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File photograph by George Sakkestad
Geologist Gerald O'Regan investigates the fissure that appeared on the Summit Road property of Freda and John Tranbarger after the quake.
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Moving Exhibit
Forbes Mill Museum looks back 10 years to the day Los Gatans learned the value of local history
By Shari Kaplan
It's a truism that sometimes people don't know what they have till it's gone. In Los Gatos, some would argue, people didn't know what they had until it was almost gone. That happened on Oct. 17, 1989. In some communities hit hard by the Loma Prieta earthquake--Santa Cruz in particular--many historic buildings were razed rather than salvaged. In Los Gatos, however, residents got a wakeup call when they saw familiar old homes and downtown businesses off their foundations, their glass shattered, their bricks and mortar scattered on sidewalks. The town suffered some $233 million in property damage, much of it to historic buildings.
The old family home of Harry and June Fromm suffered irreparable damage. Ironically, it had just gone on the market several days before the Loma Prieta earthquake.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Less than a week after the 7.1-magnitude Loma Prieta earthquake nearly devastated much of the town's historic districts, then-Mayor Joanne Benjamin convened the Town Council for an emergency communitywide meeting to address the most pressing quake-related concerns. Not surprisingly, the meeting had a standing-room-only turnout with people pouring in from every area, from downtown to the mountains.
What to do? Residents were clear about one thing--they wanted their old Los Gatos back. Historic renovation and preservation became the hallmark of the rebuilding effort.
The council, with the support of the planning department, put restoration projects on the fast track, expediting permits and waiving fees to encourage owners to restore the buildings to the way they looked just before the quake--or the way they looked when originally built.
Jan Hobson stands in front of her destroyed home.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Ten years later, the downtown is thriving, and many of the historic homes that looked hopeless immediately after the quake have been restored.
This Sunday at 5:04 p.m. marks the 10-year anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake, and the Forbes Mill Museum of Regional History is marking the occasion with a look back.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Bill Roster's barn on Summit Road had to be demolished after the earthquake.
Titled "EQ89: Loma Prieta--10 Years Later," the exhibit puts a local spin--and even local faces--on the damage and destruction as well as the reclamation and inspiration the earthquake brought to everyone's lives.
LGMA executive director Laura Bajuk, who helped put together the exhibit, encourages visitors to watch Quake of '89, an hour-long videotape produced by KRON-4 as an overview of the natural disaster, which the museum plays from a TV cart.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Passersby were curious to see what was going on behind the fence that was put up to keep people from N. Santa Cruz Avenue.
"We had two visitors from England who'd had no experience with earthquakes come in. They sat here and watched the whole video and by the end of it, they were in tears," Bajuk says.
"The images in the exhibit are static, so we wanted to have some moving and audio images too," she adds.
Not that there's anything wrong with static images, as attested by the powerful photography on the museum's walls and inside its display cases. Many of the black-and-white photographs were taken by long-time Los Gatos Weekly-Times photographer George Sakkestad, who, like everyone else in the days and weeks following the quake, made his way through the rubble and aftershocks to preserve a bit of history on film. Some color photos were taken by Ray Collins, husband of LGMA board member Louise Collins. Other pictures of the rubble are on loan from residents. One such is the shot of a toilet that broke loose from its bolts and went skimming across the floor of a house before crashing into a wall. Fortunately, no one was answering nature's call at the time.
The home of Kay Taylor and Lisbet Wright at 55 Hernandez Ave. suffered enormous damage, but is now one of the town's best examples of the Queen Anne Victorian style.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Among the most moving images are those that depict the shambles of such places as the Los Gatos Town Library, a stationery shop and a liquor store. There are also those that show how much of downtown--especially N. Santa Cruz Avenue--was fenced off for months as damaged and structurally unsound buildings were repaired.
Then there are the photos of people's homes--some where several generations of Los Gatans had lived--that received varying amounts of damage. Many residences could be saved, sustaining recoverable damage like broken chimneys, shattered windows or cracked walls.
Others, like the family home of Harry and June Fromm at 227 Los Gatos Blvd., was "red-tagged."
This dread label from the town meant a home was so badly damaged that it was uninhabitable. Ironically, the Fromms had put their Victorian up for sale just days before the earthquake. The home was eventually torn down, but not before June Fromm salvaged some of her grandmother's heirloom china, which is on display in the exhibit next to photos of the home before and after the quake, including the ad a real estate agent was running at the time.
Avis Harkness, owner of the Johnson house, 49 Los Gatos Blvd., attacks the rubble from her chimney after the earthquake.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Los Gatan Gene Gonzales could have rebuilt the boat he lost in the earthquake, but decided not to, leaving it as a testament to the forces of nature. Fortunately for Gonzales, it was not an actual boat, but rather an intricately detailed tall-ship model whose paint was barely dry before it was besieged by falling debris. It's on loan to the museum for the exhibit.
Forbes Mill itself lost a large hand-painted Asian urn that was unsecured and toppled over during the shaking, breaking into many chunks. Interestingly enough, the lid, which had been broken and repaired by previous owners, did not break. The once-impressive urn now fills a museum display case.
"The point I want to make here is that as a museum charged with protecting the past of the community, we need to take better care of our artifacts and collections," Bajuk says.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
Robin Clayton surveys the damage to her home at the corner of Los Gatos Boulevard and Loma Alta Avenue.
She and the museum board also want to ensure that the community never falls into a false sense of security that the worst is over. One method is with a U.S. Geological Survey map of the San Andreas faultline and its dozens of related faults--some mere hairline cracks on the map--which shows just how omnipresent the threat of earthquakes is. There's also a set of "Fact vs. Fiction" interactive flip cards that Bajuk assembled with information gleaned from an earthquake information area on the Association of Bay Area Governments' website.
"The whole point is that a lot of people think they're safer than they really are," Bajuk says, adding that exhibit visitors are also welcome to pick up free fliers on preparing earthquake survival kits, finding earthquake resources on the Internet and protecting themselves inside and outside.
One Los Gatan who will never take safety for granted is Carman Smith, whose story the exhibit tells with photographs as well as clippings from local newspaper articles. Smith was driving home from San Francisco on Highway 880 when he saw what looked like an explosion several blocks ahead of him. What he saw was the Cypress overpass collapsing, with cars disappearing like a row of dominoes in front of him. Although he was stuck in his truck for several hours with a broken back, Smith survived the ordeal and was able to walk again.
Los Gatan Dan Clifford stopped on his bike ride down Main Street to look at the damage to the historic Beckwith building, which has since been restored.
File photograph by George Sakkestad
The exhibit even includes examples of humor in the face of adversity, such as T-shirts and sweatshirts hastily printed by enterprising locals depicting frazzled felines and slogans such as "Los Gatos Has Its Faults--So Help Them!" For tourists not familiar with earthquakes, the museum even offers "canned quakes"--clever novelties in faultline-decorated soup cans that shake, rattle and roll when an unsuspecting person picks them up. Last but not least, there's a "Where Were You When the Quake Hit?" memory book to which visitors are encouraged to contribute their own photographs and anecdotes.
Forbes Mill Museum of Regional History is at 75 Church St. The exhibit runs through Jan. 15, 2000. The community is invited to tour the exhibit, reminisce about earthquake experiences and enjoy a reception with refreshments on Oct. 17, beginning a little after 4 p.m. and getting into full gear by 5:04 p.m. Regular museum hours are Wednesday through Sunday, noon to 4 p.m. For more information, call 408.395.7375.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
