(PressDemocrat) - 

Theresa Lang was asleep in bed or walking to her kitchen — she can’t recall which — when the South Napa earthquake struck last August and toppled the mobile home Lang shared with her boyfriend, sending the 53-year-old woman sprawling to the floor.

Lying there in shock, Lang looked out through the sliding glass door at the sickening sight of flames shooting from a ruptured gas line. There was an explosion, followed by an inferno that began overtaking the home. Bill Fittipoldi, Lang’s boyfriend, who had been thrown from his bed face-down onto the floor when the quake hit, said the couple had to get out immediately.

“I thought we had been bombed. Or that it was an airplane crash,” Lang said.

The couple were among tens of thousands across Wine Country who were subjected to nighttime terror unleashed by the Bay Area’s strongest earthquake in 25 years. The magnitude-6.0 temblor, centered beneath the Napa Valley Marina, struck at 3:20 a.m. on Aug. 24, a Sunday morning when most were still in bed. Jolted awake by the initial punch, most were helpless against the ensuing pitching and rolling, which lasted an interminable 20 seconds before finally stopping.

When it was over, a stunned citizenry from Vallejo to Napa and Sonoma Valley was thrust into an altered reality. Nearly 70,000 people were without power. Sirens wailed and freeways jammed with vehicles, as people hurried to check on loved ones. Intersection of Brown and 2nd Street.

By daybreak, emergency rooms at hospitals were filled with the injured. Napa County bore the brunt of the impact, with hundreds of homes and buildings heavily damaged, many beyond repair. In downtown Napa, a number of historic structures appeared on the verge of collapse.

Within hours, Gov. Jerry Brown had declared a state of emergency for Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties. Images of the destruction were beamed worldwide by a rapidly growing media corps.

“I looked at my phone, and it was Wolf Blitzer calling. It was so surreal,” said Napa Mayor Jill Techel, who rushed home from Monterey that morning to find her city in a state of disarray.

The eventual tally of loss showed the quake factored in the death of one person, injured about 200 others and caused about $360 million in property damage throughout the region. Sixty percent of Napa County wineries sustained some degree of damage, and up to 25 percent of wineries suffered moderate to severe damage exceeding $50,000 per winery, ranging upward to $8 million in the most devastating incidents.

One early analysis pegged earthquake-related losses to Napa County’s wine industry between $70 million and $100 million. At the time, the bank executive who conducted that survey called it a “very conservative estimate.”