A 'freight train' through the bedroom

February 12, 2021

Thanks for reading my World’s on Fire, a weekly newsletter about disasters from journalist Colleen Hagerty. If you found this dispatch interesting, I hope you’ll subscribe!

First things first: a quick follow-up to last week’s newsletter about climate resettlement. The topic ended up being in the headlines, as President Biden issued an executive order calling for a report on “climate change and its impact on migration, including forced migration, internal displacement, and planned relocation.” You can read more about it in Scientific American, which provided this helpful context on the issue:

“Extreme weather is the world’s leading cause of forced displacement. Droughts, wildfires and other weather events have displaced an average of 21.5 million people every year for the past decade, according to a Center for Strategic and International Studies analysis of Internal Displacement Monitoring Center data.”

Now, let’s get into today’s topic.

50 years ago this week, a freight train roared through Marjorie Smith’s bedroom. Or at least, that’s what the earthquake sounded like to the then-San Fernando Valley resident, who now serves as Chair of the Morongo Basin Community Organizations Active in Disaster (COAD).

50 years later, she can still recall that “moaning groaning” sound, which seemingly traveled from “deep in the ground” straight into her seventh-floor apartment.

Smith shared her story in an Earthquake Country Alliance webinar Wednesday, which marked the five-decade anniversary of the 1971 San Fernando earthquake (also known as the Sylmar Earthquake). It was one of a series of articles and other media I saw across my feed this week relating to that disaster, many of them focused on the policy changes that followed it.

“'71 probably more than any other earthquake I can think of changed the way that California and the United States addresses the earthquake problem,” seismologist (and newsletter favorite) Dr. Lucy Jones said in her podcast about the anniversary.

I’ve written in the past about how disasters can be a “shock to the system,” creating a window in which people reimagine how to deal with them in the future. But, as I note in that article, change isn’t promised – often, the political and social will to actually make it happen fades quickly. Since the 1971 earthquake is an example of that window being put to use, I wanted to dedicate today’s newsletter to that day and how it has shaped future generations moving forward.

The magnitude 6.6 quake struck in the early morning of February 9th, 1971, waking up millions in Southern California with a terrifying start. Railroad tracks were twisted, portions of freeways collapsed, and multiple hospitals were badly battered. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS):

“The San Fernando Fault is a thrust fault, which means a section of land above the fault moved up and over a region below it. The earthquake was a single episode of ongoing crustal deformation, which, in a local sense, has pushed the San Gabriel Mountains up and south towards the broader Los Angeles Basin. In a broader sense, this motion is consistent with the plate boundary along the San Andreas Fault, where the plate to the west is moving northward relative to the plate on the eastern side at two inches (52 mm) per year. During the quake, the mountains lurched as much as 5 feet to the south in a matter of seconds, damaging roadways, pipelines and other structures embedded in the ground, and leaving a discontinuous tear where the fault ruptured the ground surface across the mountain front.”

Among the areas most impacted was the Lower Van Norman Dam, which came to the “brink of catastrophic failure,” as Ken Hudnut, a seismic expert with Southern California Edison, put it during the ECA webinar. Concerns over its potential to give way led to the evacuation of approximately 80,000 people, though ultimately, it survived.

64 deaths were attributed to the earthquake, which caused more than $500 million in damage – the equivalent of $3.6 billion today, explained Hudnut.

On Twitter, LA Times reporter Julia Wick shared an archival article published days after the quake, which offered more insight into the experience of living through it:

“Millions of people now know, in the deepest marrow of their bones, that man lives in California at the sufferance of the Almighty, that God has only to clear his throat and mere mortals are reduced to a situation of paralyzed helplessness.”

The article’s author, Ernest Conine, went on to offer his “hunch” that people would forget the fear from that day “remarkably quickly.”

“Let’s hope that, for our own good, some of the terror which we felt last Tuesday morning stays with us,” he pleaded.

And, perhaps against the odds, it did.

Tim Dawson, a senior engineering geologist with the California Geological Survey, laid out some of the legislation that followed the earthquake in the ECA webinar, from regulations on safety standards for hospitals to requirements for mapping and building on earthquake zones. New programs were created in its wake, including the California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program to obtain better earthquake data.

The earthquake also reverberated outside of California, prompting Congress to pass the Earthquake Hazards Reduction Act of 1977 and establish the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program.

As to why the event spurred such change, different experts offer different explanations. For some, it was the location of the earthquake, hitting home in a popular city. For others, it was the impact on the hospitals and the close call with the dam that demanded action. There’s a financial angle to be argued, as well, with Susan Dowty, government relations manager for the International Code Council, stating in the ECA webinar that earthquake code requirements save $12 for each $1 invested.

Each agreed, though, that whatever the driving force, these changes have had a tangible effect on equipping future generations to better understand, prepare for, and face the earthquakes that have followed – and those still to come.

This is the first newsletter I’ve written that focuses on the past rather than current events, so I’d love to hear your thoughts. Interested in more editions that take a look back? Let me know in the comments!

Learn more:

  • The ECA will be posting the full webinar I referred to here next week.

  • This ABC 7 article includes much more detail of the earthquake itself and video of the aftermath.

  • The LA Timesoffers multiple perspectives on lessons learned, from engineers to geologists, and a deeper look into some of the legislation.

  • I’ve linked to this podcast from KPCC before, but it feels like a good time to do it again – The Big One: Your Survival Guid‪e.‬

Newsletter News 📰

Next week, I’m going to try something new (again)!

Instead of your typical links issue, I’ll be posting a discussion thread. You’ll still get it in your inbox, but it will look different – just a quick few links from me, with the encouragement and space for you to share your own links in the comments. To make it as interactive as possible, you’ll get the email in your inbox earlier than usual, and I’ll be commenting along with you all day to keep the conversation going.

No time to chime in on Thursday? No worries, you’ll still be able to read and revisit the post later!

There’s such a cool community of subscribers to this newsletter from all over the world, so I’m excited to see what you’re all checking out about disasters and expand the news/outlets on my radar. And please, for all the journalists and academics subscribed, feel free to share your own work!

I’m looking forward to seeing you all in the comments next Thursday – rest assured, I’ll find a way to sneak a little something in there, too.

And, as always…

thank you for reading My World’s on Fire. You can leave a comment, reply to this newsletter to reach me, or let me know if you liked it by hitting the little “heart.” It also means the world to me when you share it on social media like Cécile Stehrenberger did:

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Now, here’s a little something for reading to the end.