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.
After reading your description of the Whittier Narrows Earthquake of 1987, all I can say is, “Holy Crap!” I probably would have had a coronary.
I lived in Santa Barbara back then, and I felt that earthquake there, too, although nothing like what you experienced.
I think it was in October of that year. Around 7 AM I was sitting at a desk in my bedroom, talking on the telephone to a business associate in London. I had to get on the phone early because of the eight hour time difference.
After I hung up, I noticed the desk was moving. I ran into the hallway on the second floor of the townhouse, and I noticed that a huge lighting fixture hanging from a chain over the steps was madly swinging back and forth. On the radio, I heard what had happened in Whittier and across the LA Basin.
I remember seeing on TV later in the day a college girl sitting on the ground, in shock with people trying to help her. Apparently she and her sister had been walking out of a parking structure at either Cal State LA or Cal State Dominguez Hills when the earthquake struck. A concrete wall fell down, and killed this young woman’s sister.
Elsewhere, a construction worker was digging a large hole at a construction site in the LA area, and the earthquake caused the hole to collapse on the man, killing him.
If I remember correctly, several other people lost their lives in that quake.
About seven years ago, I bought a book on eBay from a woman in Northridge. She told me that the shaking from the January 17, 1994 Northridge Earthquake defied description.
The woman collected antique glass, and she told me that so much of her antique glass had broken, she had to bring large garbage cans into the house and fill them with the shards.
I don’t know if this is true, but somewhere I read that the Northridge Earthquake 21 years ago today was a 7.1, but the Clinton Administration downgraded it below a 7.0. The reason: the government would have to kick in a lot more money if the “official” Richter reading was 7.0 or higher.
I don’t know if this story is true or is just BS, but where the Clintons are concerned, you never know.