Viva la Zone

I had a secretary gig down the street from SF city hall in 1978. Opening and routing mail, taking phone calls, filing and delivering stuff, etc. On Monday, 11/27, everyone in the office just got back from T-Day weekend. Just before lunch, I heard sirens. Lots of sirens.
I hadn’t noticed that the main office phone had not rung for some time, which was weird, because I was also the first point of phone contact.
One of the bosses was close with DiFi and worked on her campaigns. He came rushing into the office about this time and told us there was a shooting at city hall. He asked me to try and reach DiFi’s office. I tried to call, but only got a busy signal. None of the phones in the office seemed to be working. Within a couple minutes, there wasn’t even a dial tone. Apparently, phone lines in the entire building were out of order. Nothing in or out. Kind of scary.
DiFi’s buddy and couple of the other bosses left to try and find out what the heck was going on.
A bunch of us went to windows to see if there was anything we could see. Mostly, just a massive police and fire presence and people scurrying every which way.
Finally, about half hour or so, one of the bosses comes back to let us know we were safe, but mayor Moscone had been shot. Because the mayor was supposed to hold a news conference, all the newsies had jammed the phone lines.
I went to the cafeteria with a couple of co-workers for lunch since we didn’t want to go out of the building just then. Another worker from another floor came over to us and he was crying. He managed to sob that Harvey Milk was murdered.
By the time we got back to the office, we learned both the mayor and Milk had been killed. The boss friend of DiFi came back a little later and confirmed what we heard. He had spoken with her and told us she found Milk’s body.
The rest of the day was chaos around the building with little or no work done. The rest of the week the city was in morning everywhere. Next Monday, Dianne Feinstein became the first woman mayor of San Francisco.