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The Whittier Narrows Earthquake 1987 trashed the insides of our house and toppled the concrete block wall surrounding the backyard. The epicenter was virtually underneath our neighborhood some miles beneath the surface. The motion for us was nearly all vertical. I was thrown up into the air from the bed and landed on my feet. I staggered to the bedroom doorway and waited for the chaos, deep roar and rumbling, violent slamming up and down, and crashing of the contents of the house to subside. Then I climbed over the debris in the middle of the floor where the bookcases had been toppled into the floor scattering dozens of books and binders. The earthquake literally took bookcases weighing a part of a ton and threw them into the ceiling with enough force to leave the ceiling badly dented in some wooden crossbeams.

When I reached the back door I stopped and held onto the doorframe as another large shock started again. I watched as the backyard swimming pool sloshed waves more than six feet high into the air. The concrete wall had collapsed flat onto the ground, and I watched as the ground rose up and undulated like a wave of water in the sea as it approached the house. When this ground wave reached the concrete wall lying on the ground, the wall was bounced largely intact into the air far enough you could easily see underneath it to the lawn and building on the other side.

A detached garage with a stucco wall shuddered, bent, rocked, and rolled somehow without breaking off the stucco. The concrete and brick patio also visibly flexed with the ground wave without breaking or racking. A young tree sapling shook and shuddered as if an invisible lumberjack was trying to cut it with an axe. It took several hours for the shaking from the aftershocks to subside enough to risk going back into the house for a few minutes at a time to secure the damage inside and evacuate needed supplies.

We slept in the backyard for a few days in a backpacking dome tent while we waited for another major aftershock and to cleanup the piles of damage inside the house. Friends of ours who lived much farther away had their house knocked off of its foundation. They eventually went to court to force the insurance company to pay for demolishing the house and building a new one. Virtually every house in our community with a brick chimney ended up with it being toppled or so badly damaged the remnants had to be torn down.

The Northridge Earthquake demolished a co-worker’s house in the San Fernando Valley. He eventually had to declare bankruptcy when the insurance company refused to cover the loss and the mortgage company demanded payment for a house that lay in ruins.