From the Publisher

By Robert L. Miller

. When the earth began to tremble, TIME staff members in San Francisco found themselves living the story they would report. Lee Griggs and Dennis Wyss were squeezed into an open-air press box in the upper deck of Candlestick Park, awaiting the start of the third game of the World Series. "I heard a low rumble, and my first thought was that the Giants fans were stamping their feet in unison," Wyss recalls. An instant later, the stands began rocking back and forth. A native San Franciscan, Wyss was sure an earthquake had struck. So was Griggs, who as TIME's Tokyo bureau chief in the 1960s had experienced a score of them.

Griggs did his best to reassure his neighbors in the press box, most of them out-of-town sportswriters more conversant with split-fingered fast balls than the Richter scale. But both Griggs and Wyss became concerned when stadium light towers began whipping back and forth. Says Wyss: "The stadium kept swaying faster and faster. I thought, how much more can it take before it caves in? I felt utterly helpless. Then it stopped."

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."

San Francisco bureau chief Paul Witteman was on the phone in his office on the 19th floor of Two Embarcadero, overlooking the Bay Bridge, when the quake hit. "The building began to sway gently, then more rapidly," Witteman reports. "The phone connection was broken, and then the severe shocks began." With the elevators out of service, Witteman walked down 398 steps to the ground. It was only when he got to the street and saw the blown-out third floor of the adjacent Golden Gate Bank building that he realized the ferocity of the earthquake. He pulled out his notebook and began reporting this week's cover stories.