Thirty years since the Northridge earthquake

[question everything]

That it happened on MLK day meant that fewer people were on the road, on the freeway that collapsed
.

[Sequoia]

1. I was there

Woke me up. Later walked down to where the 10 freeway collapsed in Santa Monica.

[question everything]

2. Felt it in Irvine, Orange County

[intelpug]

3. North ridge

I had a cousin who lived there at the time. He said he woke up sensing something wrong but couldn't put a finger on it. The bedroom he and his wife were in had a bathroom attached and when the door was open you were looking directly at the toilet past the foot of the bed. He told me he didn't know why he woke up but he could hear like a humming or buzzing noise then in his own words he said " I couldn't figure out what was going on, I was staring ahead looking at the toilet in the bathroom and I wondered what the hell is that? is that the pipes in the bathroom humming? Then a split second later that goddamn toilet just exploded in front of my face like a fucking bomb and we felt the first shake. Nicole started to wake up and asked what's going on? I was yelling at her to get up, were having a fucking earthquake, we got to get the hell out of here. His apartment was only a couple of blocks or so from where that freeway fell and the immediately area where he lived was pretty much demolished, They had to find another place to live because the place they lived in then fell in the next day completely

[Juneboarder]

4. I was there as well, on 1/17/1994.

Lived in Northridge at the top of Tampa, and it was like a warzone. We had port-a-potty's on our street for 2-3 weeks, houses up and down the block were condemned, many lives lost. The worst part was the constant fear with each aftershock that happened that day through probably a couple of months afterwards. To this day, I hear the trash truck outside and immediately look at my blinds to see if it's an earthquake or just an outside noise.

[intrepidity]

5. That was traumatic for me

Lived a few miles from the epicenter. Just horrible.

I remember driving as soon as the sun came up and listening to the radio and them saying stuff like "No reports of any major damage or fatalities yet" and there's brick walls on both sides of the road I'm on just flattened, and my mind can't reconcile the disconnect. Locals were calling into the radio show (KFI, probably Bill Handle) describing the destruction, which *did* reflect what I was seeing, but the periodic news reports kept saying "no major damage reported" and that's when I learned a valuable lesson: in the early hours after a major event, it often takes a long time for even somewhat accurate damage assessments to come out---of course, this was pre-internet/smart phones, but it still applies somewhat today.

That was a day that shook me to my core, pun fully intended.