At the time, I was living in Santa Ana, about 40 miles from downtown Los Angeles and 65 miles from the epicenter. I was in bed, as were most of us, so I covered myself with pillows and rode it out.

If you live in quake country, be sure nothing is around your bed that can get airborne or fall on you. It's also a good idea to keep a pair of shoes and socks next to the bed so you don't have to walk on glass. (2/x)

Having trained as a first responder, after the main shaking stopped I grabbed a flashlight and went out to check my apartment complex. All was quiet. We didn't lose power. (3/x)

Later that morning, I went to work in Cypress, which was about 50 miles from Northridge. It was a three-story building. The first floor was fine. The second floor had a few items that fell. The third floor was a mess, including a broken water line. Any cabinets that weren't locked flew open and dumped their contents. We had cracks in the stairwell.

I brought my camcorder to document it all, but the battery was dead! Lesson learned. (4/x)

My supervisor let me go home around 10:30 AM PST so I could switch VCR tapes and record the afternoon's quake coverage. I'll post that later.

I'll also post later a History Channel two-hour program from 1997 that looked back at the quake and its aftermath. (5/x)

My personal "uh oh" was when I saw this on TV. I did a one-year internship in 1984-85 with the City of Anaheim. One of my projects was a new scoreboard.

The Angels wanted the board mounted on the overhang. The architects said no, the overhang can't hold the weight. I left before it was resolved, but clearly the Angels got their way.

When I saw this on TV, I contacted some news reporter friends and told them there's a memo somewhere documenting "We told you so." It eventually surfaced. (6/x)

A reminder that if you want to relive the 1994 #Northridge #California #Earthquake in real time, start this video at 4:41 AM PST/7:41 AM EST.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rynddxc8kI4

Was just reminded of the 1987 Whittier Narrows quake, a 5.9 at 7:42 AM. I was at work in Irvine.

My employer had designated two managers as our emergency response leads. Both panicked and did the opposite of what they were supposed to do. One ran to the window to look outside. The other ran past him through the glass doors to the parking lot.

I braced myself in a door jamb. If I'd been at my desk, I would have dived under the desk.

A woman in our city had a heart attack and died.

#Northridge #California #Earthquake

"The rapid ability to collect and analyze the information enables the USGS to disseminate information about quakes faster than the most powerful tremors spread through the ground. The USGS now manages ShakeAlert, an earthquake early warning system designed to give people on the West Coast notice of when a moderate to strong quake hits nearby."

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-17/the-1994-northridge-quake-was-a-shock-heres-why-the-next-one-wont-be

#Northridge #California #Earthquake

"Walls bend. Refrigerators walk. Televisions fly. I learned all this and more 30 years ago today, when I was jolted awake at 4:31 a.m. by the magnitude 6.7 Northridge earthquake."

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-01-17/column-millions-of-angelenos-havent-lived-through-a-big-quake-i-have-and-this-is-what-its-like

Our live real-time replay of #Northridge #California #Earthquake coverage 30 years ago continues. Start this video at 10:45 AM PST / 1:45 PM EST for eight more hours of coverage.

By nightfall, local TV news helicopters were being pressed into service as medical evacuation flights.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h-WMn9xaRk

Concluding our coverage of the #Northridge #California #Earthquake 30th anniversary ...

This is a two-hour 1997 History Channel documentary on the quake. For those who don't want to watch all the live coverage, this is the "Cliff Notes" version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eODSt07MU00

@WordsmithFL

OMG

@WordsmithFL Oh yeah. My step parent’s old Zenith (which was one of those old fashioned ones with a wooden cabinet and matching speakers) actually walked across the living room. They weren’t that far from the epicenter.

@WordsmithFL I experienced this firsthand - I couldn’t exit my room without shoes due to a glass item falling from a shelf and breaking. It absolutely blocked my exit. I always have shoes near my bed now. (NorCal)

@nopuppet_007 I'm in Florida now, so no threat of a quake, but I still keep a pair of sneakers and socks at the foot of the bed. I still have a flashlight in the drawer next to the bed. And I have a fire extinguisher nearby too.

@NorCalCherylLyn Our office building in Cypress was built to Japanese building codes. It had rollers on the column bottoms, so it was designed to sway rather than snap. That's why the third floor was such a mess. I'm sure the same happened to the Sheraton.

SoCal was quite seismically active at the time -- Whittier Narrows in 1987, Upland in 1990, Landers in 1992, Northridge in 1994, Hector Mine in 1999.

@WordsmithFL building to Japanese earthquake standards might have prevented so much damage.

The Northridge quake was so shallow it really damaging. I remember the Sylomar quake in ‘71. Lots of friends woke up hitting the floor after being bounced out of bed.

@NorCalCherylLyn I very well remember Sylmar. 6:01 AM. It was time for me to get up to go to high school.

My French teacher lived up in the valley. He said he was in the shower when the quake struck. He was slammed around the shower stall, which lost water. He was a bit disheveled.

The same happened to me with a Landers aftershock. I was scrubbing the shower when I got slammed around. I decided, screw it, and let it be.

@WordsmithFL in the shower would be a bad place when a one hits. All hard and painful to smash on. 🤕