1971 Earthquake   February 9th, 1971. It was a warm Tuesday morning in our neighborhood. . I was eleven years old . That day, Sqeaky Fromme was going to attempt to assassinate President Ford. That night we were going to see a total eclipse of the moon. But that morning, at 6:01 a.m., we were going to start the day with an earthquake. I never need to look up the date, every February 9th I think about it. My family lived in a two-story house in a cul-de-sac in Granada Hills, which is midway between Sylmar and Northridge. These comminutes are small pieces of the San Fernando Valley, which is a large suburban area adjacently North of Los Angeles. Sylmar is the most northerly community, up against the hills. Northridge is right in the middle of the Valley. The epicenter for this quake was in the hills just above Sylmar, so only a pie slice of waves actually hit the Valley. The other waves headed off to the mountains and the desert. The streets were still dark, but the sky was just beginning to lighten in the East. It was going to be a clear mild day. My little sister Cindy, age 9, was awake before it happened. She was always nervous about things like blackouts, burglars, and monsters under her bed. She told me that was laying in bed, very alert, and she could her noises downstairs: slight moving and rattling of the pots and pans. She thought there was a burglar in the house, and so she was very frightened, and all keyed up with adrenaline. Her bedroom faced westward, toward the backyard, and her bed was pushed up against the window. She decided to kneel in her bed and look out the window, where it was lighter. She was looking at the swimming pool when the earthquake hit. She said that the water jumped out of the pool, and leaped over the six-foot wall that hid the pool equipment. There was a landscaped hill behind our house, and our neighbors above us also had a pool. She saw their water gushing down into our yard. She was absolutely terrified and couldn't get off the bed. My room was on the opposite side of the house, facing the east. Every morning when the sun rose, it hit my windows full on and would fill my room with light. That morning, the earthquake woke me up suddenly, and my room was moving in chaos. My room was bright as day, as if the sun was streaming in full force, and I could see everything clearly. I thought the sun was up and shining directly in the windows. The light was constant and steady like the sun. It didn’t flicker at all. But it wasn't the sun. Our house was up on the side of a hill, and my room overlooked the Valley. All the transformers were exploding, and that lights was as bright and constant as the sun shining directly into my windows. I had a dresser next to my bed and it with each shake of the earth, it would swing forward gently to a 45 degree as if it would fall over, and then it would slam back up against the wall over and over. Everything was so loud and noisy. There was the roar of the earth itself rumbling like loud thunder, and the sound of everything in the house smashing and being thrown around. I could hear all the glass in the kitchen crashing, and everything in my room smashing around. It wasn’t an easy jiggle, like driving down the street, it was unreal as if someone was holding a doll house and shaking it with all their might. The Master Bedroom was at the far end of the hall. Mom and Ken ran down the hall trying to rescue us as the earthquake continued. There were four girls in the house, including myself. Cindy's room was closest to theirs, so Ken ran into Cindy’s room first. He tried to reach her from the door, but every time he reached out to her, the earthquake would throw him back against the wall in the hallway. He said realized it was just like a boat, so he waited for it to throw him in the direction he needed to go, and then he grabbed her. Mom headed for my room, which was next. Mom and I have compared our stories a hundred times, since even the first hour after it happened, and it is interesting because our recollection is different. I remember that, for some reason, I did not feel afraid. And though my room was lit up like the sun, and I could see everything being thrown around, I calmly said to myself, “This is a blackout. I should go get Cindy to make sure she is not scared”. So I got up and started slowly walking through the room while the earthquake kept shaking. I had no trouble walking while everything was flying around, but I was taking very small steps. Suddenly, my mom ran into the room. She was waving her arms over her head completely hysterically and she was screaming, “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” Her eyes were red and I thought she was going to cry. I said, “Mom, why are you crying?” She turned around and ran out of the room. After she ran out of the room, I ran after her towards the stairs. That's how I remember it. Now Mom remembers clearly coming into my room, and she also said that that the room was as bright as day, as if the sun was streaming in, even though the rest of the house was pitch black. She also said that I was standing in the middle of the floor just like I remember. But she said that my mouth was wide open, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs. That is really strange, because I don’t remember feeling fear or screaming. My stepsister Jenny about 14, and her bedroom across the hall from min. She said that she was lying in bed, barely awake, and she felt a notebook on the bed with her foot. She nudged it off, and when it hit the floor, the earthquake started. She thought she caused it. When mom got to her room, Jenny was sitting up in bed with her arms