The Loma Prieta Earthquake And The Eclipses

We just had the 29th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area., so I thought I’d do a little astrological analysis of the earthquake. The earthquake occurred at 5:04 PM (local time) on October 17, 1989. The epicenter of the quake was quite close to the small town of Watsonville - south of San Francisco. Most folks who were here and experienced the earthquake remember where they were and what they were doing. I was sitting on my sofa and talking on the telephone to an employment consultant. When the quake began, she yelled, “OMG, it’s an earthquake!” I had just moved to San Francisco a couple of weeks prior to the event, so the rocking and rolling was something quite new to me. Unfortunately, sixty-three people died from incidents occurring as a result of the earthquake.

Anyway, a few eclipses were being stimulated at that time. Probably the most important one was the total solar eclipse of March 29, 1987 at 8 Aries. In the event chart for the earthquake, we find Saturn at 8 Capricorn (and, in square aspect to the eclipse point) along with Neptune at 9 Capricorn and Uranus at 1 Capricorn. Those planets are squaring Mercury at 9 Libra and opposing Jupiter at 10 Cancer and Chiron at 16 Cancer. In Watsonville’s chart, we see the Sun at 10 Aries giving us a fairly tight grand cross in cardinal signs. Most of the folks who were killed were on the bottom level of the Nimitz Freeway when it collapsed. Gemini is on the third house and Mercury is a part of the grand cross. The Moon was in Gemini and the third house.

The September 22, 1987 annular solar eclipse at 0 Libra had also been activated by Uranus at 1 Capricorn. And, Uranus is conjunct the MC in the event chart. Interestingly, the asteroid Pholus is conjunct the IC at 29 Gemini. We very often have a malefic outer planet (one or more) conjunct one of the angles (or more) in the charts of these events.

In addition, the Sun was stimulating the lunar eclipse of April 13, 1987 by conjunction. And, Mars was stimulating the April 8, 1986 solar eclipse in Aries by opposition. That’s quite a bit of activity related to eclipses.

One of the interesting aspects about the timing of this earthquake is that it occurred almost 84 years after the 1906 earthquake (which leveled the entire city). At the time of that earthquake, Uranus was at 8 Capricorn and conjunct the MC of that event chart. And, Neptune was at 7 Cancer and conjunct the IC in that event chart. The epicenter of that earthquake was actually located in the Pacific Ocean just west of San Francisco.