Because my 5 year old daughter was in the middle of my cousin's large swimming pool and was only 5 years old and the water was sloshing out in 1 to 2 foot waves all over the yard. I kept the back door closed to the house so the water wouldn't slosh into the house as well. The water pressure didn't break any windows on the house either.
So, I told my 5 year old to swim into the center of the pool on her floatation device toy and to stay there until things settled down.
She wanted to know why the water was sloshing out of the pool so much and so I told her we were having an earthquake and that she should stay calm and in the center of the pool so she wouldn't bang her head on the cement sides of the pool.
So, as you can see even in a 5.0 earthquake it can be terrifying for a parent if your child is in a pool.
But, the quake where I thought I was going to die was in 1971. This might have been one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
At the time I believed for awhile that we were being nuked because the ground simply would not stop shaking and things kept falling off walls and desks around me and breaking. When it finally stopped I had to be sure to put on shoes so I didn't have to go to the hospital with serious glass cut feet. And my head hurt from banging against the wall when the quake first started when I was asleep before I repositioned myself. I tried to stand up but couldn't. That wasn't possible at all during the quake. So, I fell down on my bed and just bounced for a minute or more until the terrible shaking stopped.
This was the only time I thought I was going to die (along with everyone else) and I thought we were being nuked by Russia then for awhile.
But, most earthquakes are not like this. The 1971 quake was the most serious quake I have had to live through up close and personal.
This quake after it was over I was college age still and went with a friend who was an A Student at UCLA at the time on a Sierra Club Bus tour of the destroyed areas of San Fernando Valley. I think it was put on by a Geologist who described what happened geologically to us. They stopped one place where the road couldn't be driven on at all because there was about 3 feet of it across the road where it had risen above the other area along the San Andreas fault. It also destroyed a hospital where I believe most people died there in the quake and this uplift where the road was torn completely in half was next to where the hospital was destroyed. I believe this was the quake that collapsed many freeways in the San Fernando Valley. One highway patrol officer on a motorcycle was riding his motorcycle when the freeway collapsed in front of him and so he drove off the broken over pass on his Harley Davidson police motorcycle and died. There were many many stories like this about people who died while driving on freeways that collapsed under them or in front of them where they didn't or weren't able to stop in time to stay alive.
Here are some photos of the damage if you copy and paste this URL there is an arrow to the right to see more pictures:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_San_Fernando_earthquake#/media/File:USGS_-_1971_San_Fernando_earthquake_-_San_Gabriel_Mountains_-_Veterans_Hospital.jpg
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