"Right there," I said, pointing to a power outlet on the wall, still located exactly where it was a decade ago when the San Francisco Marriott Hotel opened its doors and proved it could take a punch.
It was 10 years ago today that the Bay Area was rocked by a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, causing $10 billion in damage, killing 63, injuring 3,757, destroying 963 homes, wrecking freeways, and, for a time at least, causing people to question if this really is paradise.It also postponed the World Series.
Nineteen eighty-nine was the one and only time in history that the World Series was played exclusively in the Bay Area. In one corner were the American League champion Oakland Athletics. In the other corner the National League champion San Francisco Giants.
In that Series, a road trip was no more complicated than crossing the Bay Bridge.
Who'd have ever guessed it would collapse before they could play Game 3?
I covered the first two games of the 1989 World Series in Oakland, sleeping at a Motel 6 just down the street from the Coliseum, home of the A's. When Game 3 moved to Candlestick Park in San Francisco, home of the Giants, I moved too, relocating to the newest hotel in the city, the 1,500-room Marriott just off Union Square.
Why not? Better location, bigger room, nicer bed.
In one of the more prescient comments I have heard in my life, a bellman told me as I was waiting to check in at the registration desk that the new hotel was the safest building in San Francisco, its foundation reinforced and spring-loaded to withstand the strongest of earthquakes.
The hotel wasn't completely finished and only a few guests checked in that opening day, into 55 rooms.
We would have the place to ourselves, or so we thought.
I was sitting in an outside press box at Candlestick Park when the ground began to shake at 5:04 p.m. of an otherwise picture-perfect California day.
Next to me was a sports writer from Philadelphia, who, after the shaking subsided, turned to me, his face white as a home jersey, and said, "I've got to go outside and get some air."
And I said, "We are outside."
You never know how you'll react in a natural disaster until you're in one.
In what would be known as the Loma Prieta Quake, I was calm and composed, I was happy to observe, collected, unfazed, unrattled . . . .
Which is when I pulled a chair in that hotel lobby over to the aforementioned electrical outlet, sat my laptop on a marble ashtray, plugged it in . . . and . . . nothing.
Here I am about to start work on a Pulitzer and no power!
It was at exactly the same time I was sure every person in the lobby -- all 2,000-plus of them who had flooded in from the city's streets to take refuge in the city's safest building -- was looking squarely at me that I realized the error in my thinking.
I had just needed three hours to drive my rental car the five miles from the ballpark to the hotel because the city was as dark as a coal mine, no traffic signals, no streetlights, no light from anywhere but stars 700 light years away.
Emergency hotel generators gave the Marriott a dim glow as the thousands of refugees joined us 55 official guests for a sleepover in the ballrooms and the lobby. "Camp Marriott," we called it.
"Right there," I said again, pointing out the power outlet on the wall to Paul Webb, a Marriott bellman who was also on the scene 10 years ago today. "Right there is where I was an idiot."
"I was here, but I didn't see it," he said.
Probably just being kind.
Send e-mail to benson@desnews.com, fax 801-237-2527. Lee Benson's column runs Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.