1994 Earthquake   Sunday night I stayed out late because Monday morning was a legal holiday for Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. I was planning on sleeping in. Now I was in my thirties having been married and divorced with two children. It had been 23 years since the first earthquake, but by that time it wasn't in the front of my mind anymore. I had never heard of an earthquake happening in California in the same place twice in a lifetime, so it didn't really bother me. My mom and my stepfather had bought a boat in Florida, and were currently sailing it through the Panama Canal back to California. They would be gone for months. I was house sitting for them, so I was alone in that very same house that we had the '71 quake in. The day that mom and Ken left to catch their plane, they were running late for the airport, and they really tore out of the house, leaving stuff lying around. As soon as they were gone, I straightened up the whole house and closed the doors to the unused rooms. That way, it would be perfect when they got back. January 19th at 4:32 a.m., the earthquake struck. The epicenter was in the very center of the Valley in Northridge, and this time the destruction went in all directions. I was sleeping upstairs, alone, in the dark. I woke up in the middle of the night, and the room was shaking very hard. "Shaking" seems like such a small word for what was happening. Everything was crashing around just like before. Mom's little lights were still plugged into the walls, and they were doing their jobs. It was obviously still nighttime, but I could see the things in the room being thrown around because of the little lights. I was too groggy to be terrified because I had stayed up late, and I said to myself, “I can’t believe this is actually happening again”. Then I noticed that I was clutching the bed. I thought, “why am I clutching the bed like an idiot? It isn’t attached to anything.” Then I remembered the chimney was just outside the wall over my bed, and it might cave in on me. I quickly crawled to the end of the bed (I took the direct route to the door, plus the floor could not be walked on anymore.) I got to the hall and the emergency lights were on. At each point within the house that I made it to safely, I felt like I had reached a mini milestone. The earth was still shaking very hard. I went down the stairs and made it to the bottom okay. The entryway was lit up with its little emergency light, and I could see that, even though it usually has nothing in it but a rug, it was full of furniture. The dogs were standing there wagging their tails, as if to say, “let us out”. I knew they would really be okay in the house, and if I did let them out, they would just take off down the street, so forget it. The key was in the bolt where it should be, and I got out of the house and ran into the cul-de-sac. There I was. Alone in the cul-de-sac, in the dark. My first thought was, “I did it. I re-lived my greatest fear, and I escaped just like I had practiced doing for years.” My second thought was, “Somewhere, right now, people are dying, and no one knows where they are or how to help them.” I knew that without the phones and electricity, The fire department would not be able to get to fires. Even though it was January, it was a warm night. I only had my nightgown and my socks on, but it was not cold. No one else on the whole dark street came out of their houses. Everyone's windows were black and silent. I knew inside the houses, the earth was trembling, jiggling the thousands of broken things inside. And people were in there terrified, but too afraid to come out. I had no idea what time it was. Was it 1:00? Or would the sky be turning light any minute? How long before something else happens? Finally some people from down the street came up checking every neighbor along the way. I decided to stay with them. Someone came back in my house with me so that I could get my shoes and my glasses. It was so scary in that dark, chaotic house, rustling the glass and teasing us. While I was in the house, we could hear explosions far off. When we got back outside, we could see an orange glow in the sky to the south, and another one over Sylmar. We had no idea what was burning or how far away it was, but we knew that it could spread quickly, and there might me no help. We wondered, would we have to go back into our houses in the dark and get rescue things before the fires get here? We turned on a radio in someone’s car and listened. People on the radio show were calling in from far away places like San Diego and saying, “We felt it, but there was no damage”. No one on the radio could figure out where the it had actually hit. They kept saying, "No reports of damage so far, and we have no idea where the epicenter is". But to us, the logic was obvious, “Gee, just think, where are the calls NOT coming from?” My sister Cindy lived two hours away in a rural area. She said that she and her husband felt the waves, but by the time they reached her house, they were small. Yet they lasted for a long time. Cindy said that she knew someone just had a bad one. She got up and turned on the TV All the network stations were snow. She said, “Oh no, it’s L.A.” My mom’s