Page 6 - sg_earthquake1994
P. 6
4:31 a.m., an. 17, 1994
mages of the earthquake:
Violent shaking, severed
Igas lines, fire, sirens,
buckled roads, crumbling
walls and tumbling freeways.
Darkness.
Registering 6.7 on the
Richter scale, it was one of
the largest quakes ever to hit
Southern California, and the
darkness that made it so eerie
was a saving grace.
The quake killed two
people in the Santa Clarita
Valley - including one who
died of a heart attack - and
61 in the entire Los Angeles
area. But the toll would have
been worse had it occurred
much later than 4:31 a.m. As
it was, the devastation was Final try MARK SABBATINI
severe, and the recovery to be
A Greenbrier Mobile Home Park resident tries to douse flames with a garden hose.
long and arduous.
"There wouldn't be any
place that I would imagine the earthquake. But the
doesn't have a broken win- Greenbrier Mobile Home
dow or something wrong Park exploded into a deadly
with it," sheriff's Detective glow.
Jerry Johnson said. Fourteen homes burned to
Johnson's assessment the ground at the park, in the
would ring true in many areas 21300 block of Soledad
of the valley. The following Canyon Road. The shaking
accounts of the quake, and knocked homes off their
the events that followed it, foundations, tore gas lines
were reported by The open and set homes ablaze.
Signal's staff beginning just The fires sent up a tower
minutes after disaster struck: of smoke and flames, an
orange glow visible through-
MOBI LE HOMES BURN out much of the valley in the
The rest of the Santa predawn darkness. Engulfed GARY THORNHILL
Clarita Valley went dark after "I don't know where to Another Greenbrier home goes up in flames.
6