7.3 EARTHQUAKE - LANDERS, CALIFORNIA 1992

Our home was built in 1987, in Desert Hot Springs, California. It stood on the side of a hill, overlooking the town and directly above the Two Bunch Palms Resort. We purchased the home brand new at the height of the Savings and Loan crisis, with a 30 - year mortgage rate of 10.5%. Interest rates had been as high as 12% during this time, which made us feel we had really gotten a good rate.

We moved in, had our son in 1988 and our daughter was well on her way by April 1992. Desert Hot Springs is just a few miles north of Palm Springs, in Southern California. By April, temperatures could normally be as high 87 - 90 degrees during the day, with lows in the mid 50's at night. The night of April 22, 1992, in Desert Hot Springs, the temperature became eerily cold. As the sun went down, I remember my husband and I putting on coats, which was unheard of in April. The temperature had dropped drastically and must have dropped down into the low 40's. At 9:50pm, an earthquake hit, it was the largest we had felt in quite a few years. All through the night the aftershocks continuously shook our home. Little did we know that this quake was a precursor for something much larger to come.

At 4:57am on June 28, 1992, the largest earthquake I have ever felt shook our home so hard it was as if I were standing in a fast moving motor-home as it made its way down a road riddled with pot holes. The entire contents of the home clanged and banged together like dishes in a camper going down the road. As the never ending shaking began, the phone rang incessantly. At 8 months pregnant, I moved as quickly as I could toward my sons room, holding the swaying walls with each step. My husband had left for work at 4:30 that morning, my 3 year old son and I were in the house alone. As I reached his door, he ran to me, shivering, scared beyond belief. Together, we made our way down the hall to the ringing telephone. The shaking seemed as though it would never stop, the tile floor in the kitchen rolled in what looked like waves in the ocean. It was unbelievable that we still had phone service. When we reached the phone, my brother-in-law was on the other line, "Do you feel that?" he asked. As I stood holding my quivering toddler, I couldn't help but thinking "Are you kidding me? They no doubt feel it in China!" Before I could speak, the phone went dead, followed shortly thereafter by complete darkness when the electricity shut off. But yet, the shaking continued. I had heard of the end of the world in biblical terms and thought I was experiencing it and then the shaking stopped as quickly as it had begun. My son and I were in complete darkness and silence. It was then that I realized that the silence and anticipation of what was to come were nearly as agonizing as the shaking and sound of dishes smacking frantically together in the cabinets. And then it began again, smaller and shorter. Wave after wave we endured aftershock after aftershock. Somewhere around 7:30 that morning, we had become somewhat desensitized to the aftershocks and sat on the couch watching the news after the electricity was restored. Every channel, each with it's own explanation of what had occurred. At 8:05 another violent quake rocked the house. This earthquake was nothing like the first long, rolling earthquake. This strong and violent quake shook the house from side to side quickly and violently. It felt as though the house was going to be ripped in two. Our home on Cielo Azul Rd in Desert Hot Springs overlooked the southeast part of town and out toward the Painted Hills, about 10 miles to the West. Immediately after this last substantial temblor, we looked out the window facing west and saw a vertical line of dirt spraying toward the sky from what appeared to be a fault line. The dirt clouded the sky moving upward for 10 to 15 minutes in a five mile long vertical line. This must have been the plates along the earthquake fault shifting, the friction spewing out the dust. Ironically with the two enormous earthquakes and over 2500 aftershocks, nothing fell from the walls of our home and no dishes fell from the cabinets or were broken, although they made an unbelievable amount of noise during the 7.3 quake. Neither my son, nor I were hurt, other than emotionally and our home and belongings sustained no damage. The building codes as well as the fact that our home sat on a perfect mix of rock and sand had a lot to do with this. My Grandmother lived within a mile of us in a second story apartment that was built in a very sandy area. While her apartment did not have damage, it swayed far more. She actually stayed with us for several days afterward, due to feeling safer.

While we fared amazingly well, others did not. Closer to the epicenter, in the town of Yucca Valley, a mobile home park looked as though a team of Transformers had walked through, crushing and twisting the metal in their travels. The entire side of the Yucca Valley bowling alley collapsed. During the Landers quake, a three-year old boy was killed by falling bricks from a collapsed chimney while he slept at a babysitters home next to his siblings. His parents had traveled back to Yucca Valley for a High School reunion from Massachusetts.Two people died from heart-attacks, 400 were injured and 750 left homeless. The earthquakes and aftershocks damaged 4,446 homes and 166 businesses, and destroyed 77 homes and 10 businesses. Power was out for several hours during the Landers earthquake and water systems were damaged in Yucca Valley. I remember large water trucks brought in from Miller Brewing Company filling glass beer bottles with Miller stickers on them, with water and handed out. The grocery stores were quickly overtaken by those that grabbed up all the available bottled water from the shelf that had not been damaged. Within 1 hour, the stores were ransacked by those fearful of not having water in the above 100 degree temperature. All in all, the Landers quake caused little damage for its size, considering it released about four times as much energy as the far more destructive Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989 and ruptured 5 separate faults. The fact that the epicenter was in a very isolated and non-populated area of the Mojave Desert is the main reason. If this 7.3 earthquake, lasting nearly 1 minute, would have epicenter-ed in Los Angeles, the devastation would have been beyond massive. Especially if it occured on a week day, during business hours. But just one life lost is too much loss to me. I often think of the 3 year-old that was crushed by the falling chimney. He would be 23 today, the same age as my own son. I have thought of the regrets his parents must have had in traveling across country to attend their High School reunion.

With all the memories aside, I hope to never endure such a horrific experience again in my life. In December of 1993, we moved from the state of California, after 31 years. We have visited just twice in the 19 years since we have left. In the year and a half after the Landers quake, I lived in fear of the "big one" that was and still is supposed to hit California. I pray the scientists are wrong as I cannot imagine what the rating on the Richter scale would be if 7.3 was not the "big one".