January 18, 2007

• 1-17-94

  
  (photos ®my mom)
  
  13 years ago today, I was a child in the 8th grade, not very interested in geology.  That all changed at 4:30:56 AM on January 17, 1994.
  
  My friend Shawn and his dad had just built a hockey net out of PVC, in which I would goaltend. It was gonna be great. We had the day off (MLK holiday) so we’d play street hockey all day. I woke up at about midnight after a bad dream, with a headache. In my dream, I was thrown from the top bunk of my bunk bed by an earthquake. I got out of bed, went to take some aspirin, and went back to sleep. My next memory was at 4:31 AM, when I was in the Mw 6.7 Northridge Earthquake. I grabbed my bed, hoping to not fly off. Well, my bed never tipped over, but I was still scared. I looked over at the clock to see what time it was, but the power was out, I assumed.
  
  Little did I know that the dresser that my clock sat on was halfway across the room on threw floor. My mom called for my brother and I, at which point my brother ran to her room. Her door had been jammed but came open after some effort. We gathered ourselves together and went outside to see the damage.
  
  At first, when we opened the front door, we saw that the porch was 2 feet above the base of the door, and we could not open the screen door to get out.
  
  We went around to the side door, and saw the stairs were 2 feet apart from the door. We lived in a mobile home, and it had fallen off it’s stilts. My mom saw her best friend across the street. His house was on fire. We ran back into our house to get water to put it out, but it was too late. He ran back inside for some baby pictures before they were lost. As he did, someone stole his wallet out of his jacket that he left outside. My mom, brother, and I grabbed what little we could, got in the car, and drove away to the orange light of the fire.
  
  Craig’s
  
  Shaun’s
  
  
  View from my house
  
  This was the first of 61 other homes that burned, including Shawn’s. My two other friends in the neighborhood moved away in fear (one to Palmdale, right on the San Andreas).
  
  My mom through the burnt hole in our house
  
  A second fire that night also burned another house and partially burned our house.  It was not until April that we moved back in after months of bouncing around to my aunts and my mom’s friend’s, where I primarily used a sleeping pad for my bed.
  
  Other damage around town:
  
  
  
  The famous 5-14 interchange collapse, from the LA Times.  There wound up being 51 dead, 9,000+ injured, and $44 billion in damage, thrid only to Katrina and Andrew for cost.
  
  
  
  CSUN parking structure collapse
  
  
  
  The highest death toll was here, as this 3 story apartment building was turned into 2 as the first floor was obliterated.  Over a dozen dead here.
  
  Today is the 13th year since then, so I reflect on that day, along with the months that followed, which truly changed me into the man I am today. I look back on that time in awe, in sadness, and in a strange sense of thanks. Though we ran away that day, it made me stronger. I changed that day. I was just a boy, but I became a man.
  
  Also, our story won the Think Blue contest and we got to meet Mike Piazza and UCLA superstar Eric Karros.  Sweet.
  
  A lot of memories from that time, and a lot of me was created through that.   It’s just a part of who I am.
  
  
  On a completely unrelated note, I heard the best story ever on Radio from Hell on X96.  If you like forced catfights, crossbows, trampolines, and lesbians, read this.
  

  • 12:00 am
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