Word: watered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Across the Bay in San Francisco's public library, a chain reaction rippled through the stacks, dumping 250,000 books into piles on the floor. At a meeting of water-pollution-control officials at the Moscone Convention Center, security guard Charles Scott stood with 200 people at an awards ceremony. "Suddenly people were falling off the stage, and the lights went out," he said. "Then everyone panicked and starting running in all directions. I screamed, 'Don't run, don't run!' But people were running over each other, and I was knocked down." Fortunately, no one was seriously hurt...
...Sixth and Bluxome streets, however, the fourth-floor brick wall of a building erected a few years after the 1906 quake tore loose. "Bricks were falling, and dust was everywhere," said Charles Pinkstaff, who ran out of a nearby structure that also rumbled. "Then everything was quiet, except for water dripping somewhere. I saw a car smashed so flat I couldn't tell if anyone had been in it." When he got closer, he saw that the driver had been decapitated. The falling wall had smashed seven cars, killing at least five people. "I've seen people die, but nothing...
...working-class district south of Market Street, tenements turned into tangled splinters, and four hotels capsized and collapsed, trapping scores. An added blast rattled the area, as the city gas plant blew up. Thousands of chimneys plunged through roofs. Many residents drowned, trapped, in deluges from ruptured water mains. An elaborate new city hall disintegrated. When the Richter scale was devised later, experts rated the quake at a tremendously potent...
...well-drilled 585-man fire department proved all but useless: broken mains left the city without water. Scattered blazes soon converged into fire storms that gobbled up huge swaths of the city. The inferno spread despite desperate attempts to create firebreaks by dynamiting whole blocks of homes and businesses. Writer Jack London, who lived in Sonoma County, said what everyone saw: "I knew it was all doomed...
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...