20 Years Ago Today

I was starting my second month of teaching high school history at my alma mater. I had arrived early enough - around 7:15 am - to prepare for classes to begin at 8:00 am. I had stopped into the office and then the upstairs teachers' lounge for a cup of coffee, and was walking down the hallway to my classroom at around 7:40 am.

The school is built into the side of a hill, with the first floor only open on one side; the second floor had two sides to it, and my room was on the back side. Along the hallway across from the classrooms were lockers and a wall of plexiglass, blocking the view of hillside above us.

I heard the plexiglass rattle and thought it must be a sonic boom; we were right under the flight path of the space shuttle on its way to land at Edwards Air Force Base. My second thought was that it could not be the shuttle - this was a year and a half after the Challenger explosion and the fleet was still grounded. My entire thought process from the rattle to my conclusion felt like minutes but was probably a nanosecond. I knew it was an earthquake. I yelled to the girls in the hallway to get away from the windows and to duck down and cover their heads. We hadn't had an earthquake of any size in their lifetimes; the last big one we'd had in LA was the Sylmar quake in 1971, more than 18 years earlier.

When the shaking stopped we had all the students evacuate the building down to the lawn, where we gathered everyone by home room and started taking roll. Part of the problem was that school hadn't started yet, and students were still arriving on campus. At the same time, frantic parents were calling the school office and showing up out front to take their girls back home again. We must have stood outside on that lawn in 100+ degree heat for a good 6 hours trying to sort everything out. Fortunately, there was no damage to the school other than hysterical students and frayed nerves.

It turned out to have been a fairly large quake (5.9 or so - data varies) on a previously unknown fault, and became known as the Whittier Narrows quake. The epicenter was pretty close to downtown Whittier, which was at the other end of the range of hills that the school was built into the side of - about 10 miles away. No wonder we had such a ride. Downtown Whittier had major damage; many of the old buildings were of unreinforced masonry. It took them months to clean it up.

Not long after that, we set up an emergency plan. All of the teachers were involved. We bought containers and supplies (food, water, first aid, etc) to last the entire school population for three days. We all received First Aid training. I was assigned to the Search and Rescue team, and we had drills with students and teachers acting out the roles of the injured and deceased. It was quite an undertaking, and I learned quite a bit. The school went from having a vague idea of what to do during an emergency to having a well-orchestrated plan. I have no idea if they are still as well-prepared, but I certainly hope so.