Jan. 17 marks the 30th anniversary of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. With 57 official deaths, more than 9,000 injured and an estimated over $40 billion in property damage, it remains one of the most costly earthquakes in U.S. history. At the epicenter of the 6.7 magnitude quake – said to have been felt as far as Las Vegas and San Diego – was the San Fernando Valley.
“It was like somebody dropped a bomb on LA,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, a longtime politician in Los Angeles.
“It felt like nature had lifted the house off of its foundation, and then dropped it back on the foundation,” recalled Yaroslavsky, continuing that his two kids sprinted into his room and did a seamless, “dive into the bed and under the covers.”
After checking on his family Yaroslavsky got to work, along with first responders and other local officials. He was the city council member for the 5th District at the time, which included Sherman Oaks, and he took office as the county supervisor for the 3rd District in December of that year – representing most of the valley during the reconstruction that followed.
“It was just a different atmosphere. Everybody was in gear. Everyone was focused on getting things done,” said Yaroslavsky about the local efforts in the immediate aftermath.
Within a couple of days, then President Bill Clinton was disembarking Air Force One at the Hollywood Burbank Airport.
“It felt like half of the United States government came down the stairs from the airplane with him,” described Yaroslavsky.
Along with Clinton arrived the head of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the head of the Federal Emergency Management System (FEMA), the Secretary of Transportation and others.
After the devastation and destruction came funding and years of rebuilding. Many laws, regulations and building codes in place today were born as a response to the Northridge earthquake.
Built Back Better
“A lot of apartment buildings were red-tagged, meaning they were uninhabitable,” said Yaroslavsky. “Parks in the San Fernando Valley were jammed with people who were sleeping in tents, out in the open because they couldn’t go back into their homes.”
Homes, infrastructure, public spaces and businesses needed rapid reconstruction and assistance.
Two major freeways, I-5 and the I-10, collapsed. Major parking garages – at Cal State Northridge (CSUN) and Northridge Fashion Center – collapsed. Multiple hospitals, including the Kaiser building in Granada Hills, suffered severe structural damage.
Richard Katz, the assemblymember at the time for the 39th District in the Northeast San Fernando Valley, said the damage from the Northridge earthquake forever changed building codes and in turn saved lives going forward.
“The city adopted a whole different building code for structures, with reinforced concrete or reinforced masonry, to make everything earthquake-safe. [There were] new standards for hospitals,” said Katz. “All of those were adopted after the Northridge earthquake.”
Just five weeks after Northridge, SB 1953 was introduced into the California Senate, calling for stricter seismic compliance for hospitals. Passed later that year, the bill requires that acute care hospitals must be able to survive a major earthquake and provide ongoing services during the aftermath by 2030.
Updated building codes required homes to use plywood to reinforce sheetrock walls and new regulations were prescribed to steel welds so that they were stronger and less susceptible to cracks and breaks.
Although the most damage was done to wood structures, 200 concrete buildings were red-tagged. The collapse of cement structures, such as the two-year-old CSUN parking garage, revealed the poor performance of concrete buildings.
By 1996, new building codes were adopted to address these failures in concrete structures, and in 2015, the city passed an ordinance requiring all non-deductible concrete buildings to be fully retrofitted by 2041.
Fixing the Unforeseen Side Effects
San Fernando resident Liz Castaneda was 10 years old when the Northridge earthquake struck and remembers her family living outside in tents the week that followed because they were scared to go inside.
Castaneda recalled two markets taking opposite approaches in the community after the earthquake. One liquor store, La Tienda La Reina, would credit locals when they did not have the money to pay for items.
“They would write down our names and they would credit us,” said Castaneda. “Versus another store … because they knew that we needed food and they had produce, they were price gouging.”
Although the city of Los Angeles had a law in place against price gouging, businesses in incorporated cities like San Fernando could raise the price of goods as the demand went up, even in the wake of a disaster.
“The notion that in an emergency, you’ll go out and gouge prices – and we’re not talking about for frivolous stuff, but we’re talking about milk or eggs or water – was just outrageous,” said Katz.
First, it was milk, produce, batteries and gas. Later, as people were rebuilding, hardware stores and contractors began inflating prices.
According to a Los Angeles Times article of the time, by June of 1994 about 1,400 complaints of price gouging were registered on the county’s hotline.
“We then passed a law that made it clear that it’s not just really poor form, but it should be illegal to try and take advantage of people in an emergency situation like that,” said Katz.
An assembly bill spearheaded by Katz passed that year, making price gouging after a disaster illegal in California.
“In almost every disaster that’s occurred since then, those laws have gone into place to protect people who are just trying to get through the day,” said Katz.
Road to Rapid Recovery
“The national response was pretty much whatever we needed, whenever we needed it and as quickly as they could get it here,” said Katz.
Los Angeles and Ventura counties received $11 billion in federal assistance and the City of Los Angeles secured an additional $321 million in supplemental disaster relief funding from HUD to assist property owners.
People visited temporary FEMA centers to apply for low-interest loans and get financial assistance to rebuild their homes and apartments.
“Anytime you’re out of your residence for any length of time, it’s a personal disaster,” said Yaroslavsky. “But the disaster can be compounded if government isn’t there to help. Government was there to help on day one and they were here until the last applicant for financial assistance got taken care of.”
Homeowners also filed for private loans and made insurance claims to rebuild.
Three years after the quake, 195,000 residential insurance claims were reported, and the total of all paid claims for the Northridge event was $12.5 billion. With around 80 percent of San Fernando Valley homeowners having earthquake insurance at the time, and the majority of them filing claims, insurance companies started removing coverage from their policies.
As a result, the California Legislature created the California Earthquake Authority (CEA) in 1996, a privately funded but publicly managed organization that offers earthquake insurance. With over a million policyholders, it is now one of the largest residential earthquake insurance providers in the world.
“In a disaster, I don’t think you can ever [rebuild] quick enough for the people that are suffering,” said Katz. Adding that, “the timeline for getting freeways rebuilt or getting businesses up and running, or hospitals … couldn’t have been done quicker.”
Yaraslovsky said the repairs to infrastructure were done in record time due to the amount of resources, incentives and financial bonuses provided under the leadership of then-Governor Pete Wilson.
Contractors rebuilding the Gavin Canyon (I-5) freeway got a $150,000 financial bonus for each day they finished ahead of schedule, and would have been penalized the same amount for each day past the set deadline.
They worked 24 hours a day and completed in record time. Caltrans estimated it would take up to 18 months to rebuild, yet the Santa Monica pass opened in just three months and all seven of the other collapsed bridges opened within 10 months after the earthquake.
This set a precedent for infrastructure reconstruction after a disaster, and these same tactics of incentives and disincentives were used for the rapid rebuilding of the 10-freeway after a fire damaged the structure this past year.
“I think the Valley got a lot of attention, particularly during the rebuilding,” said Katz.
That attention and resources allowed the valley to, “stand on its own feet a little bit more,” and “show how quickly the valley could come back.”
Next week coverage continues with the birth of the Valley Economic Alliance.