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My experience - the hard news is in the public record
Originally posted January 19, 1994 - checked and slightly revised for archive
For those of you who like disaster films, I decided sometime during the last two days - the earthquake was about 50 hours ago - to upload a post about this event, as seen here at my home. If you're in this group, read on.
At 4:31 am, Monday, a 6.7 earthquake hit 10 miles west of my apartment in North Hollywood. You may have seen security-camera videotapes of patrons scrambling out of a Las Vegas casino when the quake hit. Vegas is about 250 air miles away.
I'm fine, as I asked a friend to post when he got through to me on voice Monday afternoon; but with our national network hub, which is also here in the Valley, down for a little over 24 hours from the time of the quake, I guess that was either hosed or delayed.
I was awakened by jack-hammerlike side to side jerking of my bed and bod, and by a tremendous amount of noise. I've experienced plenty of average quakes in the 13 years I've lived in Hollywood and North Hollywood; this was so different in degree that I don't think I can make any effective comparisons. With a "basic no-frills" earthquake, about the time you get to thinking, "well, is this the Big One?", or "Should I find some clothes and get outdoors?", it's finished. You might be standing there with your pants in your hands, but, usually, they're over in ten seconds or so.
First, let's look at duration. This quake came in two parts - the first was something like the usual ten seconds long, then there was a pause of a few seconds, then the main part of the quake hit, and continued - according to Cal Tech - for all of 45 seconds. That's more than enough time for one's life to pass before his eyes. I learned that that's one damned long time to be in quake mode. My first reflex, of course, was to hang on to the edges of the mattress as tight as I could, because I was getting tossed about pretty well. I did -- and found out later that one of my neighbors was thrown out of her bed, and woke up when she hit the floor. You might ask why I didn't immediately get out of there. Well, because the way the place was moving, I knew I'd get painfully thrown about -- and it was pitch black with the power out and there was no flashlight nearby.
The first thing I though about was, of course, that it was The End. I don't want to be melodramatic, but sure -- that thought crossed my mind with great clarity. Then, oddly - but our minds do odd things, at times - I got distressed about my car. It just happened that, after five years in this apartment, I'd just - that very night - started parking under the building. I'd always had an external parking spot, nicely away from the structure, but in the elements. So, at this point, I was hanging on for dear life, listening to the horrendous racket, and thinking, "damn, the first night I park under the building, the bastard falls in on my car!"
Second, I'll comment on the magnitude. As I said above, you've seen the pictures of the collapsed buildings and bridges on the news, so you only get my journal, here. I don't know of anything to which I can compare it. I've said that it threw people out of their beds; it moved my refrigerator a foot across the floor, and it doesn't have casters. Think about how little mass a 5.25 floppy diskette has; but it slid one completely out of my drive, and no...it didn't unlatch the drive for the spring ejector to kick it out, because it was already open and that drive doesn't have an ejector, anyway. Think about the energy that must be expended to shake a person and a double bed violently sideways more than once per second; now expand that thought to include a whole apartment; then extend the range to miles and miles of "solid" earth -- remember that Vegas casino?. Now maintain that energy level for almost a minute. I can no more really relate to that kind of energy than I can have a feel for the meaning of an x-megaton fusion bomb.
Third, I'll confess something. I didn't know what a cacophony accompanied an earthquake of this magnitude. As I think back, it was horrible for two reasons. First, it was just plain loud -- crashes, bangs, thumps, rattles, creaks, car alarms and, when all that died down, screams. I'd never heard real Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure panic screams and shrieks during a quake before, in my decade-plus of living in, and ground-surfing, Los Angeles.
