I pulled the passenger seat out of my car and went on a 9 day car camping journey of seeking the aftershocks, sleeping at Northridge and a few days in Big Bear seeing the people in a state of shock, chasing the ones out in that little desert town (don’t remember the names of the towns).
There was still plenty to see, to experience, and to learn from.
Plenty of small damage was coming from the after shocks and you still had to park away from popping roof tiles for instance , but I did learn how different the experience was for people in close proximity to each other.
In the heart of the worst hit areas, you could spend a couple of days and feel that you were in a war zone, with exhaustion and trauma, and stress being the norm, but then you could drive a mile away to buy groceries or gas, and everything, and everybody was completely normal and routine.
In Big Bear all the chimneys were down and people were sleeping in their cars, but the constant aftershocks were keeping them from getting any sleep and they were exhausted, I was in their main bar which was fairly crowded, and at one point I stomped the wood floor to create a noise and vibration, I will always regret doing that, even the males all looked scared, it was real fear, a submissive defeated fear, and I learned that sustained exposure to constant stress and fear of that nature can weaken people’s resistance to a point where they seem to break.
Hurricanes are truly exciting and invigorating to people, but a couple of weeks of earthquake and aftershock seems to have an effect similar to war to the population.
I got home four months after the quake and noticed the same thing. Some people were deeply affected on a psychological level, while others who'd ridden it out in the same area seemed unfazed.
My wife (who's from Florida) had never experienced a quake of any kind, but she was tossed out of her bed by the Northridge quake. She shook it off, and had no lasting ill effects from the experience. I knew others who rode it out much further from the epicenter who were badly shaken by the experience.