Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!nsc!voder!pyramid!csg
From: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.pyramid
Subject: Re: Pyramid and the earthquake
Message-ID: <88258@pyramid.pyramid.com>
Date: 20 Oct 89 00:05:15 GMT
References: <232400008@mirror>
Reply-To: csg@pyramid.pyramid.com (Carl S. Gutekunst)
Organization: Pyramid Technology Corp., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 26

In article <232400008@mirror> miken@mirror.TMC.COM writes:
>I am concerned about Pyramid's proximity to the recent earthquake.  Did
>you suffer any damage?

Other than a few dozen ceiling tiles and an aquarium that tipped over (fish
rescued by the heroic efforts of a volunteer), no. We were closed Wednesday
while the city was inspecting buildings, and also because the commute would
have very difficult because of the many bridges, ramps, and overpasses that
were closed for inspection. A lot of people worked anyway, and it's pretty
much business as usual today. 

Please note that there was almost no damage in the entire "Silicon Valley"
area, including Palo Alto, Mountain View, Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara,
and San Jose. Neither Pyramid nor Sun Microsystems even lost electricity, and
it appears that decwrl, amdahl, and hplabs were never down or were up within a
few hours. For that matter, there was no damage in most of San Francisco,
Oakland, Los Gatos, and Santa Cruz. Just a few pockets were damage was severe,
and then only to unlucky or poorly constructed buildings. 

I've watched the national media, and they'd have you thinking the entire Bay
Area was collapsed or in flames. Not so. Yes, there was damage; yes, I-880 in
Oakland collapsed; yes, something like 200 homes were destroyed. But this *is*
a metropolitan area of 8 million people. My own feeling is that Charleston, SC
had a much worse time with Hugu than we did with the San Andreas.

<csg>