Cathy Carpenter, 61, remembers waking up to massive shaking the morning of the Northridge earthquake. In her family’s home in Tarzana, almost all of the kitchen cabinets were flung off the walls, and the aftershock blew out the windows and broke the ceiling beams that supported the house’s second story.
In the months after the Northridge earthquake, the Hillel House at California State University, Northridge (CSUN) became a makeshift classroom facility for hundreds of students as many university buildings had been damaged.
If Los Angeles’ Jewish day schools are prepared for a major earthquake, they have the accreditation requirements of BJE-Builders of Jewish Education, an umbrella organization for local Jewish education, in large part to thank.
Everyone should be prepared to be self-sufficient (able to live without electricity/gas, running water, telephones) for at least three days following a major emergency.
When the Northridge earthquake struck 20 years ago, emergency city services — ambulance, fire, police — were under heavy strain, with extremely high call volume. As in any disaster, many people in need of assistance simply could not be helped quickly.
Just off a trip to the Six Flags Magic Mountain theme park in Valencia, 11-year-old Elliott Samson was sound asleep in his Pico-Robertson home at 4:30 a.m. on the morning of the Northridge earthquake.
It was an odd sight inside the Shoff family’s home in Santa Monica — a television.
As soon as the tremors that rocked her hospital bed stopped, 12 doctors rushed into Michelle Gurman’s delivery room at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Lying on a rolling cot and hooked to machines, Gurman at first thought the shaking was a side effect of her medication.
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