The Northridge Earthquake:
January 17, 1994/ 4:31 AM
Shock Levels: 1.8 G's
6.7 - 6.8 on Richter Scale
On January 17, 1994, I lived at 9907 White Oak Avenue, in Northridge, CA., with my 9 year old son, Gibralter. We moved there in August 1993, from Seattle, WA.,
for me to begin law school. (We moved to Seattle after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake put Santa Cruz, CA., where we lived, in chaos.) Since we had been in the Loma Prieta quake,
we understood some things about quakes, such as the probability of aftershocks. But on Jan. 17, 1994, at approximately 4 AM, we were rocked out of our sleep by an earthquake with amazing
power. The Northridge quake was significantly stronger than the 7.1 quake we experienced in Santa Cruz in 1989.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
My apt. building was "red tagged" at 7:40 PM on Jan. 19, 1994, 2 days after the quake
"Despite all the terror, the deaths and damage, the quake never created a single rupture in the surface of the Earth. But it did heave the ground so badly that the densely populated
valley floor bulged upward and the San Gabriel and Santa Monica Mountains on either side inched closer together." - 1/18/1994, Seattle Post-Intelligencer describing the Northridge
quake to NW readers
This letter was sent to me after I asked the landlord how we get our belongings out of their damaged building and also I sent praise for the handyman who was of great help to
us all that night. The landlord basically askews all responsibility, blaming all liability for lost possessions on God. Remember that the Northridge Oaks Apts were built after
the 1971 building code revisions due to the destruction of the Sylmar Earthquake in the same region. It is not clear whether
the people who constructed the Northridge Oaks Apts actually followed those codes. Problems like this arose all over Los Angeles, as tenants asked how they retrieve their things
from dangerous buildings, and landlords blamed the tenants' losses on God, and contractors who made the buildings, while the contractors blamed the city inspectors for
passing their half-assed work, etc...lots of fingers pointed but in the end, the renters lost all of their things inside red tagged buildings and that was the end of it.
It was a holiday weekend, so my son and I had gone to sleep in sleeping bags on the living room floor in front of the TV. We were sleeping when I heard a lot of glass breaking in the street
below us. At first I thought it was car thieves, but then it began to be so much glass that I sat up to listen to figure out what was going on. It began to sound like sheets of
glass were hitting the street and I could not figure out why. Then I began to hear a strange moaning in the walls. It sounded like zombies, moaning and moaning, getting louder and louder.
My son woke up at this point and asked me who was moaning. I told him I did not know. It was *very* creepy. And I did not know, either. I had no idea what was going on. (Apparently
the sound was made from the wood and metal twisting in our walls).
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
Shortly after this moaning in my walls, I could hear the lid of my toilet fly and break, and I heard things fly off my walls, and the electricity went out, all at once. (The photo
above is of my bathroom floor the morning after the quake. If you look close, you can see the toilet top flew off and broke on my floor, then the water from the back of the toilet got everything that flew
out of my medicine cabinet and towels that fell on the floor wet. The strength that a quake would need to put out to lift a toilet top off like that
shows how much power this quake had.) So we were in the dark
with the loud moaning, with a jolting building we were surfing in. The building began to jolt back and forth in different directions and my son and I decided it was an earthquake
unlike any we had seen before so we decided to leave our apt. without anything...without shoes, pants, coats, keys, ID, etc. It felt like our apt. was a deck of cars which could fall in
on us any *second.* It seemed like any delay was life-threatening.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
Our building was shifting back and forth, in several directions, and as my son and I began to navigate the dark hallways, and stairs, we worried the whole time. This photo shows
an apt. door down the hall on the right, but the left shows what was going on with the walls around us. They were buckling.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
This is the pool area in our apt building the morning after the quake. Look at the pool. The day before, it was filled to the top. After the water splashed out from the quake,
the water barely covers the second step. My son and I took on some of that water that night. We were wet up to our knees from the water slapping onto us from the pool during the quake, it
was like being on the deck of a boat as the Valley floor was shaking so violently that night.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
This is a picture of the Cal State Northridge (CSUN) parking lot after the 1994 quake. It was one year old. This scene was about 5 blocks from our apt.
