Matt Ortega

Collapsed span of the Cypress viaduct in 1989.

With the anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake quickly approaching on Saturday, the Oakland Tribune published a story about a community's efforts to transform the tragic rubble of the Cyprus Freeway left by those tragic events 20 years ago into a beautiful but solemn reminder for West Oakland.

When the frantic recovery was over, and the last crumbling bits of concrete and twisted rebar had been hauled away, many residents saw the potential for beauty in the barren, arrow-straight roadway. Where once had been an ugly, noisy, gritty behemoth that offered only shadows and physically divided neighborhoods from the BART station to the Emeryville border, a greenery-bedecked parkway could reunite the community once again, they declared.

"We had seen some places that Caltrans had beautified ... and we said we wanted Cypress Street like that," Parkinson recalled, referring to the early discussions.

And they didn't wait. On Earth Day the following April, six months after the freeway collapse, 100 dancers fanned out across the newly empty medians from Seventh to 32nd Street, swaying in unison to simulate the slow wave of the earthquake. Trees were planted where a freeway onramp once stood at 14th Street, and Cypress Street was officially renamed Mandela Parkway.

Read the full story here and coverage of the collapse here.

Local residents come to the aid of trapped motorists.

Less than two weeks after the earthquake struck the Bay Area, People ran an amazing story about the courage and heroism of ordinary people crawling into the rubble and wreckage to save their fellow citizens.

It was a widespread shock, both psychic and physical, and as the evening hours wore into night its dimensions became startling: an estimated 270 dead, 1,400 injured and perhaps billions of dollars in damage. Hidden in those statistics, however, are the small brush strokes of extraordinary heroism, Like that of Dr. James Belts, who risked his own life to extricate a child from the rubble of the collapsed Interstate 880 in Oakland, Or an anonymous bus driver who managed to stop his vehicle before it plunged off the Bay Bridge, Or Capt. Chris Heath, a fireman who returned an old debt by rescuing the son of a comrade who had once saved him. Theirs were the heartening moments unseen by many, but symbols, still, of the best that can emerge in the worst of times.

Just shy of my fifth birthday, this particular story has stuck with me after all these years.

Patrick Wallace, 31, a worker at a nearby paper products company in the industrial neighborhood, was the first to hear children's screams filtering through the jumbled slabs of concrete. After scrambling up the elevated structure, he could make out two children still alive, but trapped in a dilapidated red car. He yelled for assistance and stayed with the children until help arrived. Rescuers were able to extricate Cathy Berumen, 8, in fair condition with head injuries, but her brother Julio, 6, could not be freed. [...]

Betts, while acknowledging that he feared for his own safety on the tottering roadway, is matter-of-fact about his heroism. "I honestly felt that if it was going to collapse, it was going to collapse," he says. "We just couldn't leave him. If he was still there, I'd still be working there."

To free Julio, part of his right leg was amputated.

Read about their heroism and that of others here.