blu_fuz said:
I can't even imagine what that would feel like.
Here's my story...
My ex-wife and I had shared custody of my then 3 year old daughter who I had dropped off at her moms 5 hours before the disaster. I lived in a 1 bedroom up scale apartment on the 3rd floor with my then girlfriend (a smokin' hot little blonde stripper! good times). When my daughter was over, she would sleep in the living room on the couch. My apartment was in the city of Calabasas about 15 miles from Northridge. My apartment had 5 aquariums in it (I was into fish and snakes at the time). I also had an English Bulldog.
At 4:31 in the morning the apartment began to shake and one second later it EXPLODED! My first thought was the building got hit by a jumbo jet and we were about to die! At the time I had an old school waterbed with a big headboard w/shelf and a Fisher 3 piece boombox with CD player on top of the head board. I immediately jumped on my girlfriend to shield her and thankfully I did as that radio came down and hit me in the back of the head almost knocking me out. It only shook for 20 seconds but it was the longest 20 seconds of our lives, it was also followed immediately with a MASSIVE 5.5 aftershock.
We were totally unprepared. After I had dropped off my daughter in Camarillo 27 miles to the north and returned home, my girlfriend and I had done the nasty in the living room and then gone to bed, leaving our clothes and shoes in the living room! This turned out to be a problem. With no power and in pitch darkness I tried to find my way out to our clothes and shoes, but the house was total broken glass! Every aquarium EXPLODED, water everywhere, glass from mirrors, pictures, glass top tables, everything EXPLODED! In the hall of the apartment complex people were screaming. I managed to wrap my feet in our pillow cases from the bed and make my way to our clothes and shoes and we dressed. I found a flashlight and it was suddenly surreal. The kitchen had imploded into it's self. Every cabinet emptied on to the floor the refrigerator was laying at a 45 degree angle and all the contents broken on the floor, the dog had bloody feet from running through it all and I had to stuff her in the bathtub and lock her in. The living room flooded from the aquariums and they were pouring down to the ladies apartment below. My water bed had jump and hit the wall leaving a dent in the dry wall 3 feet off the floor and was 3 feet to the side!!!! I can't believe we didn't go through the floor and kill the lady below in her bed.
When we tried to exit we found that the building had shifted and the front door was jammed shut. We went over the balcony over to the 3 floor walkway jumping the gap of 4 feet.
The walls had separated from the floor and a long runway rug down the hallway was now pinched under the wall! Later we cut it off with scissors and the rest remained under the wall.
My girlfriend and I went apartment to apartment kicking in doors to free people. My neighbor across the hall was a nurse and he had just gotten home from work and was in the shower. The glass shower doors were shattered along with the mirrors, he had cut his feet pretty bad.
Groups of us were going door to door trying to get people freed. I remember knocking on the door of this elderly lady. She must have been 85-90 years old. She wouldn't open her door, she thought we were trying to rob her. Finally her next door neighbor who knew her convinced her to open the door and when we went in, her apartment was perfect! She had glass shelving with glass figurines on all the shelves and everything was in place, nothing moved! I was flabbergasted.
Once we were outside the streets were full of people. We were sitting on the decorative planter in front of the building on the lawn and just trying to grasp what was happening when I was looking at these strange ceramic tiles standing up in the lawn. They looked like tomb stones. I had never seen them before and was wondering where they had come from. They were about 4 feet long, 2 feet wide and must have weight 50-70 lbs. Then I looked up and realized, 5 stories up, they were the decorative Spanish roofing tiles from the front of the building that had fallen off and were jammed into the lawn standing up right and there were many more just hanging there ready to fall, right above our heads. I started yelling to everyone to MOVE!