My son still says this parking
garage was the most shocking thing he saw in the quake. The post on the left bent like playdough, but what is really scary is
the second floor caved in, so there is a little white light in the center of the photo, which used to be on the ceiling, lighting the first floor below it,
but now the floor had collapsed so if you drove in that driveway, you would just drive into a wall of cement. The angles of things change drastically in quakes. One cannot
help but wonder what would have happened if the quake had hit this parking garage during class hours, rather than in the middle of the night.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
This is another angle of the Cal State Northridge (CSUN) parking lot after the 1994 quake. You can see the first floor collapse more clearly from this angle...
Water was in high demand, and the days after the Northridge quake were hot, and people were lined up around the block at grocery stores like Ralph's in Granada Hills,
just to buy water. The National Guard also brought in tankers of water at high schools for people to fill containers, and some Red Cross shelters had bottled water. We had some
interesting water incidents after the Northridge quake. I believe the first water we scored after the quake was either on the first day after the quake or the second day after it.
Everything was still in shambles, and I had this odd timing thing where I drove up to a gas station that
clearly had no gas to sell or electricity to pump it, but I thought maybe they would have water or drinks in their little minimart that we could buy, since I didn't want to wait in
long lines at Ralph's. I walked into the mimimart and asked if I could buy all their Gatorade in plastic bottles with cash. They said that would be fine, but just then, a huge
truck pulled up to make a bottled water delivery to the store! I couldn't believe it. I opened the trunk and back door of my Dodge Dart and told them to just unload the cases of water
into my car, not into the store. I believe I bought all but one of the cases of bottled water they delivered. I drove back to the residential street I was staying on, full of
single family homes, and was a hero of the block when I returned with tons of drinking water for everyone.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
Within a few hours of the quake, people began stacking their belongings on the street, backing UHauls up to the curb and loading their things up. I was first of all amazed that
people were able to get UHauls so quickly, but then to see how many people were willing to risk their lives going back into buildings which were red tagged and not stable during
strong aftershocks to retreive things was weird too. The photo above is the sidewalk on White Oak Ave and Lassen St. in Northridge the day of the quake.
I was staying with a high school friend (but we were then in our 30's) right after the earthquake. We had her, her husband, her 4 kids, me, and my kid, all staying in her two bedroom house
in Granada Hills. I felt an obligation to not
use their resources while staying with them in this disaster, so I sought out water as I said above. We needed water to flush toilets (by putting the water in the back of the tank)
and we also neeeded water to wash kids' hands, dishes, etc. The house next to the one I was staying in had a pool and they said we could use all the water we wanted as they had
flown out of the region right after it happened. We took plastic 13 quart kitchen trash cans and would fill them up pool water, then bring them back to the house to flush toilets and
wash dishes...
A few days after I scored the water at the minimart, I was out looking for water again. And lines were still going around the block at Ralph's for food and water. It looked like a
few hours standing in the sun to shop there, and you could not go into the store. You handed the clerk at the door your list of what you wanted, and they looked for it in the store
which was ravaged and without electricity, and then if they had it, they brought it to the door and if you had cash, you could take it away. I thought "where could I find food and water
that most people would not think of looking?" I thought of a health food store hidden away up the street. I drove to it, and sure enough, they had no electricity but were open to cash sales,
and I was able to buy not only water and juices, but fresh baked bread and cheese that had just come in that day. Again I drove back to my friend's block and blew people away by
producing large amounts of bread, cheese, etc., things there was a general shortage of in the immediate area. The following day I hit up drug stores like Thrifty Drugs, for distilled
water in gallon jugs, as people were also not thinking of drug stores as sources of water. Looking back, it seems odd the way we felt desperate for water, as the area that was damaged
was really not that wide. I could have driven to somewhere a bit south of there, such as into Hollywood, and could have bought anything I wanted as if nothing happened in many stores.
Maybe it was the lack of gas stations with gas, or maybe it was the collapsed freeway system around us which left us unsure where we could drive in the beginning, but we did seem
to be in a survival mode in the NW part of the San Fernando Valley, even though the damaged area was quite regional.