out calling for my mom. The room was pitch black, but my mom could see her and was saying, “Jenny! Grab my hand” But Jenny wouldn’t move. Then mom realized that Jenny didn’t have her glasses on, and it was dark, and she couldn’t see mom. So mom reached out and grabbed her. The earthquake only lasted a minute, and everything up to this point happened during that minute. The earthquake was still shaking hard, and now were altogether at the top of the stairs. We all ran down together, and just as we got to the foot of the stairs, it stopped shaking, and we stood there in disbelief. My older sister Kim, age 12, had a bedroom right at the bottom of the stairs. Kim always was a little peculiar. She has always been clam, analytical, and matter-of-fact, like a Vulcan. And there she stood, in her doorway, perfectly calm, holding her pet mouse. With the completely logical presence-of-mind as Spock on Star Trek, she said, "Where have you guys been? We just had an earthquake”. It was still just the early light of morning, and everything inside the house was smashed. Every piece of furniture was turned over, and glass from the kitchen had been shaken to every part of the downstairs. I remember my stepfather said, “Well, we’re in the safest place in the world now. It will be twenty years before we have another earthquake.” Since I was so young, twenty years was an infinity away. The whole kitchen floor was about a foot deep with glass and debris, mixed with food such as ketchup, syrup, and cereal. A lot of things came in glass containers back then, plus all the dishes and glasses fell out of the cupboards and were smashed. We set a chair by the pantry, and Jenny sat there, and as we found containers intact, we would pass them to Jenny, and she would briefly sponge them off, and put them back on the shelf. For at least a year we would find containers with gunk and Rice Crispies dried and stuck to the outside. I remember the stove in the kitchen was an island. The island had come loose and all that glass and stuff was under it. They got some neighborhood men together and they lifted up the island so Ken could rake some of the stuff out with an iron garden rake, just enough to set the island back on the floor. Once the island was on the floor, they never picked it up again. The artifacts of that earthquake are still under that island. It took us weeks to pick up everything. Later that day, my girlfriend and I rode our bikes down to the school. It looked okay to us, but it would be condemned. We rode out onto the playground and there was a huge gash in the asphalt. It must have been 5 or 6 feet wide at the widest point, with one side at least five feet higher then the other. It stretched on a little longer then the kickball field, but each end of the gash ended in a neat point. We peered over the edge into the crack. I was dark and jagged inside. We could not see any bottom. I thought, “This is what it looks like when the earth opens up and swallows you to hell.” Later, that girlfriend found an unbroken glass, and you could put it on the sidewalk with water in it and watch it jiggle. What was really unnerving was that over the minutes, hours, days, and months, the earth would not stop shaking. It kept shuddering like it had the chills. We had many big after shocks that didn’t hurt anything, but they shook all the broken glass around and really terrorized us. But we had many small aftershocks, and they were just as terrifying. It would have been much easier to recover if the earth hadn’t kept taunting us. As far as we kids were concerned, there were three types of aftershocks. One type would be like this: it would be so still, and you would be engrossed in something on television, and then suddenly BOOM! A big jolt, the lights would go out, and the house would be rolling. We would be running down the stairs in the dark screaming. Nobody would go to sleep that night, because you just weren't sure if it was going to do that again. Another kind would be a small jiggle, a pause, and then the big shaking. That would give you a few more steps towards the hall before the blackout hit. Then there were the small jiggles, a pause, and then nothing. That was still terrifying because we weren’t sure whether or not the jolt was right behind it, and we would still be filled with adrenaline. When we would run during an aftershock we would try not to touch the ground because it is moving and things might be falling on it. So when we ran, we would take long, springing leaps like deer. Screaming seemed to help too because it cleared the path in front of us from anyone not moving fast enough, and it helped release some of that adrenaline. This sort of terror went on for years. The Sylmar earthquake took about 50 or 60 lives. Many of the freeway overpasses near our house collapsed entirely. I remember seeing in the paper one freeway fell flat onto the road beneath it, and jutting out from the rubble was the bed of a pick-up truck. The 5 / 14 interchage is a real major route. Up there, all the northbound freeways out of L.A. have merged into the 5, and it is the only Northern access to L.A. You can't drive around it because of a huge mountain range. The whole thing came down, and it reminded me of a toddler kicking around wooden train tracks on the floor, with big chunks scattered everywhere. On our street, the waves of the earth made cracks across the width of our street at regular intervals. Anyone can look at it and say, “This is exactly how far apart the waves were.” They are still there too, but I don’t think the current residents know where they came from. The worst damage though, was to the Olive View