boat had just come out of the Panama Canal, and they landed in the first port. People were talking about the quake. “Did you hear about the big earthquake in the States? Over 6.5” “Where in the states? “California” “Where in California” “Los Angeles” “Where in Los Angles” “Somewhere called ‘Northridge’”. “Oh no, Carolyn is in that house alone.” Kim, who now lived in Northern California, turned on the T.V., and saw the news coverage of the explosion that I had heard. It was right by the nearest grocery store to our house. It was a main gas line that went under the street and had been torn open. The air had been filled with gas. Someone jumped in their car because they wanted to check on their family, and the ignition spark lit the air in a huge explosion. Six houses, three on each side of the boulevard, burned to the ground. On the news, one of the houses looked like mom’s house. Kim called all the family members on the phone and said Mom’s house was on fire. Cindy called back and said, “We don’t have palm trees in the side yard.” My stepbrother, who had teased us about being sissies we were younger, was in the Valley, asleep in bed with his wife. When the earth was shaking, the plaster started coming off the roof, and they thought the roof was going to fall in. They were somehow in a lower bedroom, so they got out of bed and tried to escape up the stairs, but the earthquake kept throwing them, back. He told me later that it was the scariest thing he had ever experienced, and he thought for sure they were going to die. He apologized to us later for all the teasing he did when we were little. (He was just a kid when he teased us, so I didn't care about that anymore anyway.) The sun finally came up and my neighbor and I helped each other clean our houses. She was a woman living alone too, and both of us were afraid to be by ourselves in the house. Having a little company helped channel all that adrenaline into cleaning energy. A plumber from down the street came to each house and put all the water heaters back, and checked to see if I needed anything else. My boyfriend Larry came by. He lived 45 minutes away and didn't have anything happen to his house at all. He and went to work that morning, but when work was closed, he decided to come over to my house. My old boyfriend, who was now a friend, had come by first, and Larry was angry. He said, “Oh, so you call him, but not me?” That really made me angry. My house is in a complete shambles and he is drilling me over a non-issue. I picked up the dead phone and said, “You try calling someone”. He stayed and “helped” me pick up the house. I remember he got a chair, and set it right between me and the door, and talked while I cleaned. I would ask him to move the chair to a better spot just in case, and he said I could get around him with no problem. When an aftershock would come (and there were hundreds each day during those first few days), I would go tearing out of the house, and he would tell me that I was upset over just a little, harmless jiggle. (Can you tell that this relationship was on the way out?) He wanted me to spend the night at his house, but I didn’t want to. I said I would camp out like the rest of the neighbors. But as night got closer, I got more scared, so I went. Larry’s house was far enough away that he didn’t have even one teeny thing fall over in the main quake, and all of his utilities were working. That night was the first time I saw the news that day. I didn’t know until then that the mall parking lot had collapsed and a man was trapped under the concrete. The University four-level parking had also caved in entirely. If these parking lots had been full of cars and people, there would have been so much death. The 5 /14 interchange that had been repaired after the ’71 quake, had come down again, stranding vehicles on the few isolating standing portions of the overpass. It looked exactly the way it had after the '71 quake. We learned later that it had been re-built to pre ’71 standards. But the worst was an apartment building right in the middle of Northridge. It was a very large complex, shaped in a huge square, and three stories tall all around. Along the street side of the buildings, the first floor of many units caved in completely and people were crushed before they could even escape. All the units had balconies. It was really terrible because the first floor was crushed so completely that the balconies of the third floor now lined up exactly evenly with the balconies of the second floors. You would think that a refrigerator or something would have made some kind of difference, but the first floor was as flat as a pancake. That is where most of the people died in this quake. That night I went to bed before Larry, and I asked him to leave my light on because I was scared. I was dozing and he walked by my room and turned off the light. I woke up with a start and accidentally called him my old boyfriend’s name, and asked him to turn the light back on. He got really mad and started yelling at me. He said, “I have never been so insulted in my life! To be called another man’s name, in my own house! In my own bed! Any other man would beat you for this, and you deserve it, but I’m not going to because