On this day, 50 years ago, I and millions of others experienced what was the strongest earthquake to hit a California urban area for nearly 40 years. The San Fernando Earthquake, also referred to as the Sylmar Earthquake, hit the Los Angeles area at a little after 6 am.
It was the first earthquake for me, and it was a big one. I remember being awakened by the swaying of the building in which I had been sleeping. I, however, was among the fortunate. The earthquake, measured as magnitude 6.6 and centered in the San Fernando Valley east of LA, led to the deaths of 64 people and more than $500 million in damages.
I was in Los Angeles because a friend had come west on business and I took a short leave to spend some time with him. He was a staff member of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and was attending a conference. I had something of a guest pass to attend as well.
The quake was, of course, a topic of conversation at the conference, but, media being the way it was 50 years ago, most of us were unaware of the terrible impact it had.
Forty-nine people were killed at the San Fernando Veterans Administration Hospital, where two buildings were completely destroyed. Others died at Olive View Hospital, under collapsed freeway overpasses, and at other locations. At Olive View, four five-story wings pulled away from the main building and three of them collapsed. Here is a gallery if images showing earthquake damage. Click on the image to see larger images and to advance the slideshow.
Eighty thousand people were evacuated from the area of the Lower Van Norman Dam, above the San Fernando Valley, which was in danger of collapse.
The Doobie Brothers chose an image from the earthquake damage for the cover of an album.
The earthquake helped result in state and federal legislation setting stricter standards for buildings to withstand shaking, etc.
Personally, I experienced several more earthquakes when I returned to live in California 1984-1996 and have since moving in Southern California at the beginning of 2012. Personal record is the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake. Rated at 6.9, it struck the California coast south of the Bay Area at 5:04 pm on October 17. I was in my office at UC Berkeley, about to head home to watch the third game of the World Series matching the Oakland Athletics and San Francisco Giants (the series was postponed for several days). Suddenly, I heard a loud, weird noise far away to the southeast, like a freight train rushing toward me. Then it hit. Again, the building swayed and I held onto my conference table until it subsided.
Again, too, I was fortunate. No one in my family was harmed. We lost only the chimney on our early-20th-century home in Berkeley. More unusual to me was an aftershock a couple of days later. I was in my car, waiting on a light on San Pablo Avenue in Albany, a town just north of Berkeley. The rear of the car suddenly started bouncing up and down. I looked up at my rear view mirror to see who was jumping on my rear bumper. There was no one there. It was just the road bouncing up and down.