BAY AREA QUAKE : THE HEROES A SALUTE : 12 Who Went to Bat When the Quake Hit

Police Officer Al Wong hadn’t had many days off since the Oct. 17 quake struck, so he was somewhat apprehensive when his lieutenant called a few days ago.

But then he recalled his boss saying, “I hope you’re a baseball fan,” and explained that Wong had been chosen as one of 12 heroes of the earthquake to throw out the ceremonial first balls at the third game of the World Series on Friday.

Like the others, Wong is not used to all the attention. He is distinctly the low-profile type, he said in an interview Friday before the nationally telecast game at Candlestick Park.

Asked to go over the earthquake events, he chose to tell first about how his fellow officers in the Haight-Ashbury District had donated 50 pints of blood and $1,800 out of their own pockets for earthquake relief. Then he matter-of-factly told of his own exploits.

Headed home to the East Bay, Wong was on the Nimitz Freeway on Oct. 17 when the earthquake struck. The roadway collapsed in front of him, the upper deck crashing down on people in cars on the deck below.

Wong, 34, stopped, grabbed his first-aid kit, and told others who had stopped to run to nearby warehouses and get ladders, ropes--and more help. Then he organized rescue teams to begin pulling people free wherever possible from beneath the tons of concrete and steel at the Cypress Street viaduct.

“We tried to get to the people on the lower deck, but it was so dark. The black smoke, you couldn’t see through it,” Wong said. Smoke from burning asphalt and tires choked him. “It was like tear gas,” he said.

He worked his way through the rubble to a van filled with nurses who had been on their way home from the UC San Francisco Medical Center. Firefighters had to use a metal-cutting device to free them. Some died, but three were carried out alive. Wong administered first aid to the survivors.

As he set about his task, Wong recalled, “You could look down and see the bone.”

He tried to keep the women awake, afraid that they would lapse into a coma if they lost consciousness. A helicopter arrived to take the nurses to hospitals. But the pounding from the rotors shook the freeway and Wong waved the copter away.

He later learned that one of the surviving nurses was related to the wife of the captain at his Park District station house in San Francisco.

“She wanted to know how her legs were. I told her, ‘You’ll probably have to wear socks for a while. You’re going to have to trust me on this.’ I think she had a broken back, so she couldn’t sit up to look. I sure didn’t want to tell her (about the exposed bones) because it would have put her into shock.”

After hours at the disaster site, Wong got home only to learn from television bulletins that all off-duty police officers were to report back to work. His boss let him sleep a few hours. But he was on duty early the next morning and, like the rest of the police force, worked 12-hour shifts for the rest of the week.

In San Francisco, the Police Department has long suffered its share of criticism. But there hasn’t been much of that since the earthquake. “It kind of boosts the morale of the Police Department,” Wong said. “ . . . We’re getting a lot of ‘Attaboys!’ ”

Among the others honored as heroes at the World Series Friday:

John Aziz, 46, a district manager for Pacific Bell who ran the telephone company’s emergency control center in its evacuated headquarters. Aziz was responsible for switching 800,000 phone lines onto auxiliary power when the lights went out, as well as overseeing phone service for police and fire departments and hospitals throughout the Bay Area.

“We had been practicing drills for the last year and a half,” said Aziz, an Egyptian-born father of two and a 20-year employee of Pacific Bell. “Let me tell you, it is really different when the real one hits.”

Aziz also helped rescue staff members who became trapped in the 13-story building’s elevators in the quake.

Juan Moncada, 25, has worked for the last year and a half for the San Francisco branch of the California Conservation Corps. Since the quake, he has put in 18-hour days taking care of displaced residents from the Marina District.

A native of Jalisco state in Mexico, Moncada said he and other CCC members helped residents pick through the rubble for their belongings and assisted the police in cordoning off dangerous areas.

“Especially, we talked to people so they would not be so nervous,” Moncada said. “The important thing was to help people keep calm.”

Ron Carter, 34, a captain with the Oakland Fire Department, supervised the dramatic rescue of 6-year-old Julio Berumen, freed from the Nimitz Freeway wreckage only after rescuers sawed through the body of a dead passenger in the car to reach him. Doctors then had to amputate Julio’s leg to get him out. Carter directed a crew of 12 that worked feverishly to free Julio and his sister, Cathy, 8.

Teri Tussey, 32, a San Francisco sheriff’s deputy, toiled 15 hours a day following the quake to dispatch 100 deputies throughout the city. The eight-year veteran also coordinated security for City Hall, the courts and other public buildings.

Steve Whipple, a bridge engineer with the state Department of Transportation, was the first rescue worker to locate injured motorist Buck Helm last Saturday morning, Oct. 21. Helm was pulled from his car in the collapsed Cypress structure of Interstate 880 four days after the quake.

Corey Livingston, as chairwoman of the Santa Cruz county chapter of the American Red Cross, spent long days directing relief efforts in the heavily damaged Santa Cruz region.

Shelly Cruz, a 15-year-old volunteer with the Salvation Army from Santa Cruz, assisted with collecting and distributing supplies, clothing and equipment to people in the hard-hit region. Shelly remained on duty despite the destruction of her own home by the quake.

Clifford Gray, a lieutenant in the Oakland office of the California Highway Patrol, represented the dozens of CHP officers who spent long days and nights overseeing the rescue operations on the collapsed Nimitz Freeway.