We finally decided to go north, into the Santa Clarita Valley about a week after the quake. There was a long wait
to get onto I-5 (the Golden Gate Freeway) at the San Fernando onramp, and when we finally got onto the freeway, traffic was moving at a slow crawl in the
hot sun, and I worried I would either run out of gas or overheat if it all took too long. We all were driving very carefully, with many detours around displaced freeway plates, with
many CA State Patrol cars on the freeway, directing people around the uneven surfaces...but what really blew us away was the difference between the San Fernando and Santa Clarita Valleys, with respect to water distribution. There was much more damage in the San Fernando
Valley around Northridge than in Santa Clarita. The need for water in the NW San Fernando Valley after the quake was great. The adrenaline alone after a quake and during aftershocks
burns up water in your system, but it was also hot the days after the quake. But here was the San Fernando Valley desperate for water, and it was hard to come by if you did not have cash, and were not resourceful. The parks
were full of tents and shelters were packed full, water was gone at most shelters, etc. But we drove
up to Newhall about a week after the quake, after staying in Grananda Hills at first. In Newhall, we drove into a Red Cross shelter full of empty cots with blankets. I asked if they had
any water as I left most of our water with the folks in Granada Hills when we left, and they gave us a case of Evian bottled water, and they had cases of Evian sitting around with no one
to take them. We loaded that in our trunk, as I did not want to
burden the next friend's family we were to stay with. We got to our friend's house in Castaic, and she said the military was giving out cases of water at the freeway offramps in the
Santa Clarita Valley. So the next day, we drove to an offramp, and sure enough, we found a guy in military clothing, sitting there with cases upon cases of water in bottles. We
asked him why he was just sitting here where the need was low, when people desperately needed water right over the pass in San Fernando. He had no answer and offered me a case of water
after asking me my family size. I still have one of the bottles from that case of water. It is a Miller's Beer bottle, with a Miller's Beer bottle cap, bottled at their plant,
but with water inside, not beer.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
It is hard to see, but if you look close at the top right balcony, you will see they are lowering things from their damaged apartments via ropes. This apt. house is directly across the
street from 9907 White Oak, on Lassen. As usual, you see the most damage on the lower floors.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
A few blocks up the street from where we lived, in Northridge Meadows Apartments (pictured above), the building collapsed and killed people. The fire department went by the building
shortly after the quake and thought it was a two story building and thought it looked fine, but when they found out that was a three story building, all panic broke out.
People were rescued, but many died in the Northridge Meadows collapse. I believe all of the victims that were killed were on the bottom floor. This photo was taken
of the scene about 4 days after the quake hit.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
Across the street from Northridge Meadows, was the Northridge Post Office. I needed to get my mail, and had to talk this National Guard officer into letting me into
the Post Office to get my mail.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
The National Guard, Red Cross, and other agencies set up tents in local parks after the quake to house displaced residents. These tents are in Petit Park, I believe.
(Photo: K.Anderberg 1994)
The stairs of the Cal State Northridge campus parking lot right after the 1/17/94 Northridge quake.
Within one hour of the Northridge quake, Mayor Riordan had verbally declared a state of emergency, and by 5:50 AM he had issued a written order asking for immediate state of
emergency support.
Portable toilets were provided by the LA Dept of Water and Power after the quake, and water was distributed at local high schools.
Newspapers look odd right after quakes. They have unusual ads, and things like lists of school closures, maps of freeway collapses and alternate routes, and addresses of local
Red Cross emergency shelters and FEMA disaster aid center locations, as well as numbers for structural inspections by the city, emergency distribution sites for water and ice,
animal shelter locations to reclaim pets, hospitals that are open and closed, blood bank donation appeals and phone numbers, charities asking for donations for quake
victims, counseling services, bank and court closures, insurance company contact information, etc.
******* GHOSTTOWNS AFTER THE QUAKE *******
(Photo: K. Anderberg 1995)
This is a photo of the inside of one of the apartments in Northridge Oaks apartments, where I lived, about 1 year after the quake. Since the building was still standing,
and my belongings were all left in the building, I had the bright idea one day to just go in there and get some of my things out. I went to the apartment complex one day,
and went to the fence around it by then, and there was a man who was caretaking the property. He barely spoke English, and I barely speak Spanish, but we talked and I asked him
if I could go inside to get some of my things. He said it was fine. I walked around the back of the abandoned red-tagged building. I first tried to just open one of the metal
doors and walk down the dark hallway past the closed, hopefully, apartment doors. But it was dark, and god knows who was living in there by now, each apt door I passed in this
completely abandoned, yet ghostly as if occupied building made my heart race, and it was too
frightening, and so I turned back and exited the building. I made it past maybe three apt doors in the hall before turning back. I felt like I was walking into some sci-fi
zombie movie where I was entering this abandoned building, that was really occupied by zombies, and as soon as I got into the interior of the building, I would disappear forever,
devoured by the zombies you don't see in the light of day.
