Tell Your Kids the Truth About This Moment
The October 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake struck Northern California, where I then lived, shortly after I turned 11. It was not the biggest upheaval in my life that year—my parents’ marriage had just ended—but discovering that, on a random Tuesday afternoon, the ground could start shaking hard enough to knock you over was a pretty close second. In the days that followed, I was obsessed with news about the disaster, especially the deaths it had caused.