Once the 45-second part of the main quake seemed to be winding down, which seemed like a lifetime, I had the pleasure of trying to remember where I took off various articles of clothing when I went to bed. Under duress, I frankly didn't think to get clean clothes from what would normally be predictable dresser drawers and closets -- and in comparing notes, later, it was evident that nobody else did, either. This led directly to the next problem, and remember that things were still moving, albeit less wildly, and it was absolutely dark in the apartment. The problem was that virtually everything I own was on the floor, or in drawers thrown open to the very end of their slides -- just right for being banged into. The medicine cabinet of the dressing area on the way to the living room had opened up and dispensed all of its contents onto the floor. I didn't know it yet, but the big mirror on the back of my dresser had shattered, and I later found a couple of shards of glass in the bed. Several boxes of stuff stored on top of some utility cabinets had also tumbled down. The sliding doors of the bedroom closet had jerked around until they were both right in the middle of their tracks, and stuff from the closet had fallen out through the open spaces on either side of the doors. Everything on my dresser and bedside tables was on the floor. Most of the overwhelming noise, it turned out, had been furniture and possessions careening about the apartment.
Remember, it was pitch black. My descriptions of the status of things, here, is based on what I felt, at the time, and what I found, after sunrise -- but more on that, later.
I had to step or stumble over all of this crap, while occasional jolts continued, and make it to the door between the bedroom end of the place and the kitchen and dining area, to get to the living room and front door. I kicked a broken glass or two, and a plate, and some other spent kitchen shrapnel.
In scratching around to find clothes, while all of the time kicking, walking on, falling over and slipping on all kinds of junk, I found, by touch and toe, that all four of my bookcases - two six-footers and two three-footers - had fallen over atop their totally spilled contents, which had scattered in such a fashion as to completely cover the living room floor. Well, that's not quite true: they had help from broken and intact lamps, my TV, which was five feet from where it should've been, stuff from my desktop, my file cabinet, the island between the kitchen and living room, part of my stereo, six floppy disk files and their now awesomely unsorted contents, my guitar, paper from various places...you get the picture.
In the dark, I found some shorts and my Levis, a tee shirt, and some sneakers. I got them on - how's your balance in the dark, in rubble, and when you're scared? - and walked over something like half of my worldly possessions to get to the front door -- to find it blocked by two of the bookcases and their one-time contents that had all piled up in front of it. And it's an inward-opening door. And it's still pitch black, of course. At least the earth had stopped moving.
Decision time: go through the window, or dig? I didn't smell smoke, but knew I should sniff now and them, in case something had fallen too close to the gas wall heater -- mine, or someone else's. Okay, then ...time to dig. First, I got those bookcases the hell out of there, and stood them up. I started heaving books out into the middle of the living room, to clear a wedge of space for the door. Dig, toss, dig, toss...thump-boing. Huh? Thump-boing? My classic '65 Kalamazoo Gibson acoustic guitar. Ow...it was under the bookcase. Ahh, well -- I moved it and kept digging. And dug some more. More still. Finally I got the door free enough to open about a foot, and squeeze through.
By now, virtually everyone else in the building was gathered down at the pool. My friends and neighbors never looked so good. There was a supply of candles, flashlights, and relatively warm bodies -- all good things with which to hook up.
Snapshot: one friend is sitting on a chair he's brought from his apartment. Arrayed in front of him are a flashlight, a candle, and a big bottle of Mylanta.
Snapshot: one of the screamers has now been reduced to wailing, by someone who has his arm around her in such a way that it's not evident whether it's a gesture of comfort or a headlock -- a caring and supportive headlock, of course, if the latter.
Snapshot: utility-pole power transformers are sending flashes of light into the sky on all sides, as, one by one, they blow out.
Snapshot: with Los Angeles, there are a several million stars in the sky -- so many that my very first impression when I finally made it out of the door had been, "look at all the stars...it's like being out in the desert."
Snapshot: in a huddle of people, I say, "okay, I'm scared as hell -- is there anybody here who isn't?" Nobody answers...bravado is worthless currency, right now.
Snapshot: a neighbor who is a civilian LAPD employee has been called in; he drives away into who knows what, for who knows how long.
