Haiti earthquake damage (APTOPIX)
After seeing the news reports on the 7.0 earthquake that struck Haiti yesterday, I found myself remembering the 1994 Reseda (aka Northridge) quake that Cheryl and I endured. Although it registered a mere 6.7 on the Richter scale, we lived only 3.2 miles from the epicenter and, according to Wikipedia, “the ground acceleration was one of the highest ever instrumentally recorded in an urban area in North America”. I vividly remember being awoken at 4:30am by the surreal shaking and a sound that’s very hard to describe, partly because, like some sort of cosmic bass synthesizer, you heard it through your body and not just with your ears – a sort rolling rumbling accompanied by the cacophony of a zillion things tumbling and breaking. The main quake lasted only about 20 seconds, but when it was over it looked as if a tornado had blown through our apartment. Nothing was where it had been a few moments before; the pipes had broken under our sinks; our toilet reservoir had broken in two; a two-story wall with four plate glass windows the size of patio doors had buckled in the middle and was leaning inward at about thirty degrees. Power was out; hundreds of car alarms had been triggered, adding to the ambiance of emergency. I remember the dazed feeling of not having the foggiest idea of what to do, except to try to get out of there before the next tremor hit. Not easy to do when we couldn’t even find shoes to keep our feet from being cut on all the shattered glass, or a flashlight to help guide us through the chaos.
The tremors continued for the next 36 hours every few minutes. Had this been the legendary “big one” that would someday occur along the San Andreas fault? Hearing that it hadn’t been, we couldn’t help but worry that this quake might have been its immediate precursor. I recall sleeping in the back seat of our car that night, being awoken every 30 minutes or so by a large aftershock, when the trauma – which I had managed to keep under raps throughout that first day, when survival seemed all that mattered – suddenly hit home.
We were lucky. Our apartment had been constructed to fairly modern quake-related building codes. Like a big tent, it swayed with the tremors instead of resisting them, and so didn’t entirely collapse. Also, it hadn’t been built atop a parking garage, many of which – like the one below – hadn’t made it through the quake-
1994 Reseda quake damage (USGS)
We were also lucky to live in one of the richest places in the world, where first-responders could relatively quickly provide aid to those who needed it, and there was plenty of food and other supplies in the markets. In those days FEMA was well-managed; I remember receiving a check for a couple thousand dollars only a few days after the event, and based only on our address. That helped to pay for the hotel room we needed for the next couple of weeks, while the damage to our building was being assessed.
I can only imagine what the residents of Port-au-Prince must be going through – the anxiety caused not only by the quake damage, but also by the concern that food, water, and civility might soon be running out. Help them by donating to the Red Cross or text Haiti to 90999 to donate $10 directly to Haiti relief via your cell phone bill.