Earth Shaking Event: Sylmar, Feb. 9, 1971

It started as a rumble at 6 A.M. the morning of February 9, 1971 as I was dreaming of playing in the LA City basketball playoffs and then all hell broke loose in my basement bedroom as the earth shook with a vengeance with the epicenter in Sylmar. 

My dad had his medical office there and it was quite different than 1994.  Yes, the same overpass where the 5 and 405 met, slammed an unlucky truck driver into the earth below and the county's new Olive View Medical Center was torn in half with a wheelchair dangling from an upper floor and the clock stuck at 5:59. 

Streets were buckled around Sylmar and San Fernando as many homes suffered damages from cracked plaster to being upended off their foundations.  This was the Sylmar Quake, perhaps the first major quake that I can remember hitting the San Fernando Valley.

Luckily my dad was a colonel as a doctor in the California National Guard who had been deployed within hours to direct the evacuation of the north valley based on fears the Van Norman dam was ready to burst.  My dad had a dial up phone, so we were able to traverse the valley to see the damages to his office, which, despite being built in 1965, had separated in the rear exposing his drug closet and his supply of amphetamines and other scheduled drugs. 

The community was displaced from San Fernando to Northridge.  House fires were popping up due to fallen water heaters and broken gas lines.  Water service was disrupted with Busch providing us with water from their brewery.  Streets were fractured with newly discovered fissures near Van Gogh elementary and under a number of buildings. 

We ended up at the Howard Johnson's after a free meal at the Queen's Arms, swaying with every aftershock.

The Sylmar Quake started at 6.7 and ended up at 6.3 as I recall, but it was an experience that I will never forget. Luckily the streets were so damaged that I was awarded my driver's license without the dreaded 3 point turn maneuver at the DMV in quake ravaged San Fernando with falling light standards and fallen multitudes of bricks that hadn't seem the light of day since their installation in the 1930s.  

We had a playoff game in North Hollywood and the basket was moving with each aftershock.  We did learn about earthquake insurance and that helped us later in 1994 when many of us teens had houses.  We strapped down waterheaters and had ample supplies of flashlights nearby.

I know many of you vividly recall 1994, but it was different ... we had cell phones and seemed to be better prepared than in 1971.  I recall reading a book by an author named Gentry in 1968 where he described a quake that decimated and separated the state.  It is now more than 40 years since I heard that distinctive rumble and rode my bed across the floor as wall panels flung from their moorings while pools dumped their fill turning our glass sliders into aquarium like portals ... Yes it was an earth shaking experience for those of us in Knollwood and the North Valley on February 9, 1971!