Tuesday, February 09, 2010

eArThQuAkE

February 9, 1971
6:00am
6.6 on the Richter scale


















What I remember:
The noise. The shaking. Things falling. Furniture banging against the wall. Screaming. It was very scary. Did my dad really run down the hall yelling "Get the children!"?

Our friend owned a pharmacy and we went to help him clean up. I remember when we opened the pharmacy door everything on the shelves had been dumped on the floor and the odor was unbelievable. Broken glass. Pills. Band-aids.

We had to evacuate our home because if the Van Norman Dam had collapsed it would have flooded "the valley". We went to stay with our friends--the Jensens--who lived in La Crescenta. We stayed for a week. Our dad wore jeans to work (he taught school in LA). We loved being evacuated because it meant NO SCHOOL and FUN WITH FRIENDS!

This earthquake was the inspiration (who knew?!) for the 1974 movie Earthquake.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

saw that movie and our seats moved and there was a lot of rumblingI was pretty sure I never wanted to move to CA

Melanie said...

Sounds like the California version of the Blizzard of '78!

Janae said...

I have been through a few CA earthquakes too. Fortunately, they were more fun than disastrous. Nothing like Haiti.