ARTING About...? The 6.0 Napa Valley Earthquake: A Knockout?

by Robin Scott Peters

Napa Valley First Presbyterian Church

When I first drove in to downtown Napa I saw the Riverfront Building to my left.  It was noon.  The sky glared white-blue. Everything looked pretty normal at first.  I entered on Third St. crossed Main St. and I jumped on the first place I could park.  It was pretty busy.  I was surprised.  I thought it would be a little less active.  I surveyed the situation.  I saw this big beautiful church in front of me about three hundred yards.  It had survived the earthquake.  I passed it off as such.  I thought, "Good, hate to see the old structures go.  They survived so much."

Initially I unpacked my full gear, my tripod--Manfrotto 509 and my Redrockmicro DSLR kit which I had spent much time, the night prior, recreating trying to find that perfect balance between everything working and being on the rig and keeping it all as streamline as possible.  Needed the gear functional, but not too ostentatious.  I was about ready to go out to talk to people. Some whom may have lost everything they worked for over their life.  I didn't want to have this big ass camera in their face. As I was putting the gear together I just got this feeling that it was over-kill.  I could feel the apprehension building.  I like to listen to my instincts.  So, I did.  No getting into peoples faces and asking them how they felt. I knew there were other "corporate" news agencies all over talking to people.  This small blogger, about face, to maneuver in a different manner.

I had set up the full gear, and as quick, broke it all back down to just a run and gun setup.  I took my Redrock gear and I created the "Grippit."  Attached my additional battery grip, clicked in my 105mm lens and took my D810 out into the streets in a stripped down get it done approach.  I started to wander about.  I didn't know where I was going.  I figured if there was damage I would run into it pretty quickly.  It was right on the corner.  A car devastated under a pile of rubble magnified with white-hot sun rays sucking up what life was left in that poor pile of what use-to-be.

Boy taking in the damage from the Napa Valley Earthquake

Windows gone, top crushed, clay-brick-red smeared.  Sometime prior to the earthquake the owner had put a For Sale sign on the vehicle: "Runs Great!" it read.  I was hoping that it was a sign of some deep level of humor to assuage the ugliness and hurt of losing so much, having no control.  Unfortunately the dusty sign spoke clearly--there was no dark humor to be found here.  I gravitated toward the church and made a right hand turn at the next block.  I stumbled upon more damage.  A wall high above Novelli Bail Bond.

This looks newly refurb

A large portion of the right corner of the building had disappeared. Decimated.  Bricks gone. 2 x 4's exposed.  Window frames pulled out and glass shards spewed.

I turned and I saw so many orange, yellow, lime safety vest and hard hats.  Disaster response comes in Skittle colors, I thought.   People were "ant-ing" about doing all sorts of things.  Walking, running, bending, talking and directing.  There was every type of workers truck.  All sorts and sizes from all different organizations. And paralleling this scene were people puttering forth enjoying the day. Mothers tugging along their children.

A family enjoying 

Teenage daughters not paying attention talking on their cell phones to their boy friends.  And, there was this sort of overwhelming sense "did something happen here or not?'

I walked around and I began to see. Plywood.  And yellow tape. Caution. Police officers.  Police vehicles.  And then, the cracks.  On Second St. now. There was the building in the news that I had seen the corner of the third floor missing.  I stood there and started to shoot.  New brick placed over old brick....both gone.  Metal beams standing starkly out into space. Lonely. All the support structure gone.  Lights hanging from wires that let lights dangle like spider webs that had caught some sort of bug, that was now dead, that hung limply.  Waiting to be devoured.

Gone

Swoosh, swoosh the camera shuttered as I shot and I shot.  I didn't have my camera on multiple release.  Each shot of close to 300 individually deliberate.  I thought it was the least I could do. I tried to get it at different angles tried to get, capture the immensity of this rare moment. People all around me.  Doing the same thing as I was, just with smaller cameras.  Reaching over chain link fence from Tri-City Fencing Co and the yellow tape.  These groups of people in groups of four or five.  As I shot, people would come up.  I would listen to them as I was shooting.  They were standing right next to me. I heard stories about, "Wow, we don't get it.  A lot of these building where just retrofitted and redone and new and they just crumbled."  I heard. Thought it an interesting comment. I went about clicking away. Didn't think much of it.  I was still in awe of what was in my viewfinder. Shooting the brick.  Like lingering dust it just floated over me.  But as I walked around I began to hear that same comment more and more.  I didn't really get a chance to interview anyone.  The two that I did get a chance to speak with didn't want to talk on camera because they had affiliations with the city and weren't really allowed to speak.

