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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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103089
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10308900.056
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1990-09-18
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FROM THE PUBLISHER, Page 28
When the earth began to tremble, TIME staff members in San
Francisco found themselves living the story they would report. Lee
Griggs and Dennis Wyss were squeezed into an open-air press box in
the upper deck of Candlestick Park, awaiting the start of the third
game of the World Series. "I heard a low rumble, and my first
thought was that the Giants fans were stamping their feet in
unison," Wyss recalls. An instant later, the stands began rocking
back and forth. A native San Franciscan, Wyss was sure an
earthquake had struck. So was Griggs, who as TIME's Tokyo bureau
chief in the 1960s had experienced a score of them.
Griggs did his best to reassure his neighbors in the press box,
most of them out-of-town sportswriters more conversant with
split-fingered fast balls than the Richter scale. But both Griggs
and Wyss became concerned when stadium light towers began whipping
back and forth. Says Wyss: "The stadium kept swaying faster and
faster. I thought, how much more can it take before it caves in?
I felt utterly helpless. Then it stopped."
When Griggs returned to his apartment downtown, he found that
his wife Jean had broken out candles and flashlights and filled
tubs and basins with water. Says Griggs: "We've spent 14 years in
the Third World on assignment for TIME, and you presume power and
water failures as a way of life in many places."
San Francisco bureau chief Paul Witteman was on the phone in
his office on the 19th floor of Two Embarcadero, overlooking the
Bay Bridge, when the quake hit. "The building began to sway gently,
then more rapidly," Witteman reports. "The phone connection was
broken, and then the severe shocks began." With the elevators out
of service, Witteman walked down 398 steps to the ground. It was
only when he got to the street and saw the blown-out third floor
of the adjacent Golden Gate Bank building that he realized the
ferocity of the earthquake. He pulled out his notebook and began
reporting this week's cover stories.