The Sylmar Earthquake - Day 250 - Haiku - Remembering the Earthquake that Shook Me Awake, in More Ways Than One

The Sylmar Earthquake
My dog landed on my chest
Before it began

The Sylmar/San Fernando earthquake was a turning point in my life. I remember awakening when my dog, Dak, literally landed on my chest shortly before dawn, despite his not being allowed on the bed.

He was a Keeshond, aka Dutch husky, and large for the breed at forty pounds, despite having been the runt of the litter. He literally knocked the breath out of me.

Then the rumbling started, and being still before dawn, and me not fully awake, my first thought was that Los Angeles was being bombed. And then the shaking started, and I remember thinking, "Oh! Okay! It's just an earthquake!"

So, while I may not be the only person to have been relieved that loud rumbling and the ground shaking was an earthquake, I can pretty much guarantee that I'm one of the few. ;-)

Here is my post from last year on this day.

Not that earthquakes are anything to sneeze at, but as a native Angeleno I'd been feeling temblors since babyhood, and personally, I'd still today far rather go through a major earthquake than to awaken to my homeland being bombed.

Initially the reports said that the earthquake was 7.1 n the Richter scale, which was later scaled back to 6.9, and today is reported as 6.5, 6.6 or 6.7, depending upon the source. In any case, it was large enough to have toppled brick walls, broken windows in several Los Angeles high rise buildings, killed over sixty people, and helped to change building codes all over the state, so that a future earthquake of the same size would do far less damage overall.

One unfortunate soul died when the overpass above him collapsed onto the front of his truck, crushing it, which would sadly be echoed when in San Francisco's Loma Prieta earthquake, eighteen years later, most of the sixty-three people who died were killed in the collapse of the Nimitz freeway in Oakland.

As terrible as these losses are, however, I have always been grateful for the earthquakes in my home state, because with each successive quake, fewer and fewer people die, because the buildings are built to higher and higher standards.

After San Francisco's horrific earthquake and fire in 1906, for example, building codes all over the state were revamped, along with emergency management plans, particularly for getting water to the sites of fires.

In any bad earthquake, the gas and water mains are at great risk of breaking, as they did in San Francisco in 1906, and it remains a terrible irony that in a city literally surrounded by water, they had none available to battle the advancing flames.

That said, had the Sylmar quake occurred during school hours, rather than shortly before dawn, the death toll would likely had been far greater, as several older school buildings collapsed during the earthquake, and numerous freeway overpasses and masonry walls collapsed.

My own thoughts that morning went to a friend of mine, Laurie White, whose birthday was that day, but whom I hadn't seen for several months. My attempts to call her went unanswered.

Laurie was several years my senior, but we had been friends for years, and after the L.A. earthquake, I never heard from nor saw her again. I have no idea why.

I did manage to reach another friend, Julie, who lived in Studio City, which was threatened by the Van Norman Dam, which had partially collapsed in the quake. Emergency measures were underway to lower the water level in case of potential failure. Over 40,000 were evacuated, who lived in harm's way, and it was a full three days before they were able to return home.

Julie's family wasn't evacuated, but her school had been called off for the day as a result, which led me to feel even more that ours should be as well, even though our area was in no way threatened by the dam, with a line of hills between our valley and hers. Ah, well, I had to go to school.

In the early morning hours following the quake, the only local station broadcasting was KTLA Channel 5, because they had literally dragged their equipment outside their building, in case of aftershocks, and were broadcasting from their parking lot.

Virtually all of the early footage of the San Fernando/Sylmar earthquake coverage was taken from news feeds from KTLA, including aerial footage from their "Telecopter" of the water behind the Van Norman Dam rippling during the earthquake, and they won a number of well-deserved awards for their news coverage of the event.

They were one of the best independent (at the time) news stations in the country, and are still one of the few stations to broadcast local and national news in real time, rather than on a tape delay.

Meanwhile, this recent article gives one of the best explanations I've yet come across regarding the complexity of the fault system underlaying the Los Angeles basin and surrounding environs, and the resulting difficulties of predicting local earthquakes with any degree of certainty.

Being a person to whom numbers and dates are important, February 9th will always bring these events to my mind, along with wishing Laurie White a happy birthday and a long and healthy life, wherever she may be.

So yes, I am grateful for even earthquakes. And as part of that, one of the true blessings that growing up in California gave to me was the indisputable lesson that, when all is said and done, there are and will always be things that are beyond my control. And, though difficult at times, I am okay with that.

It is up to me to maintain a handle on what I can control, namely, my response to the events in my life as they occur. And, in all cases, even though I may not always do so as gracefully as I might prefer, I choose to act with love.

I am dedicating this post to #gratitudelog, and in the hopes of furthering this initiative, half the liquid proceeds earned from my post will be awarded the to the author of the top post using this tag.

The image above is from a 1908 post card of Angels Flight,, the "world's shortest railway," which has been delighting passengers since its inception in 1901.

The image below is another post card, dated 1910. I'd love to give credit to the photographers of these post cards, but these images were sent to me by a friend years ago, and the photographers were not noted.

Personally, I'd love to have the Victorian home at the top of the image, but given that this photo was taken in 1908 or prior, it may or may not still be standing. Angels Flight is in the Bunker Hill section of downtown Los Angeles, and was relocated half a block from it's original location, so it could easily go either way; the last time I was there, there were indeed some wonderful Victorian homes still standing.

I remember riding Angels flight as a child with my family, and always loved it, as it is a wonderful mix of nostalgia and practicality. I was saddened upon visiting from Florida in 1994 to learn that it had closed years earlier.

Fortunately, it was revamped and reopened in 1996, and has since been fully restored, while including some modern safety features, and once again giving locals and tourists alike a small but lovely taste of Victoriana. It has also been featured in over one hundred films and counting, not to mention numerous television shows, and a substantial number of advertisements.

Joining Grand Central Market at the bottom, across the street from where you board, to Water Court Shopping Mall at the top, taking a ride on Angels Flight allows you to avoid walking up the extremely steep hill, while tickets today are still only $1 each way.

Then again, one of the safety features added was a stairway that runs along the train, so for those into serious physical training, or just masochistic, knock yourselves out.

We will definitely be taking a ride, or several, on our next trip to L.A. ;-)

For the record, this post was begun on 9 February, even though it didn't get posted until the wee hours of the 10th.

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