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.
You are right, but I was really trying to point out about how earthquakes can affect one neighborhood, while not the other.
Sleeping in my car at Northridge I got caught up in the feel of the area, and was amazed when I drove out of it to buy some groceries, most of the city was unaffected and already forgetting what had happened among their neighbors.
“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.”