All Californians have our earthquake stories.
Mine is From a man I've been searching for since I missed the Northridge earthquake Three decades ago, on January 17, 1994, a bus driver we believe was named Reggie. Reggie was a model of selflessness that day. I wonder if he has told this story, if he knows that my friends and I think about him every year around this time.
Missing the earthquake probably saved my life. The fraternity house he lived in was just a block from Northridge Meadows, the apartment building that collapsed along Reseda Boulevardkilling 16. The ceiling above my bed collapsed into a million fragments where my head would have been, but I didn't find out about that until much later.
I woke up on the morning of the 17th in a hotel outside of Reno. I was with a group of fellow Cal State Northridge students on a ski trip to Lake Tahoe. My friend Dave was knocking on my door. “Turn on the TV,” he said and then he was in my room, turning on the TV himself. It was 6:30 in the morning. On the screen we saw an aerial view of destroyed buildings, cratered streets, a forked road, and then CSUN's two-year-old C-lot parking structure, which was horribly bent, like a broken leg. Many of the people on the ski trip had parked their cars in that structure. They would never get them back.
The camera panned. The San Fernando Valley was engulfed in smoke and flames. Somewhere was my family. My sisters in Sherman Oaks, my brother in Encino. Were they alive? Did they even know I was out of town?
I tried to call.
Nothing.
We were ordered to meet in a parking lot outside the hotel. A blonde man from the tour company that had been hired to coordinate our trip to Lake Tahoe was standing with a megaphone. I remember him looking like James Spader. “Listen,” he said, “under no circumstances will we drive these buses back to Northridge today or anytime soon. You all have lift tickets and hotel rooms, so enjoy your vacation, okay? That's all.”
We were just supposed to… ski?
James Spader put down the megaphone.
Reggie, an African-American man who had driven one of the buses to Tahoe, picked him up.
“I have a wife and son in Los Angeles,” he said without preamble. “I can't communicate with them.” The crowd fell silent. None of us had managed to communicate with anyone yet. “They can fire me, but if you want to ski, get on another bus, why this bus?” Reggie pointed to his idling car. “This bus is headed home!” Dozens of us piled onto the bus. Many others were left behind.
As we settled into our seats, Reggie stood up front. “We're in this together now,” he said. “I will take you all home, no matter where you live.” The pause. “I know you're probably scared. I have fear also. So let's share phones, see if we can communicate with our people, and we'll stop using pay phones from time to time. I have a radio up here. I hear something, I'll pass it on. But my intention is to get home as quickly as possible. Cool?”
Cool.
For the next 12 hours, we drove through California on two-lane highways and interstates. We share sandwiches. We stood in line for pay phones at rest stops, but couldn't get through. We whisper our fears. We acted like adults when all we wanted was our mothers. And all the time, Reggie was driving. “All alright?” he asked every 15 minutes or so. “Only a few more hours left.” It was always a few hours longer.
We finally arrived at the Valley that night. I tried to map the route Reggie must have taken. It doesn't make sense to me now how he managed to get us to 101 South, but there we were, heading out into Tampa, rolling down dark, broken streets, with fires burning in the distance, before arriving at a ravine of torn up pavement. a few feet wide and full of water.
Reggie stopped the bus. He turned and looked at us. “Well,” he said, “how about we see what this bus can do?” He told everyone to wait, backed the bus up a block, giggled, and knocked it down! We sailed right over that ravine.
From there, Reggie did exactly what he said he would do: he drove us home, stood in front of our trashed dormitories, our leaning apartment buildings, our fraternity and sorority houses, all of which would soon be red-tagged. , yellow or green to indicate your safety. When we finally arrived at the frat house he lived in, I could make out the glow of sirens down the block. They were looking for survivors they wouldn't find, but I didn't know it then.
Ten of us got off the bus. I don't remember if we shook Reggie's hand. We should have thanked him. But the truth is that I don't know anymore, because when I got off that bus I was in complete panic. Were my brothers alive? My girlfriend? My friends? Each of us stepped off that bus into an unknown future, dazed by the journey, lost in what the light might reveal.
In the end I didn't lose anyone.
We didn't talk about Reggie right away. In reality, it would be months.
And then someone would say: How crazy was that bus ride?
And we would all agree: crazy.
Did he really jump over that ravine?
He really did it.
Crazy. The guy was a hero.
He was. He is. I hope you know.
Tod Goldberg is the author of the most recent book “Gangsters Don't Die.” He directs the low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts at UC Riverside.
