Remembering the 1994 Northridge Earthquake

I was reminded that yesterday, January 17, was the anniversary of the 1994 Northridge earthquake—which that year, like today, was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Though I lived “over the hill” from the epicenter in the San Fernando Valley 25 miles away, we nevertheless felt much of its force, being suddenly shaken awake at 4:30 in the morning. I vividly remember sitting up in bed as the house violently swayed back and forth, like an old 1930s cartoon. Fortunately, the rented house we were living in at the time didn’t experience any serious damage other than a partial collapse of a cinder block retaining wall in the back of the property. 

 That said, my job at the time was in the very epicenter of the earthquake in Northridge. I was asked to report into work three days later. The building where my office was in had been deemed unsafe to occupy and for the first few months we worked in an open field in what looked like a MASH unit. We eventually worked out of new temporary trailers for the next several years as the office building was retrofitted and eventually re-opened. A parking structure at the site had completely collapsed. It was fortunate that it not only occurred in the early morning hours, but also on a holiday. 

Though freeway collapses had occurred, they did not fortunately affect my commute directly—in fact, two of the freeway collapses occurred a few exits outside of my commute on both sides, one just about a mile from me. (An on-duty highway patrolman on his motorcycle lost his life in the other collapse since he did not see the missing section in time.) A year later, President Clinton visited our site to mark the recovery.

(These are all my personal photos.)