The building it's self, a 120 unit 5 story above ground, 3 story below (parking garage) apartment complex had dropped about 2 feet. I had 3 vehicles at the time, 2 MG's (1978 MGB & 1978 MG Midget) and a 4x4 Chevy Van. The MG's were in the garage under the building and the Van was on the street. With no power, the garage doors wouldn't open and people were trying to get to their cars to flee. Worse even was that the gates were crushed under the weight of the building and couldn't be opened. I didn't want to leave my sports cars under the building in case an aftershock finally dropped it so I hopped in my van, backed it up to the gate, wrapped a chain around it, dropped that pig into 4 low and after a few tries, RIPPED the garage gate off it's mountings. People ran in and jumped in their cars as fast as they could fearing that at any second it might all come down. Sadly in some places in the city, that did happen killing many (
Northridge Meadows Apartments)
By now the sun was just starting to come up. My girlfriend and I went back up to the apartment, loaded up the dog, the 6 foot Boa Constrictor and 2 small red ear slider turtles and headed for my parents place in Van Nuys about 14 miles away. Their house was right on the boarder of Northridge and Van Nuys. At the time I had no idea where the epicenter was or the extent of the damage. There was no phone service but the cell phone system, as primitive as it was at the time was working. But since I had a cell phone and my parents didn't, I couldn't call them.
It was total chaos on the streets. No power meant no intersection signals and people were in panic mode driving 100 mph through the streets. There were many horrific car crashes at intersections. All the block walls that surround peoples back yards were down so everyone's dogs were running free, dogs were dead every where in the streets, hit by cars. Houses were on fire, gas mains broken, bulges in the streets with flames coming out, bridges down, cars crashed off the down bridges, giant holes in the streets, total and complete lawless mayhem and chaos. It took an hour to drive the 14 miles to my parents. Thankfully they were OK and their house wasn't damaged to badly. Sadly, it wasn't the same for many people on their block. Many people had their chimneys collapse right through the middle of the house destroying the house and in some cases, killing the people inside.
At the time my father and I were running a small electronic's company in Chatsworth, 17 miles away. My dad and I drove to check our business, it took hours to get there. We crossed the valley and it was complete and total destruction. The Northridge Mall was leveled and on fire, California State University Northridge, leveled and on fire, streets flooded from broken water mains with FIRE coming out of the water from broken gas mains, blocks where every house was on fire, totally surreal. It looked like Baghdad.
Lucky for us our business was intact, everything was on the floor, but it was still there.
No electricity, no water, no gas, no food. Total chaos. Store owners gouging customers with unreal prices. Many of which later went to jail for their actions.
Everyone's kitchens were piles of rubble and in time all the food went bad and the stench was horrible. I returned to my apartment building, mostly to make sure it didn't get looted and since everyone's apartments
were trashed, of the people that remained
, we set up camp that night in the lobby of the building. We all brought down the food and supplies we had and piled it all up and organized the rations
. I had a small camping cook stove and some of the ladies made some pretty good meals from all that we had. We lived that was for days while we each cleaned up and removed the debris from our homes.
The next months were filled with stomach churning aftershocks and anxiety of fear of a bigger quake. 10 million people with PTSD. It took years to rebuild the city and even longer to calm our nerves. For weeks and months there were HUGE aftershocks that ate away at the lining of our stomachs. We were so sleep deprived and stressed. When a truck drove by it would send us into a panic thinking "This is it, here's another one". It was total misery.
Ultimately my apartment building was condemned along with 82,000 other buildings. There were so many damaged buildings that it took months for inspectors to come around, so we lived in a building that ultimately could have collapsed, but we had no place else to go.
There was a housing shortage and rent went through the roof. Goods and services went through the roof. Needless to say, it was a dark depressing time in my life and took years to recover mentally and financially.
My dad and I's businesses main customer was a CNC Machine manufacturing company called Fadal Engineering. Their building, a 300,000 square foot mega complex lost huge sections of the roof and they were out of production for months, so were were out of production for months. My dad and I dipped heavily into our savings to weather the storm and pay our employee's so they too could make it to the other side. Everything we had worked for and earned was dumped back into the business to keep it alive and bridge the gap. We made it just by a few hundred dollars and ultimately cost us everything we had to stay afloat.
But like other places, we just get on with our lives. Pick your poison, tornado's, earthquakes, typhoons, floods, hurricanes, fires, wars. Which would you like?
I have always said, at least after an earthquake, your stuff is in a pile where you left it and not strewn half way across the state AND big ones only happen once roughly every 20-30 years....I guess it's time to get ready again!
Certainly a dark time in mine and many peoples lives...I'm not looking forward to the next one and hope we can move before it happens again!
