“Did you feel that?” New Yorkers anxiously asked when a 1.7 magnitude earthquake was felt in Queens and on Roosevelt Island in January, jolting people out of bed and rattling nerves.
Researchers believe the New York metropolitan area is susceptible to a magnitude 6 earthquake about every 670 years, and a magnitude 7 roughly every 3,400 years. The previous known earthquake in the area was a magnitude 5 in 1884. Reports of fallen bricks and cracked plaster were chronicled. Two other temblors in the same region occurred in 1737 and 1783. Although New York experiences numerous small earthquakes yearly, most are never felt.
This is not the case in California. A quake measuring 1.7 on the Richter scale would likely go unnoticed, let alone merit a raised eyebrow or prompt the proverbial earthquake question often asked by Californians, and now maybe New Yorkers: “Did you feel that?”
Two thousand twenty-four marks the 30th anniversary of the terrifying Northridge earthquake that decimated parts of Los Angeles. On Monday, Jan. 17, 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake rattled and shook Santa Monica and the San Fernando Valley, producing the most violent ground motions ever recorded in an urban area in North America.
It was also the date celebrating the birthday of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and, of slightly lesser importance, my former husband. Adding to the drama, our nearly 3-year-old daughter, Maddy, was spending the first night in her “big girl” bed. Since it was a holiday, our 11-year-old daughter, Molly, had spent the night at her friend’s slumber party a few miles away.
At 4:31 a.m., we were fast asleep when the shaking began with a giant, roaring rumble. Our king-size bed rocked and pitched so violently that I barely managed to sit up. My first thought was this is The End of the World. My second thought, get to my baby in the next room. As the sound of breaking glass exploded around us, I slid off the bed onto the heaving floor and struggled to stand. Bracing myself in the creaking doorjamb, I did my best to avoid being hit as it swung wildly. Our television toppled off the wall, shattering onto the floor, and the dresser nose-dived onto the heavy wooden bed frame.
While my husband tried to dodge and/or hold on to falling objects, I stumbled barefoot, inching my way to Maddy’s room, stepping gingerly, trying to dodge shards of glass. What sounded like a million car alarms screamed relentlessly as more emergency sirens wailed, adding to the cacophony. The rolling and pitching continued for what seemed like an eternity but was, in fact, less than 30 seconds.
I finally made it into the bedroom. Lying across her on the bottom bunk, I feared the bed and the entire roof might collapse.
“Mommy, make it stop,” she murmured sleepily, not knowing whether to be scared. “Mommy, I don’t like my bed,” she continued, crying and whimpering.
Trying to hide my terror, I clutched Maddy’s little body tightly, nearly suffocating her as the quaking began to subside. I imagined the headline in The Los Angeles Times the next morning: “Child survives being crushed by collapsing bunk bed during earthquake only to be suffocated by desperate mother attempting to protect her.”
With the phone lines down, we had no way to reach our 11-year-old, Molly.
As the sun began to rise, we bundled Maddy up and stepped cautiously outside, gazing upward as if to see if the sky was falling. Maybe Chicken Little was right. Piling into the car, still in our pajamas, we drove the short distance through Santa Monica to get her. Molly and all the girls at the slumber party were jittery but fine. We headed home, having no idea of the extent of the damage.
The widespread destruction that unfolded over the next few days, weeks, and months seemed insurmountable. Freeways buckled, apartments and parking structures collapsed, hospitals were evacuated, and streets were severed. Hundreds of fires erupted and at least 57 fatalities were reported. Thirty-three others died from stress-related causes such as heart attacks. Thousands more were injured and tens of thousands became temporarily homeless.
Our home’s wreckage was extensive — windows were shattered and nearly every glass and ceramic object we owned was broken and scattered throughout. Thankfully, we had less structural harm, unlike the hospital next door. With widespread ruin, over the next few days the hospital was forced to evacuate all of its patients. In subsequent months, hundreds of buildings were deemed uninhabitable and demolished.
Aftershocks unsettled us for days. Canceling the birthday dinner I’d planned for my husband that night, we ate Honey Bunches of Oats cereal and Goldfish crackers instead. We camped out in sleeping bags under our huge, solid oak dining room table. The kids thought it was fun, akin to making a fort, but for us adults, trying to behave normally was impossible.
We were glued to the news on the downstairs TV, which remained working, watching the staggering, incalculable loss and feeling grateful. Grateful that our family was intact and our sturdy dining table was large enough to accommodate four bodies, plus one dog and a cat. We slept beneath it for the next few days, until the aftershocks finally subsided. It was months until Maddy returned to her big-girl bed, choosing instead to sleep with us.
Once the dust had literally settled, my husband and I drove through Santa Monica documenting the aftermath with our recently purchased Sony Video 8 Camcorder, a Christmas gift we’d bought for each other. Yellow caution tape, red-tagged doors, broken, discarded furniture, and piles of rubble filled the streets and crumpled sidewalks. Although the quake became known as “the Northridge quake,” the damage to Santa Monica was equally devastating.
Decades later, some areas are still recovering, as are my nerves. Still, after all these years, every time I hear a car alarm or feel a rumble my heart rate skyrockets. In Los Angeles, that might also be because of fireworks or gunfire. Possibly, it’s just a truck passing by or an upstairs neighbor doing a virtual Zumba workout or learning to tap dance.
Now that I’m in New York, I don’t worry about earthquakes much. If the seismologists and historians have it right, we may be waiting another 600 or so years until a sizable quake hits New York. In the meantime, as long as I’m on the East Coast, I will chill out and enjoy the assurance of solid, unflinching ground.
Stephanie Blank’s writing has appeared in The Los Angeles Times and the collection “Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Positive, Live Happy.” She lives in East Quogue and Marina del Rey, Calif.