Other than a few press releases from politicians, there were no public commemorations Saturday as the 15th anniversary of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake came and went.
Editor's Note: Scroll down to the bottom of this page to tell us where you were when the quake struck.
The 4:30 a.m. temblor on Jan. 17, 1994 was the first direct hit by a major quake on a modern American city, and caused horizontal movement that may have equaled the famous 1906 San Francisco quake.
The magnitude 6.7 Northridge quake killed 72 people, knocked seven freeways out of service, and caused $20 billion in damage. Until the destruction of New Orleans, it was the worst damage ever inflicted on a U.S. city in most Americans' lifetimes.
The quake struck on a previously-unknown, blind-thrust fault under the mountains north of Porter Ranch. It raised the elevation of Oat Mountain, north of the city, by about 20 inches, scientists later measured.
The epicenter, far underground, caused odd patterns of destruction. Some of the worst damage occurred in Santa Monica and east along the Santa Monica (10) Freeway towards USC. Numerous buildings were shaken from their foundations in the Mid City area, and the 10 itself collapsed at the La Cienega interchange, named for the one-time freshwater marsh that was blamed by seismologists for the shaky soil there.
The Santa Clarita area was cut off from Los Angeles, as bridges in the Newhall Pass were brought down by an earthquake for the second time in 23 years. Other major freeway collapses along the San Diego (405) and Simi Valley (118) freeways caused commuter woes for nearly a half year, in some cases.
The quake woke up people in Phoenix and Las Vegas, who looked out to report water was sloshing out of swimming pools.
In the San Fernando Valley, geysers of water from broken mains swirled around geysers of flame from broken gas mains. Tent cities were built in valley parks, and lasted for a week of overnight temperatures in the 30s, as a cold front moved in to cause further misery.
The Los Angeles Times today marked the anniversary by noting that apartment buildings perched atop parking areas -- like the doomed Northridge Meadows complex that collapsed in 1994 -- are still largely unreinforced and in risk of failure in a similar quake.
The Times reports that only 800 of the 20,000 "soft story" apartment buildings within Los Angeles city limits have been hardened to prevent pancaking similar to what happened at Northridge Meadows, just west of the Cal State Northridge campus, where 16 people were killed.
The state Seismic Safety Commission says only the City of Los Angeles and about a dozen other California jurisdictions have even begun to address the issue of unsafe apartment buildings perched atop parking spaces, which are susceptible to wobbling apart.
Rep. Brad Sherman, the Congressman who represents the San Fernando Valley, sent out a news release urging his constituents to remember the quake and take preparation precautions now.
