My experience of surviving the 1971 San Fernando Earthquake

The unanticipated thrust earthquake had a moment magnitude of 6.5 or 6.7 (as determined by several independent institutions) and had a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme).end partial quote from:

1. 1971 San Fernando earthquake - Wikipedia, the...

   en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_San_Fernando_earthquake

   The 1971 San Fernando earthquake (also known as the Sylmar earthquake) occurred in the early morning of February 9 in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in ... 

    

   Though it only registered a 6.5 or a 6.7 it went on forever. This was the longest earthquake I ever went through. So, sometimes the numbers just don't add up at all.

    

   It woke me up before dawn (like everyone else). The night before I went to see the movie "MASH" that the TV series was based on in Palm Springs about 30 miles from where I was living with my parents then in Yucca Valley up on the Mesa. This would have been February 9th and I would have been 20 in April 1970 so I hadn't yet turned 21. It was winter time and likely cold where I was up at 3500 feet there. But, as I woke up I thought to myself, "Oh. This is just another earthquake"

    and I turned over and thought I could just go back to sleep. Nope! 

   
   

   This thing started out like about a 4.0 or a 5.0 and it just built and built and built until I was bouncing off the wall while still in my bed. Then it kept building and building (seemingly forever) to the point where I knew no earthquake I had ever been through was this bad. It was then (half asleep) when I had a terrible thought that this wasn't an earthquake but that Los Angeles had been hit with a hydrogen bomb. This at this point was what I thought had happened, and I really didn't know for sure until it stopped and I could turn the radio on to see what had actually hit us.  Then of course I was relieved it wasn't a nuke and we weren't at war. 

    

   But, I had this really sick feeling thinking it was a nuke for a long time it was so bad and seemed to go on forever with us there in the dark early in the morning.

    

   Later I took a Sierra Club tour in a bus with a friend who attended UCLA to some of the worst hit sites. It was a geology tour and was very interesting. There were places that were moved vertically 3 to 6 feet making cliffs in the middle of roads next to a hospital that had collapsed completely killing many people. I think about 64 people died in this one and at least 2000 were injured by it. One of those that died was a highway patrolman on the freeway that collapsed. His motorcycle went into the air off a collapsing freeway and he died.

   
   

   This earthquake had to be one of the most terrifying experiences of my life and at the time I didn't expect to survive it because it was so intense at the time. 

   
   

   Most earthquakes I have been through that you can feel are usually between 3.0 and 6.0 and are much more survivable than this one was.

   
   

   If you are in a pool when one hits at about 5.0 if you go out into the center like I told my 5 year old daughter to do she was okay as long as she stayed away from the edges. She asked me why the water was going in all directions out of the pool. I just said, "Please stay in the center away from the edges until it stops." She was floating on a float in my cousin's pool when a 5.0 happened in Orange County.