On February 9, 1971, I was nearly 16, in 10th grade at Taft High School, and
living in Tarzana in the southwestern part of the San Fernando Valley in Los
Angeles. By 6:00 a.m. on school days, my older sister and I were supposed to
already be up and getting ready to leave for an early-morning religion class,
but we were still lolling in bed when the shaking started about a minute after
6. As there had been a fairly significant tremor around the same time about a
month before, I planned on just "riding it out" in bed. As the shaking got
stronger, however, my sister screamed, "Get up, you idiot, it's an earthquake!"
(No duh.) Whatever semblance of calm I had had at the time evaporated, and I
jumped out of bed.
She and I ran out of our room to the top of the stairs, where we met our
brothers coming from their rooms (our bedrooms were on the second floor — ours
was one of the very few "non-ranch-style" houses in the neighborhood). We could
hear our next-door neighbors screaming over the deep sound of the quake itself
and the sound of things falling or breaking. Our chandelier (on a long chain
over the staircase) was swinging back and forth, hitting the walls. I yelled a
prayer for God to protect us just as the electricity failed and the lights went
out. Being plunged into near-total darkness was in some ways scarier than the
shaking itself.
We all made it down the stairs and joined our parents (who came from their
bedroom on the ground floor) in the guest bedroom next to the garage — this was
a preplanned meeting place for just such an emergency (chosen because there was
no second story overhead). We cowered together through the aftershocks until
daylight had fully established itself. We knew that school wouldn't be held
that day, but I can't remember if my dad ended up going to work downtown or
not. (I rather doubt it.)
Our house was spared much damage — a couple of cracks here and there, and
maybe one cracked window. Power was restored fairly quickly, and the first
televised reports started coming in about the VA hospital in Sylmar that was
hard-hit (accounting for most of the deaths)... and of the collapse of an
overpass under construction on the I-5 en route to Santa Clarita. (The pickup
truck that was squashed under the fallen segment of overpass remained there for
months and months afterwards — a very grim sight.)
(As an aside, our Mormon bishop had just finished the graveyard shift in
Santa Monica and was on his way home on the I-405. Just as he reached the crest
and could see the brightly-lit panorama of the Valley before him, the
earthquake struck. The Valley went totally dark, and then fires from broken gas
mains started flaring up. He hadn't felt the earthquake, so he had no idea
whatsoever what had happened — he thought the U.S. was under attack or
somesuch. For someone with serious cardiac problems, it's amazing that he
didn't have a heart attack then and there.)
Later that morning, a friend and I made our way down Ventura Boulevard,
marveling at the cracked streets and shattered or cracked plate-glass display
windows. Not a shop or store seemed to have been spared. We ended up at our
local grocery store, Food Fair (later Theeee Movies of Tarzana), and helped
re-stack boxes and cans. (For safety/liability reasons, we were not allowed to
help clean up the aisles where bottles of cooking oils and dressings and jars
of jams and jellies and peanut butter had fallen and broken. What a mess! —This
was before plastic bottles were widely used, by the way.) Food Fair was the
first store in the Valley to re-open that day (at around noon).
Meanwhile, there were great fears that the Lower Van Norman Dam on the north
side of the Valley was going to collapse. Authorities were draining it as
quickly as they could, but 300,000 people in the surrounding area were ordered
to evacuate. Thankfully, the dam held, though it was damaged beyond repair. The
huge broken slabs were visible from the freeway for a long time afterwards.
Schools were closed for three days to allow for thorough inspection, and of
course when we returned to school, the earthquake took up a lot of class and
social time for several days thereafter.
I remember two sizable aftershocks: one was during the early-morning
religion class. When it started, we all ran outside. And there, on one of the
patches of grass behind the church, a young tree was shaking violently back and
forth — a very vivid image. The other memorable aftershock occurred when I was
in 7th-period art class on the 3rd floor of Taft's C-building. The teacher
yelled "drop!"—which I and all the other students did... but the thought
occurred to me then that getting under one's desk when the floor was likely to
drop out from under one didn't particularly make a whole lot of sense.
Those few moments of hard shaking in the darkness, accompanied by an
other-worldly, loud and penetrating deep sound, was one of the scariest
experiences of my life... but also one of the most interesting and
exciting.
