Think back to your first or most significant response to an earthquake.
- What did it feel like?
- Where were you?
- Were you alone?
- How did it make you feel?
- Do you recall noises?
- What did you do?
- Is there anything you would do differently in the event of a next time?
I remember my husband woke me and told me an earthquake just happened but I did not feel it so I rolled over and went back to sleep. On the morning news I learned about the after shocks that I also slept through. All I can say is If and when the BIG one strikes I hope I will be asleep and if it takes me that’s ok because I am not afraid of dying.
I remember the wildly rolling earthquake of Northridge, Ca. I heard rumbling sounds and watched the house shaking like never before. I was taken by surprise as it continued on and I ran out to a west facing porch area. I looked out to the street to see the asphalt rolling like ribbon – my mouth dropped open at the sight. I had never seen anything that extreme. I have never forgotten it. I’m glad I haven’t seen another like it. I was not alone, was standing staring at the moving street with my housemate friend. We still talk about what we experienced. The rolling n rumbling continued for too long!
I usually just let tremors go by, I don’t look for cover – I wait, watch, and listen.
But the Northridge quake actually put me in touch with my fear of Nature’s unforeseen strength. We respect the vast ocean and it’s unpredictable temperament, but don’t have the same hesitation in regards to the land we live on. I’ve given this thought thru the years and would do my preparation differently. You learn how important being prepared is.
I like to have charged up devices to communicate with.
Full tank of gas in my car.
Earthquake safety prep kits (yes more than one) with flashlights, etc. I have Be- Ready kits that include pkgs of nuts, foods that keep. Back up clothing.
Basic essentials.
I have to laugh when I think back to my first earthquake experience because I honestly did not know we were having an earthquake. I felt the rumble and some noise, but I thought it sounded similar to the noises of living on the military base in Florida. I was at home and my sister called me on the phone and said, “did you feel the earthquake?” I said, “what earthquake?” and she replied, “we just had an earthquake.” I told her it sounded and felt like the jets flying overhead on the base. Since then I experienced only two other earthquakes and one was worse than the other. This was when I learned that the house we purchased was on the San Andreas Fault. I didn’t know that when we bought the house and so when this last earthquake hit, it really scared me. Now all I can think about is moving far far away from California and we plan to do this in the next year so I hope the big one doesn’t come soon because I have nothing to duck under in my house if it does strike when I am at home.
At 6:00:55 a.m. PST on February 9, 1971, the San Fernando or Sylmar earthquake struck with a magnitude of 6.6. My husband and I were in a lower apartment in North Hills. The aquarium next to the bed spashed water on me and I was wide awake through the quake. I looked up at the white popcorn ceiling and hoped I would not be meeting my upstairs neighbors if the ceiling fell. I tried to get up but was thrown back into my bed. My husband tried to get under the bed but it was only 5 inches off the floor. He was used to getting under the bed from growing up with hurricanes. The lights were knocked out so I got a candle and put a robe and slippers on and went outside. I saw a neighbor looking out their door. The neighbor later told me that I was a spooky sight to see. We were pretty close to the evacuation area below the dam so we really felt the quake. The kitchen was a real mess. There was ketchup, relish, various liquids (like soy sauce and vinegar) and broken glass all over the floor. It took a few hours to clean up. At that time I was a student at CSUN in the old science buildings. The aftershocks made us students run to the ends of the building and down the stairs because the building really shook. My stepdaughters had trouble sleeping for months. Everytime there was a significant aftershock, it triggered the feeling of total helplessness deep within us. Raw nature is truely an awesome force that we must accept as greater than us.
On January 17, 1994 at 4:30:55 am PST the Northridge earthquake hit. I was asleep in bed and my kids were down the hall south of me. There was a strange sound and it felt like a train hit the house and was moving it down the track. I was pinned to the bed by the force and called out to my kids that it was an earthquake. It seems like time and space stops and the shaking goes on for such a long time when it was only 20 seconds. Things along the west and east walls were knocked down. The tv fell but did not break. Of course the lights were out and did not come back on for a day or two. I went to my kids and held them. The after shocks touched the deep fear that was felt in the original shaking. Outside it was black and spooky. Later I went around the neighborhood and checked on the people of my block. I encouraged everyone to put on their shoes! Later that day I cooked a lot of food from the freezer so that it would at least be used. The phones were funny but I got through to my family and they were all ok. Seeing the massive destruction this 6.7 quake did was shocking. The Meadow apartments in Northridge that pancaked down and killed 16 people. It brought back the memory of the earlier 71 quake that I had been in and trapped on my bed looking up at the ceiling and hoping it would not fall. I was lucky to be in a sturdy built house and my kids and family were safe.
While attending the opening of the show tonight I recalled another earthquake memory. In 1994 I worked in a school laboratory. The school was close enough to the epicenter to cause a lot of damage. When we were allowed to come to work to clean up, the lab was something to see and smell! There were a lot of broken reagents and chemicals spilled around and some smelled very bad. The purple stain had spilled everywhere and permanently colored the scene. The drawers just below the counters had opened and closed mysteriously adding items from above, sometimes leaving broken glass in a closed drawer. The real boned full skeletons fell over and legs and arms were knocked off. Heavy metal dissecting scopes fell and the plastic parts broke. I used all the scopes to salvage parts to put a few whole scopes together. There was paint dust from the walls all over because the building had a metal skeleton that held the structure together so the drywall layer rubbed together so the paint fell off with the earthquake and each big after shock. We could only work in the mornings because by the aftenoon the sun was hitting the building and without air conditioning it got too hot. We were lucky to be able to open the windows to vent the fumes. It took weeks to get the lab ready. The freeways were a mess with a lot of the interchanges destroyed or made unsafe by the earthquake so I had to use surface streets. As I drove to work I passed many old houses I that were knocked off their foundations and red tagged. The amount of destruction was overwhelming.
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