Yes eerie, almost ethereal. My husband and I woke up in the air after being thrown out of bad by the Northridge earthquake. I remember thinking ‘well, I might die, but I don’t think I will die’. Not a real near death experience I guess, but I wasn’t afraid. When we got our son from his room and brought him into ours, we just hunkered down for the second quake (two 6.7’s within minutes of each other). It was several days later that I finally cried at the thought of what could have happened.......60+ people died in that quake. We were some of the lucky ones, just thousands of dollars damage to the house and contents.
We lived in Chatsworth when the Northridge quake struck. I got up at 4:30 a.m. every morning,
and that morning I had just gotten to the bottom of the stairs when the quake hit.
I stood there in pitch blackness (the electricity was out) in the doorway to the kitchen and
listened to all the glass and china in our house fall and shatter on the kitchen and dining
room floors. They were tile floors, and we had quite a clean-up ahead of us. 6.8 earthquake
with several 5.0 aftershocks. Our library was tossed. Fallen shelves, books everywhere, just
a horrible mess and again, loss of anything breakable.
I went to work, but the facility wasn’t operable, so they sent everyone home to start making
the repairs. I didn’t work there for much longer, and eventually got a job where my husband
was working at my area of expertise, a printed wiring board manufacturing shop.
Our slimy liberal neighbors took a ton of FEMA money, while we did our repairs on our own.
We figured others needed it more than we did, and we got by all right.
That was a beautiful house (after we bought and repaired it) on a gorgeous plot of land with
a huge panorama from the upstairs rooms and a cute little pond in the back yard just off the
patio where we entertained our in-laws in the Summers. I wish we could have taken the entire
plot of land, house, pond, front and back yards, and all, wherever we moved. But no... Sigh...