Shaken up

Josh from the US wrote:

It was the “Battle of the Bay” World Series and the game was at Candlestick Park in San Francisco.  Everyone was rushing home to catch the game between the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants.  I worked in Oakland and had a long ride on my motorcycle to get home. 

All day the guys in the yard and I talked about the game.  We couldn’t wait to get home to watch it, but we were on a huge job that was behind.  I kept getting this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach all day long and as it got later into the afternoon it got worse.  I’d feel like I couldn’t breathe and felt like I was having panic attacks.  I went to the foreman and told him I thought we needed to head out early.  It just felt too weird and I was really anxious. 

He finally gave in … I guess I somehow made it clear that something terrible was going to happen.  We all headed out and were on our way home when the earthquake hit.  Our jobsite was covered by the collapse of the Cypress structure.  If we hadn’t gotten off early we would have all still been working when it happened and been among the hundreds of people who died in the collapse.