Volume 46 - No. 27
July 07, 2016
By Friedrich Ggomez
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA IN THE PREDAWN HOURS.
It is still dark in Los Angeles. Most residents are still deep asleep. No one knew what was about to happen. It was January 17, 1994. Very soon, millions of Angelenos would wake up to a living nightmare at precisely 4:31 a.m. 9-1-1 Emergency Dispatcher: “Fire Paramedics, can I help you.” Woman in Distress: “Help me! I can’t see anything! Please help, we had an earthquake!” Dispatcher: “Listen to me – calm down. Because the fire department will come out, okay?” Woman: “The earthquake!! The earthquake hit my house, it’s falling apart!! I don’t know what to do!!” Minutes later, Los Angeles KFI Radio Station announcer, Jay Lawrence, takes to the airwaves: “Ladies and gentlemen, we just experienced a real whopper here, especially at the radio station! All I can say is that Los Angeles apparently just had a major, major tremor!”
In the darkness of Los Angeles’ vast metropolitan area a city of frightened, panic-filled residents pour out into the streets away from their homes, apartments, and various shelters, seeking open space away from crumbling buildings and debris. For many, the memory still persists as if it were only yesterday. This was no ordinary earth tremor; it would prove to be both deadly and mysterious on a variety of different levels. Powerful seismic shockwaves rumble throughout the city, snapping gas lines, and igniting a series of uncontrolled fires. Water pipes rupture as if they were only made of cheap plastic, creating geysers of both water and fire shooting upwards. These two elements (fire and water), which would normally cancel each other out, provide a surreal image of a single fountain thrusting upwards, together! With structures still ablaze and crumbling, emergency first-responders enter random neighborhood dwellings to ensure that no living human being has been left behind, or incapacitated that would render their arms and legs useless in trying to escape a deadly aftermath.
LEFT IN ISOLATION. Power lines have been ripped down like toothpicks and telephone calls have overwhelmed public communication systems leaving millions of people without lights and electricity, in the The Paper - 760.747.7119
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dark – and left to themselves, isolated and vulnerable. Almost no one was prepared. Public emergency precautions and survival provisions such as basic medical items, flash lights, water and food supplies, were never in place.
At first, the major damage seemed to be confined to a specific area of Los Angeles known as the San Fernando Valley, which is only 20 miles northwest of downtown. This assessment would quickly prove deadly wrong. Emergency Central is quickly receiving shocking evidence of a much wider, much deadlier range of destruction. The incoming intelligence reports stun even the most seasoned First Responder Units. The
dismal reports to Central Control would read: “Sections of five separate freeways – in different parts of the city – have collapsed!”
One ‘live’ report from a vehicle reveals utter chaos in oncoming traffic that has become dangerously irregular and causing head-on collisions: “I am southbound on the 5-Freeway and there is traffic on the southbound coming directly at me in the number one lane! There’s a break in the road and traffic’s coming directly at me, head-on, in the southbound lane! I’ve just been hit!! – I’m in shock!!”
Other reports would stream-in, causing emergency first-responders to become overworked and over-
Earthquake! Continued on Page 2
whelmed.
9-1-1 Dispatcher: “Please state the nature of your call and address.” Woman In Distress: “My husband! My husband . . . he’s having a heart attack!! Please help us!”
Emergency Central issues an urgent call to all its crew members, both on the ground and in vehicles: “All units be advised. We have just sustained a major earthquake in the east L.A. basin. All unit battalions report on Blue-4.”
And they did – an incoming battalion report on Blue-4 was a most grisly one. One of the first reported fatalities was a Los Angeles Police motorcycle officer who was killed when his