I am nice!” He ranted for two hours, while I sat there terrified that he might become violent. I didn't want to run, because I was afraid he might use force to stop me. Thanks a lot. Now I am even more scared. In the morning I got only my purse, I left everything else behind, and I went to work. (I knew there was no work, but I knew I wouldn’t get credit or paid later if I didn’t check in.) Then I went to the old boyfriend's house, and he found a family for me to stay with. I called Larry and said that I was helping a girlfriend. I would work on my house in the daytime, and sleep over at there house in the evening. He didn’t know how to find me. It was very, very interesting being in that families’ house. They had two children the same age that my sisters and I had been in the first quake. It was like being an adult observer to my own trauma in the ’71 quake. They had only a one-story house, but the children were afraid to be alone at all. They would not go down the hall to take a shower or use the bathroom alone. They wouldn’t go in their bedrooms for anything, not even a pair of shoes. The mom and dad were very stressed out with their own fears, plus the anxiety about cleaning up, and trying to feed people with no heat or refrigeration, etc. (They had nice neighbors, and for the first couple of days, everyone got everything out of their freezers and had barbecues and potlucks. Someone had a generator, so everyone got to watch the news on the TV together.) Anyway, since the parents were busy and distracted, and I didn’t have anything really to do over there in the evenings, I made my job following the kids around like a little shadow so they would feel safe. I kept them company while they took showers or looked for their shoes. I didn’t mind. I knew how scared they were, and this really was a big help to the parents because it freed them to do what they needed to do to get the house back to normal. The parents were very scared and stressed too, just like I was. At night, the children insisted on sleeping with mom and dad in the master bedroom with the lights on. I could see from an adult perspective how suffocatingly dependant the children had become, yet I could also see that the parents were doing all they could to play down their own fears so as not to upset the children. I slept on the couch with the radio going, in my robe, with my shoes on my feet, my glasses on my face, my car keys in one pocket, and a flashlight in the other. Every night we would have two or three sizable aftershocks, and then everyone would go running through the house screaming and scared out of their minds. I decided to pay attention to see how long it was before we went 24 hours without a noticeable aftershock. It was one long month. This time, water was not a problem. The army came in and passed out free water, and they set up tent cities in the park. A lot of people from various condemned apartments stayed there. Most wood frame houses were okay, but we were told to wait until the government came around to put a green, yellow, or red tag on it. Most of my neighbors had moved into their front yards and cars. I overheard a neighbor child say, “But I want to sleep in the van forever.” I was going to vocational school at night, and after a week, classes were in session again. Even though we were all grown ups, everyone talked a lot about how scared they were. It turned out that everyone was sleeping with the lights on, with the TV going for company, and emergency stuff packed in the trunks of our cars, and keychain flashlights dangling from our belts. My friends would say, “I’m going to the bathroom during the break. Can you please come with me, because I am scared”. I had no idea when I was a child that the grown-ups were just as frightened as we were. Once during the lecture, I felt the slightest aftershock. I was terrified, but I resisted jumping up and running. The teacher, who had not been here for the earthquake suddenly stopped mid-sentence and said to the class, “What?” They said, “Didn’t you feel that?” “No, but all your faces went white at the same time and your eyes popped out of your heads” I knew mom was not going to be back for a couple more months, so I just did my best to take care of myself and the house. This time, none of the aftershocks ever shut off the electricity. That right there was a big help. Cindy came into town for a couple of days to help, and my dad lived close enough that he could come over during the day. We cleaned and cleaned. Cindy said she wasn't as scared of the aftershocks anymore, but seeing my fear so fresh would trigger her old fear. After staying the night with the family for a few weeks, I moved in with my single neighbor. Again, I kept the lights on in my room and the TV going just for company. It helped me not to jump at every creak that the house made. When mom finally did come home, she told me how worried they had been. I didn't need to sleep with them, but they were much more understanding this time around. We were all older and wiser. I still slept with the lights on, but I was able to sleep upstairs in my own room. When we would have an aftershock, mom would come and check on me to make sure I was okay. It was really helpful. Home