Snapshot: one woman's 8-year-old is at a friend's place; and the phones are, of course, dead; so she, too, drives off into the dark.
Snapshot: someone has Cuervo -- we can make this work. Actually, I passed.
Most of the building's residents - from babies to a 95-year-old - were assembled in the courtyard, and the manager knocked on the doors of the missing to learn that they just didn't want to come out, but were okay. We found out the next evening that one of the two was blocked in her bedroom by falling stuff, and, since nothing had come down on her bed, had decided to stay on it, feeling it a safe zone of sorts. Another was missing, but her car was gone so we chalked her name into the "okay" column.
Frankly, I didn't want to go into my apartment and deal with the whole mess, and any losses I may have suffered. And there were aftershocks, as well. I decided to deal with it later -- after sun-up, and maybe quite a while after sun-up. But it was only in the high 30s, and I was in a tee shirt, so I went back in with a borrowed flashlight, just enough to find a jacket, which was under my stereo, but I tried to not look around beyond what was necessary to do that task. Plenty of time to access the damage, later. There was nothing else to do in there at that time -- my flashlight and Walkman were under a large bookcase, and I decided not to bother with them.
We largely hung out in the courtyard until dawn. I don't actually remember many - or very serious - aftershocks in those couple of hours. Someone got bandaged for a glass cut. A few of us ventured a walk a couple of buildings down the street, to see how others were doing. The choppers appeared and left -- otherwise sirens owned the night. A lot of jokes were tossed about, to make things seem normal. The manager had just started a drive to get everyone on leases -- I pressed for some revisions to the terms which would ban earthquakes from the premises.
As the eastern sky started to glow, we could see a layer of smoke from the fires that broken gas hookups and mains were fueling, and that much seismic activity also kicked up a lot of dust that hung in the still valley air. We did another walk-around of the building - having earlier spot-checked it with flashlights - to see what kind of damage it had sustained; we found plenty of stucco cracked or popped out. My car had some crumbled plaster on it, but nothing more serious, and the finish didn't even turn out to be damaged. I moved it away from the building. We sniffed for gas leaks and smoke. Finally, we simply hung out, waiting for the sun, and the more upbeat attitude it might help create. The Cuervo was gone. I'm on a boulevard, and people from up and down the street had begun parking up on the median, to get their cars away from and out from under their buildings; some of them stayed in their cars, others went home. The woman came back with her 8-year-old. A friend and I who had been taking walks in the mornings, for exercise, decided that we would do the same this morning, both to see how the neighborhood looked to pretend that it was Just Another Day In Paradise, even though we had some housecleaning ahead of us. Since I was dressed for that activity, I didn't have to go back into my apartment to change, and for that I was grateful. I was also grateful that we were all alive.
Our walk showed that the one-story homes that dominate the area were pretty much untouched - on the exterior, at least - but it hadn't been a good night for walls, chimneys, and a couple of cupolas. Laurel Canyon Boulevard, which snakes through the Hollywood Hills, connecting our area to Hollywood proper, had quite a few businesses with no windows. There was no looting evident, even though, with a couple of exceptions, no one was yet boarding them up. With all of the traffic lights out, everyone was four-way-stopping the intersections. We can be civilized. It just takes a lot. By the time we finished our walk, the epicenter had been pretty accurately placed, and the death toll set at less than ten so far -- but they'd just started pulling bodies out of the apartment buildings that, within a day, would contribute about 16 more.
After our walk, I reentered my apartment to assess the damage and come up with a game plan. I found I had been extremely lucky: the things that were important to me hadn't been lost. My mom used to paint, and I had three of her works. They were okay. My guitar came through the earthquake (and my hasty digging) with nothing more than a very small amount of white paint rubbed onto the edge of the neck, from somewhere I can't identify. Actually, I lost very little.
I hung out until lunch time, and then remembered that I had a big package of chicken in the fridge. Surprisingly, we still had gas service, so I took it down and did it up on one of the courtyard grills, for anyone who wanted to show up with a plate. It was well received, but in a building of 55 units, one would think somebody would have had potato salad. Sheesh.
