its that feeling of deja vu

as I sat and watched, fascinated, horrified, at the pictures from Minneapolis.

Its been almost 18 years since the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, and those pictures last night were all too familiar.

It was made even stranger as I listened to Keith Olbermann describe the event in words that were poetic, beautiful even, regardless of the terrible situation.

Weirder yet that his was a voice we heard that night in October, 1989, as he was a sports caster then, in the Bay Area for the World Series games that were interrupted by the quake; suddenly turned news caster, describing the destruction around him.

And the reports of a hundred little miracles --- the school bus that didn't go over the edge; the Red Cross facility practically at arms reach; the Red Cross official that was ON THE BRIDGE and helped those kids get out of that bus as it lay at an odd angle; the whole class of student nurses in the Red Cross building to aid all those kids as they came off the bus ----- no sir, it was not any of those kids day to die.

Then the stories that rip your heart out as one young man described his last words with his fiance as she was on the bridge saying to him "the bridge I'm on is collapsing" and then the awful silence. I wonder if he has found her yet, I wonder if she survived or if she is one of the bodies they are searching for this morning.

And finally the anger at a political situation that has continued over the past 6 years to drum the word terror into our ears over and over until one of the first questions out of our collective mouths is "Was it an act of terror?" And yes, it was terror for those people on the bridge, but not THAT kind.