Jean O’Sullivan’s initial memory of the Northridge earthquake exactly 30 years ago came in mid-air — a few feet above her bed — where she was awakened to the sound of her own screams.
Minutes later, O’Sullivan scrambled out of her Granada Hills home and joined neighbors in the pre-dawn darkness, tossing displaced goldfish back into a decorative fish pond.
“I was sitting with my feet on the ground, embracing my knees. Then I looked up and I noticed what I had never seen in the San Fernando Valley — so many stars in a deep, black sky. It was just this moment of peace,” she said on Wednesday, Jan. 10.
For most, memories of the first minutes after 4:31 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, when a 6.7-magnitude, thrust-fault earthquake pushed up the San Fernando Valley’s floor, consisted of frightening sensations interspersed with neighborly acts and flashes of calm. For many, the experience reminded them of life’s preciousness, and later on, the need for a change of scenery.
Sometimes, mundane thoughts would pop up, temporarily wiping away the horrific reality.
Right after the quake struck “I remember thinking I was going to go shopping with my mom today,” O’Sullivan remembered.
Actor Peter Onorati still lives in his landmark home in Sherman Oaks, where he and his family literally were slammed into walls that morning. On instinct, he placed his twin boys and 4-year-old son in the SUV, away from falling debris. The 1929 Spanish Hacienda house’s roof was damaged, some walls had puncture holes and two chimneys needed to be rebuilt. He could do nothing but wait two weeks for the power to come back on, he said.
In the meantime, Onorati helped a friend move a piano out of his apartment, one of many residential buildings in the area along a stretch of Sepulveda Boulevard damaged by the quake, he said.
“This guy’s apartment building had shifted off its foundation so much that the main entry to the hallways looked like one of those fun house…
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