By midafternoon, power was restored, so I got out the vac and went to work, finally. For my procrastination, I didn't finish working until 11 that night, but some things have to wait until one is ready. And, of course, like most chores, once I got started it wasn't as big a deal as I'd feared - it was just work. With aftershocks averaging three per hour, I wasn't about to put stuff up high again, so I still have a floor full of books -- but they're nicely organized. The book cases are empty, for now, and leaning against the walls at a safe angle of maybe 25 degrees...if something causes them to tip over from there, I won't be around to have to pick them up, anyway.
The computer and peripherals are fine. The TV doesn't work, but I have a portable black and white set that's good enough for following the news, and I might be able to fix the color set, anyway. The stereo tuner and turntable landed on the sofa, as, I think, did the cassette deck, before bouncing onto the floor. Whatever their trajectories, they're all okay. With a little work, the bookcases lived; and three out of four table lamps survived, as well. In other words, I had far more mess than loss. The only mystery -- my watch never turned up.
As for the building, the structure flexed a lot, and that made for lots of broken plaster, inside and out, some broken pipes, a slight droop to the balcony walkway from which I enter my apartment -- and a need for inspection. Aside: the pool guy showed up the next day, and estimated that 3,500 gallons of water had sloshed out of it. I was standing next to it for one set of aftershocks, and when the waves sloshed against the wall of the shallow end, they kicked up splashes of water equal to my 6' height. The aftershocks are causing more damage -- opening main-quake cracks and holes, and creating new ones. Later Monday we had two 5+ aftershocks -- just a few days earlier, those would have been considered pretty decent shakes. I was walking down Laurel Canyon Boulevard, for one of those, and before I felt it, I noticed all of the shop windows that were still in place were bowing in and out, and the utility poles were waving around a bit. One apartment had a 2-by-4-foot hole in the wall, damage to every room, and a shower stall and tub that had pulled out of that end of the bathroom by about four inches, so I'm not very disturbed about the degree of damage to my unit.
It turns out that sleeping is one of the biggest problems. After being awakened Monday morning thinking that this is what hell is like, temperature aside, it's hard to relax enough to really sack out -- especially at night, since that nighttime siege and escape is a big part of what's burned into memory. It's hard to go back to sleep after an aftershock -- and, at the time it happens you never really know if it's just an aftershock, of course -- it could be the beginning of Phase Two, Richter 8. Sometimes, too, they come just a few minutes apart. There is both good news and bad news, on this front: last night (Tuesday) was quieter than Monday night, but this afternoon was far rowdier than yesterday afternoon. We even had a couple of aftershocks for the President's visit, today. One of them was a respectable 5.1.
Anyway, the beat goes on. It's not like anyone can predict this stuff, so we have to take it a day at a time -- and hope and pray for the best. But this is my home, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna give it up, in spite of its faults. Heh. Faults.
When the city inspectors finally made it out, my apartment was one of the ones in our unit that got tagged: don't stay here. More temblors could come any time, but they weren't as psychologically stressful during the day - you're up, you're cognizant, it's light - so I dragged my mattress, a lamp and my alarm clock to a vacant unit, and slept there for a week and a half or so, until the building was more thoroughly checked and found not to have the structural damage that was suspected at the time of the first, cursory inspection. Repairs to the building went on for quite a while. You can still (2003) see minor bits of damage here and there.
The death toll reached something like 56. We were exceedingly fortunate that the earthquake visited us in the middle of the night, given the number of collapsed commercial structures and freeway overpasses. Had it happened a few hours later, things would've been much worse.
A mall about a mile from me fell in, and was torn down. The Sears store another half-mile up that street collapsed in on itself internally, but the walls remained standing. Eventually, they gutted the rubble, probably reinforced those walls, and rebuilt the rest. And so on. And so forth.
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