January 1994 - 6.7 Northridge Earthquake Rocks Southern California
At 4:31 a.m. on January 17, 1994, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake centered in the San Fernando Valley rocked Southern California and claimed the lives of 57 people, injured over 9,000, and damaged 82,000 buildings, costing over $20 billion.
Though the quake's epicenter was located in Reseda, initial U.S. Geological Survey monitoring reported the epicenter as Northridge, and the name "The Northridge Earthquake" stuck in its use by the media and the general public. The temblor, the largest to affect urban Los Angeles in modern times, caused apartment and parking structure collapses in Northridge, freeway overpasses to topple in Sylmar, fires and water main breaks elsewhere in the San Fernando Valley, brick structures to crumble in Hollywood, and a section of the Santa Monica Freeway near Culver City to fall down. It was felt as far away as Las Vegas, and caused visible damage as far away as Orange County, where the scoreboard at Anaheim Stadium collapsed onto a seating area below.
Because the quake happened in the middle of the night, and during the Martin Luther King, Jr Day holiday, casualties were minimized. With freeway the interchange leading to the Antelope Valley damaged, a Metrolink commuter rail line planned to reach Lancaster opened 10 years ahead of schedule in order to facilitate weekday commutes from that area.
Though the damaged Santa Monica Freeway was re-opened by April 1994, and the 5/14 Interchange was fully repaired by November, recovery and repairs lasted several years, aided with funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some neighborhoods were already receiving assistance in recovering after the 1992 Riots. The final major Northridge Earthquake-related repairs were completed at California State University, Northridge in 2007.
Following the temblor, KCET's programming on-air and in the community helped to provide information and support. The news program "Life & Times" devoted several hours of quake-related programming in the days and weeks afterward. Special live episodes of "Sesame Street" were performed in the San Fernando Valley to comfort children traumatized and rendered homeless following the disaster. And an episode of PBS' "NOVA" aired on KCET in 1995 explained the geological processes that caused the quake.
