The 1994 Northridge Earthquake was the biggest quake to hit Los Angeles in decades, and as it happened, I was living only three or four miles from the epicenter, initially thought to be in Northridge (thus the name) but later located just south in Reseda. I’ll post a separate page showing damage to my house in Granada Hills.
The quake hit on a Monday, January 17, 1994, early in the morning about 4:30am. Most people were at home in bed. Since the quake knocked power out, there was no thought of going to work. I heard from Rocketdyne people beginning the next day, Tuesday, and learned that some of the Rocketdyne buildings might be condemned, and not to worry about coming to work until further notice.
At least twice plans were made to go in to work and pack stuff up, since the building the our group was in — a leased building in an office park on Plummer St. — was indeed being condemned. We would be relocated to one of the buildings on the Rocketdyne De Soto campus. As it turned out, it was the following Sunday, the 23rd, before we were allowed inside. We were given hard hats and U-Haul boxes and instructed to pack up all our stuff as we would for any move.
Here are three shots of the front of the building. Note in the vertical pic that there’s a gap between the front and a side wall.
Workmen had been there for days shoring up in the inside with lumber before we employees were let inside.
In the second picture you can see the window looking out over the parking lot that’s shown more closely in the first pic at top.
Here’s looking over the cubicle farm with most of the ceiling tiles gone, and temporary lighting installed.
The three in our little SEPG team — Alan P, Jere B, and me — then packed up our stuff into boxes.
From my daily logbook then I see that we went back to work, in our new location on the DeSoto campus, on Thursday the 27th. The furniture was in our cubicles, but not our boxes of stuff; those came the next day. And there was some transition from Sun workstations; instead I got a 386 PC in my office. But of course I don’t have pictures of the new offices.
