What a memory AA62!
October 17th 1989, we had just spent the night in Las Vegas but were eager to get to our ultimate destination which was Alameda Naval Air station. We had “lucked in” big time and were due to spend three full days in San Francisco; I had excitedly prepared my tourist research.
For some reason we had been delayed by air traffic at Nellis AFB for about two to three hours. As we got closer to our destination we heard lots of chatter over the airwaves and one priceless comment “Wow that was a Biggy, what do reckon it was on the Richter scale?” For some reason no one else on the crew seemed to pick up on the comment, so I suggested to the captain that we should check with Air Traffic to see if there had been a problem at our destination.
It turns out San Francisco had just experienced the strongest earthquake to hit the area since 1906; it caused more than 60 deaths, thousands of injuries, and widespread property damage. There was so much pandemonium that ATC had just forgotten to tell us that Alameda airfield's two runways and two taxiways were significantly damaged and inoperable. We diverted to Travis AFB, 50 miles to the north, and spent three days practically confined to our hotel watching TV.
It was even more of an aftershock, and a relief, to later discover that the route to our hotel in San Fran would have been along the ill-fated double-deck Nimitz highway and across the Oakland Bay Bridge, both the scene of many of the fatalities. Thank you air traffic.