I did get the pulse.  I think I actually got more truth.  I was able to hear people talk about this experience with their friends and family whom had come up to see for themselves what had happened. Their friends paying sympathy to them.  The devastation was everywhere, bricks and awning and cracks and yellow tape and trees.

Irony with Carpe Diem taking a hit

Carpe Diem, that was a moment.  I didn't really see it at first.  I saw it. I walked upon it.  But.  Carpe Diem, Seize the Day.  Ripped and torn and tattered and thrown down to the grown like it didn't mean anything. Bricks scattered around with strips of metal and wood laughing at it with the holes.  Carpe Diem, surrounded by "POLICE DO NOT CROSS" yellow tape.  Seize the Day.

I walked around and I stumbled upon the church again.  And still as I walked up to it, I was underneath it, I didn't see.  What caught my eye was at the top of the spire-- the weather vane.  It was tilted, it was crooked and had been altered by the earthquake.  I thought, how odd, even that got discombobulated, hanging on for dear life.

Discombobulated Weather Vane 

But it was still up there.  The wind will start blowing, who knows what will happen.  I took a shot of the church's sign "First Presbyterian Church."  And I moved on.  I went to Ace Hardware.  It was tapped up.  I came back down the street and started shooting a close up of the spire not sure why I was so connected with this wobbly weather vain. That's when a city worker came up to me.  He said, "hey if you really want to see something sad, go to the other side of the building and see what happened to the stained glass.  It's all gone.  The depiction of Jesus.  It's been there a long time and now its gone."  "Really?  I was just over there and I didn't see anything?"  I went back to the front side of the church and there, in all it's "glory" was, a gaping hole.  I had shot it. But just didn't see what I had shot.  The dark interior background inside masked the gaping hole where Jesus once had been.

I moved up the street to the Uptown Theater where the Dan Band was scheduled to play on August 23, The "A" hanging precariously bumping into the "B". Definitely Earthquake positioned.  Dave Mason was scheduled to play the next day.  Wonder if he did?  He looks so much like my friend Larry (whom I talk about a lot in my articles) in the picture.  Larry, you could be Dave Mason.

My objective was to come to do what the Mayor of Napa Valley asked me to do.  Which was to spend time in Napa and do what you do in Napa--eat great meals and sip great wine, enjoy great shopping and spend!!.  I grabbed my book that I have on Napa wineries.  But one after the other after the other was closed or boarded up.  1-800 Board Up was actively doing just that.  Boarding them up.  Antiques on Second was open.  I took a shot of it and a gentleman yelled at me from across the street whom was sitting there: "Excuse Me." He called out.  I wasn't sure why he was doing that, so I continued on.  He was open for business, though.  I was assuming it was his shop.

I took a left, more yellow tape.  More trucks, fixing something, doing something, advertising how they fix what's broken.  More yellow tape.

More walking.  The same blocks.  I think I was on my third go-round.  Getting more acquainted with the lay of the land.  I guess that is when I began to see the Red Tags, Yellow Tags and White Tags that where being placed on the doors of the establishments.

Too Many of these Red Tags

"Unsafe Do Not Enter, This Placard Is Not A Demolition Order." Hmmmm??? Shop after shop:  Tailors, Cleaners, Restaurants, Wines, Clothes, Music & Video stores.  Red Tagged.

Cracks, cracks, cracks and crevices.  Big cracks.  Charles Schwab Building, Wells Fargo.  Yellow tape, more boards, more men and woman in multi-colored hard hats.

New buildings cracks on corners, walls falling down, New stores, no longer. Panels falling down. Yellow tape everywhere.  I go around the corner and there is Subway and people siting outside and inside, eating just as normal as can be. Then turn the corner and there is the Empire Building. Supposedly a relatively brand new building built/rebuilt, just within a few years and damaged greatly.

"We are closed.  Hope to be open later today, unsafe conditions outside."  Norman Rose Tavern.  More cracks and more yellow tape and more red signs.  Broken.

