52% want (CA) bullet train stopped, poll finds (LA Times)

[MADem]

46. As I said, I was in the Loma Prieta quake. Not the worst quake in terms of the numbers, either...

It was "only" a six point nine, but I had no power for three days and I was the only one on my block--indeed, in a fairly wide radius-- with a working telephone (cellphones were not "the thing" back then). I was very popular as a consequence. I had a portable pocket tv and could watch a grainy CBS news for as long as my batteries held out.

Remember the pancaked overpass? The engineers could have done a better job on that, I'm guessing the families of the dead might say. Did you live there then? So many dead, the rescue dogs, the trapped people--and it would have been more, had not so many people called in sick or sneaked outta work early to get home to watch the World Series. The streets were deserted--because people were in front of their TVs, watching the First World Series to Be Cancelled at Candlestick Park.

That was a pretty terrifying event. As I said, I was flung across the room with great force--and I'm not a lightweight.

I wouldn't want to endure that from inside a train, is all I'm saying. Where this thing gets built, if that happens, and what route it takes, is important.

Fifty-seven of the deaths were directly caused by the earthquake; six further fatalities were ruled to have been caused indirectly.[2] In addition, there were 3,757[3] injuries as a result of the earthquake—400 severely hurt.[1] The highest number of fatalities, 42,[12] occurred in Oakland because of the Cypress Street Viaduct collapse on the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880), where the upper level of a double-deck portion of the freeway collapsed, crushing the cars on the lower deck. One 50-foot (15 m) section of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed, leading to a single fatality, a 23-year-old woman named Anamafi Maala. Three people were killed in the collapse of the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, and five people were killed in the collapse of a brick wall on Bluxome Street in San Francisco.[4]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake