It's interesting that many people describe the sound very differently depending on where they were. Here in Camarillo it was ghostly shrieking and moaning combined with an awesome light show. I had to drag my wife away from the bedroom window where she was staring at sheets of what was apparently lightning off to the northwest, oblivious to the possible danger of broken windows. It wasn't power transformers; our power lines are underground.
We had very little damage considering the intensity of the shaking. The quake itself was bad enough but I think the aftershocks were just as scary. When a 5.1 hit the next morning we all wondered if we were getting the "real" big one. I still think of the tragedy of the L.A. motorcycle policeman who was heading downtown on his bike in the dark to assist. He sailed to his death off a collapsed freeway structure he had no way of seeing.
>> Here in Camarillo it was ghostly shrieking and moaning combined with an awesome light show.<<
I think that was a Bay City Rollers concert....
It sounded like a freight train was coming through our house. We had shutters and could see nothing so cut our feet on the broken glass trying to get out of the house. Our aquarium exploded and we stepped on live fish in the dark, too. The 14 Freeway, going south out of Canyon Country, is where Officer Clarence Wayne Dean lost his life. He had gone out early to help with the earthquake and could not see that 14 had fallen down. The rebuilt interchange is dedicated to him. The 5/14 interchange was our of commission until May. I remember telling my husband that spring, that they had better work faster getting the 5 moving or somebody was going to get killed. One morning I was waiting on a ramp to go south on the 5 and saw one driver get out of his car and swing a 2/4 at the window of another car. I guess the other guy had cut him off or something and then they were both stuck on the ramp. Seriously, the whole ordeal was pretty overwhelming. I would never want to go through anything like that again.