The whole block was a ghosttown of abandoned apartments in red tagged buildings with transients now living in them. Even though the buildings on my block had been "abandoned"
for a year by us, the renters, it still felt like people were living in there, though you saw no one. But for some reason, although I had hesitations, I thought I would just try
to go up to the second floor, to my old apt., to see if I could recover some of my things that day I returned. But after getting spooked trying to walk down the dark hall
alone via the back door, I decided to try to walk through one of the broken apartment windows, into an apt., so I could just open its door and be
in the courtyard, closer to my apt. The picture above is of the apt I entered and walked through to the front apt door. I worried the whole time that someone was going to come out of
the bedroom on the right. I got this apt door open (top left of pic), and I walked a few steps into the desolate courtyard that used
to be a lovely BBQ and pool courtyard, that I used to enjoy with my son. It looked like Chernobyl. It was odd because it looked like people did not leave the property in a planned manner,
but instead lives were left right where they were, as if the clock stopped and this was a time capsule of 4 AM on 1/17/94. As I stood alone in the
courtyard, looking at all the rubble, glass, and trash on the ground, reliving that day we raced out of there, a breeze came up and rattled all the vertical window
blinds that hung in all the broken windows of the
abandoned apts. I had chills run down my spine at that point, and I bolted backwards out of there. I realized whatever I had left in there, I had to let go of it, as it was too
chilling to the bone to go inside that building a year later.
A few months after I tried and failed to go back into my apt, I told my friend Bart about how scary it was and how I could not get past the front door, basically.
He made fun of me, said I was a wimp, and told me to drive him to my old apt and he would go in there with me and get some of my stuff out with me. I left in a great hurry during
the quake, and then it was red tagged and criminal activity to enter the building shortly thereafter, and thus I lost things that were sentimental to me such as photos, in
there. So Bart was determined to go into my old apt and get some of my things, saying I was a wimp, and we drove to the apt. As we entered the block of Lassen St and White Oak Ave,
Bart began to see the devastation of the entire block. He said "this isn't your block, is it?" I replied yes, it was. He said he was shocked at the state of the buildings. We
drove down to Petit Park, and up a street across from the west side entrance. The apt buildings were being held up by stacked pallets of wood under the places pillars used to be, and
as we drove down the street, dust blew up as no one had driven on the street much in so long. As we entered this strange world of dusty streets and damaged abandoned apt
buildings, my son commented it was creepy how you saw no one but felt you were being watched. That was exactly how it felt, like there were people living in these abandoned buildings
and they saw us, but we did not see them. It had quite the sci-fi vibe!
We went back to my apt building and got out to show Bart where my apt was. He looked at the chain link fence around the building and noted that the fence was worn down and
sagging from where people had jumped over it so often. We looked inside some of the bottom floor apts, and it looked like people were not only living there, but people with
CHILDREN were living in there! More than one apt had what looked like current living situations going on, with baby items in the mix, beyond the chainlink fence. The more Bart assessed the
situation, he said there was no way in hell he was going into that building, that god knows what is in there now, and it was not safe far beyond just having structural damages now. We
both laughed the whole way home as he realized why I chickened out before, as he had just been terrified at the idea of going in there now too.
Finally, years after the quake, the Northridge Oaks apt building was demolished and a new building was built there. The entire block rebuilt, and it is a little scary now to
drive down that block and know the intense damages the buildings sustained, wondering how well those damages were repaired, i.e. in the next big quake like that, will
those repaired areas shake apart faster than last time, etc. I believe my apt building was the only one on the block of Lassen St at White Oak that was demolished and
rebuilt. All of the others were merely "fixed" which is a bit scary.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.
Kirsten Anderberg. All rights reserved. For permission to reprint/publish, please contact Kirsten at kirstena@resist.ca.