And I was tired and I realized I had been walking for hours around an around up and down.  When I first arrived I had no feel for the area.  Now, I felt I understood.  I stumbled upon The Napa Tourism Information Center and Square One Tasting Bar.  I walked in to see what was going on and to see if they were pouring.  No, they weren't doing any tastings, but I could buy a glass.  The other side was closed, the Olive Oil store side, suffered major damage.  They had cleaned up but it was closed. "Thank you for the information" and I walked out and she said "come back have something to eat and drink if you can."   And I said "I will" and I walked out.  More pictures.  I couldn't stop.  Kept finding more.  And more cracks and bigger cracks...fucking more, more, more cracks and more cracks, can I say more enough????  Can I say red tag enough can I say devastation enough?

And then, round the corner, people eating and enjoying and trying to live life.

Taking control of their lives,  having a nice meal.

You have to go on.  And, you do.

I went back to the Riverfront where I was parked at Third St.  It was really now time to eat.  I was exhausted, my diabetic-self.  Three-plus hours walking around.  I think I covered the pictures.  I think I got it.

Now I was going to do what the Mayor proclaimed.  I went back to the information center.  I sat down at the bar.  I ordered myself a Petite Syrah.  Accent on the "Ahhhhh!"  I asked the young woman behind the bar if they served food and she spirited out "we sure do."  She began to read off a list.  I stopped her and I asked her "What do you like?"  "I like the turkey on toasted waffle, with asiago cheese and chocolate, with pineapple dipped in chocolate.  "Say no more, say no more, Bring it!"  It was delicious, decadent, worth it.  Ciera, was "her" name.  She made me feel welcome.  Talked about the earthquake.  How it affected the community.  How the people have come together.  Ciera is a "Townee" as I call it.  Born and raised right there in Napa.  What a wonderful representative for Napa. She didn't complain.  She talked about how they took lemons and were making Lemonade.  A true sign of a Leader.  Specialty wines lost.  35% of the stock.  Yikes.  Those bottles that survived, stained with red wine leaked from those that did not.  Ciera called it Patina. I thought that Perfect.  She was setting up make-shift displays to sell the Patina Bottles at "Earthquake Specials."  What was going to be a brief meal turned into two-plus hours.  Thank you Mayor of Napa, in your salmon colored polo on TV headline news.  You were absolutely right.  Come to Napa, don't shy away.

I heard a lot in those few hours.  I heard a father talk about why he brought his young son down today.  I heard him tell Ciera, as he was buying something,  behind me just a foot away.  He brought his son down, it was a teaching moment.  The power of the earthquake, the power of how people deal with disaster, the power to make it right. That's a good dad.  I sat.  People dribbled in, nothing like it should have been.  Certainly.  Another man.  An architect.  Was going around offering advice to business owners.  Another tells about that moment 3:00 AM, coming downtown to this very spot I sit. Checking to see if the glass had tumbled.  Knowing the owners, called to tell them that at least the store was secure. Giving them a little breathing room as they rushed down to survey the damage.  Just being neighborly.

I have had the unfortunate experience of living through a major earthquake, well actually three.  I lived in Los Angeles from 1982 until just recently returning to Northern California.  The Whittier Earthquake in the late-1980s was scary.  I lived in an old rental home in South Pasadena.  It was late-afternoon.  I remember running out of the house dragging my children.  Northridge, 1993 I believe, was even worse.  I was in Sierra Madre along the San Gabriel Mountains. 40+ miles away from Northridge.  4:31 AM.  I am pretty sure that's when it hit.  Deep sleep-on the floor disoriented-out the door in the drive way naked.  Stood there like that for over 30 mins before I got the nerve to go back inside.  I will take a Lie Detector Test on those facts.  Not pleasant.  And I wasn't even in the Epicenter of either.  Your strength is tested those immediate days after.  Every aftershock.  Even every truck that drives by. Your "earthquake" radar is highly strung....tuned.

I got back on the road heading home about 5:30 PM.  Right into a load of traffic.  Felt like I was back in LA for a brief moment.  I liked the traffic.

Traffic I can enjoy

People were out.  Not home.  Not scared hiding.  Living. Napa has a smart Mayor.  His press conference was simple.  KISS. Right!?  He kept it simple, help comes in the form of living, keep moving forward.  It's all good, nothing wrong here, we will work around it.  Come on down to Napa, we got it covered.  And after checking out the scene, I am convinced the Mayor is right.

PS getting the $1-4 Billion dollars estimated to fix it all.  Well, that's for another article later.





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