's shelves emptied onto the floor. My grandmothers interior walls developed some significant cracks, a neighbor lost her chimney - if I remember, both those houses survived 1906, I don't know about the chimney.

At that time there was a road around Lands End from the Mariner's Memorial that connected to Harding Park at the Palace of Legion of Honour. That roadbed slipped and was never repaired.

Adrienne Asher

I was 6 years old and in grade school in what was then Part Merced (near Stonestown Shopping Center) when the quake struck. The window glass buckled and desks slide across the room. Teachers herded us outside.

My mother was over at S.F. State, also in class, at the time. She picked me up and we drove home to a kitchen floor covered in canned goods and opened cabinet doors.

The only time I cried, though, was when I discovered the cookie jar, whose home was atop the refrigerator, smashed to bits on the floor.

Ginger Maniscalco

I was 8 years old; when the quake struck I was in school at ER Taylor Elementary in the Portola district of The City. I had to walk home from school by myself and I remember I ran like crazy I was so scared the earth would open up like it did in the Spencer Tracy movie "San Francisco". That quake shook harder than any other I have been in (including the '89 Loma Prieta quake). There were many, many after shocks. But the thing I rememeber most vividly about that quake is that I could hear it. I heard a roar which I think even preceded the shaking. But I guess not everyone heard it. My mother always insisted there was no sound associated with it, but I know what I heard and I heard it roar! Not the kind of a roar that one would cover one's ears against, but a roaring noise that one could feel. I will never forget it. Loma Prieta was nothing compared to the Daly City quake!

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