Kathleen Martinez was giving a presentation at the restaurant on an upper floor of a luxury hotel on Nob Hill, about a mile and a half from Ground Zero. The restaurant's picture windows offer a beautiful view of the
bay. An intense, literally blinding light suddenly floods in from the east. Seconds later, the windows explode inward, and winds far stronger than a tornado blow Kathleen and her audience out of the building.
Kathleen's death is mercifully quick. The hotel does not totally collapse, but huge pieces of concrete and glass are torn away. The street below is ravaged by a storm of debris, and Huntington Park is soon filled with shattered glass and rubble. Many people who were caught outside have second-degree burns on exposed areas of skin. Reacting as they would to an earthquake, most people try to find safety outside of damaged buildings and pay little attention to a fine gray dust that begins to settle over everything. Only a few of them realize that much of that dust is radioactive fallout. People who spend about an hour outside will receive enough radiation from fallout to make them very ill, and about half of them will die within three weeks.