The day my world shook -- even if I didn't feel it

I'll never forget where I was at 5:04 P.M., on TUESDAY, OCT. 17, 1989.
I was driving home, traveling west on California 116 between Rohnert Park and SEBASTOPOL, Calif., after a rather long day at work in a computer tape library in Bel Marin Keys, Calif.
I'll never forget what I was doing at 5:04 p.m., either.
I had tuned the car radio to KNBR 680 AM, so I could listen to the pregame broadcast of the third game of the World Series -- a series that featured our local teams, the SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS and the OAKLAND ATHLETICS. I hoped the Giants could improve on their Game 2 showing. The A's beat the Giants in that game, 5-1, and I was in attendance at the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum (still the only World Series game I have attended).
The road was bumpy and my car was old, so I didn't notice any unusual vibrations.
Instead, I just knew something was wrong when the radio went dead.
I tuned to a the dial locations of a few other stations. Nothing. I knew the radio worked because I could hear static.
I pulled the car into the parking lot of the condominium complex where I lived with my family in those months following college.
Residents were standing around by the swimming pool, and one stepped over to me as I climbed out of my car.
"Your cat ran away when the waves were splashing in the pool," she told me.
A large swath of northern California reeled from a 6.9-magnitude earthquake -- the biggest in my lifetime -- and I hadn't felt it. I first learned about it because roiling water of the swimming pool had apparently frightened my cat.
A neighbor and I raced up the steps to my home.
The cable was out, and we couldn't get any of the San Francisco television stations on a set using "rabbit ear" antennas.
A Sacramento television barely came in, and the details were sketchy.
Local broadcasting resumed soon enough. How can I ever forget the images of house fires in San Francisco's Marina district, the collapsed Cypress structure of Interstate 880 in my birthplace of OAKLAND and the bent upper deck of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
I could reach my sister INGER in Oakland. The quake smashed household items throughout her apartment.
I couldn't contact my girlfriend (eventually wife) JILL in Iowa, though, in those days before ubiquitous cell phones.
My family felt lucky to have emerged unscathed from the disaster, but a dread permeated our thoughts and conversations.
An unsettling fear and feeling of helplessness gripped people -- even those without damage. It seemed frightfully unreal to have a disaster hit so close to home.
That feeling is probably one of the reasons why I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing at 5:04 p.m., on Tuesday, Oct. 17, 1989, even though -- truth be told -- I never felt a thing.
(A similar version of this story recently appeared in the "LIFE IN THE TRI-STATES" blog on THonline.com -- click here. Please visit for a wide variety of insights into daily life.)