hospital. It was close to the epicenter. A whole five-floor wing fell over sideways, just like a giant book at the end of a bookcase. That was where most of the deaths occurred. The effects of the earthquake in our lives lasted a long time. My sister Cindy and I were scared out of our minds. We could not sleep at night for years. Everyone slept downstairs for two weeks, and then we tried to go back to normal. But my room was too scary. It was too easy to visualize the whole thing happening again. So I would creep into the hall with a blanket, and sleep up against mom’s door with the hall light on. Cindy would come too. I felt safe because nothing could fall on me in the hall. So mom tried letting us sleep in bed with her. We were still so scared, we wanted the lights on, we were talking, and we were jumping every time the bed moved. This was very stressful for my mom. Her mom had just passed away recently, and she was still grieving. This was before we understood how healthy it was to talk about one’s feelings, so she just kept it all in. Also, she had just remarried, and wanted to be alone with her new husband. We were like little monkeys just clinging to her. Plus, if she had any fears, she never let on. She kept trying to put on a brave front. Soon though, all of this got to her and she began to lose her temper really badly. Altogether, it was a mess. At school, no one talked about how scared they still were, but we all talked about where we were during the earthquake. Some kids said that they thought a giant was shaking the house. I didn’t think that because I didn’t believe in giants, however, that is exactly what it felt like. Other kids said they were so scared that they held onto the bed. I thought, “why would you hold on to the bed? It isn’t attached to anything stable.” Because no one talked about what was going on in their homes now, I thought we had the only crazy house on the street. My mom told me later that our neighbors got a divorce because of the earthquake. The dad had been out of town when it happened, and he came home to the utter insanity of his wife and five children. He couldn't take the screaming and running around "over nothing", so he left. The aftershock really weren’t so bad if you hadn’t been in the actual earthquake, so he couldn’t see the point. Mom told me later that one of the biggest problems after the earthquake was water. She said that one bottling company went around and serviced all their customers. The other company ignored their customers and sold water to everybody right off the truck. But all the trucks had armed guards on them. After about a year of sleeping with mom, she really insisted that we sleep in our own rooms, but I was still scared out of my mind. We could go for months without an aftershock and then get a big one. I would lay in bed every night just riveted in fear with my eyes wide open. I think now that I must have gotten some sleep, but I don’t know when. Mom finally compromised and said I could sleep with my light on. That helped a lot, and I was not able to sleep with the light off until I grew up. Mom also put a ight in each bedroom that would automatically come on when an aftershock would knock the electricity out. She also had them in the hall. In the stairwell, they installed an industrial one, which was a big metal box with two car headlights on it. One pointed up the stairs into the hallway, and on pointed downstairs towards the front door. We had all agreed that even though everyone says, “Don’ t run outside”, our house was safe outside, and we were supposed to run into the cul-de-sac. I think the popular belief regarding standing in a door way during an earthquake is not at all smart, because when the earth is shaking that hard, the door is going to rally whack you, plus you could get your fingers pinched. And if the house falls down, I have never seen a doorframe left standing. I vote for outside. A few years later, when my sisters and I were teenagers, sometimes we would test our fear. We would say, "Are we really still so scared that even in the daytime under our own power, could the sound alone scare us? We would go into the kitchen and assign stations: one person at the stove island, one at the table, one at the doorway, and one at the sliding glass door, and we would all jiggle them simultaneously to make it sound just like an aftershock. It sounded like the room was shaking. Even though we were creating it, we would scare ourselves, scream, and let go. We had another stepbrother and stepsister who were not there for the earthquake. They thought we were a bunch of sissies and scared for nothing. One time at dinner, the tall wooden salt shaker fell over with a loud bang. Everyone at the table (but them) jumped up in terror right to their feet. When I grew up and moved out, I was pretty much back to normal. But sometimes I would be sitting in a building, and a truck would go by, slightly rumble the building. I would freeze in fear, and the adrenaline would charge through my body. When I decorated my house, I was always aware of earthquake safety. I didn't put bookcases by the doors, so they wouldn't fall over and block an exit. I never put heavy things up on high shelves that could fall down and kill you. I had those automatic lights in the light sockets, and the first aid kit was not in the kitchen, were it could be buried under glass, or trapped in a cupboard, but somewhere in the living room near the front door. To this day, I never put my expensive camera up on a counter over a tile floor, but I set it on a couch, or on the carpet. "What if there is an earthquake?" is just in my blood. 1994 Quake Home