Earthquake: Diaster Before Dawn : Tourists Will Take Home Some Additional Memories

Mel and Sue Woods brought their two children to Disneyland this week for some well-deserved rest and relaxation. Earlier this month, brush fires burned within half a mile of their home in Sydney, Australia.

But instead of finding calm, the family was jolted awake at 4:31 a.m. Monday by one of California’s most destructive earthquakes.

“It was horrible, scary,” Sue Woods said. “I just couldn’t believe we were experiencing an earthquake.”

The Woodses’ feelings were shared by other tourists who came to Orange County for the famous amusement parks and beaches--but ended up living through a natural disaster.

“I’ve never felt anything like it. I’m still rattled,” said Margo Vickers, a 33-year-old Seattle homemaker visiting her mother in Tustin. “The motion was amazing. I know people here are used to them. But to me, I could never get used to it. I could never live here.”

For tourist Tania Avram, the quake brought back wretched memories of a 1977 temblor that severely damaged her hometown of Bucharest, Romania. That 7.2-magnitude quake killed 1,541 people and injured 11,000.

“It was like reliving a nightmare,” said Avram, who had shepherded her family down to the lobby from the Anaheim Hilton and Towers’ 12th floor. Ninety minutes after the quake, she and husband Vasile were nibbling nervously on a muffin, while daughters Alicia, 5, and Ellie, 3, slept soundly on a couch.

“I felt trapped,” said Tania Avram, whose family now lives in Melbourne, Australia. “We were on the 12th floor, 50 meters from the fire escape. There was no place to go.”

Vasile Avram--who left Romania before the 1977 quake--said he was struck by how calm all of the Californians were.

“One guy came down the hall saying, ‘Don’t worry about it, it’s not going to get any worse. Just go back to sleep,’ ” Vasile Avram said.

Louis Abros, a 29-year-old Oakland insurance adjuster, was on business in Irvine when the quake struck.

“I’d really like to be out of here as soon as possible and be home with my family,” Abros said. “I lived through the 1989 quake (in San Francisco) and it wasn’t nice to go through it again. I just want to get home.”

Others tourists, however, took the earthquake in stride.

“It’s part of the L.A. experience,” said John Lord, whose flight from John Wayne Airport to Tucson via Los Angeles was delayed because of the quake.

For the past week, Utah resident Kelly Morgan had been kidding her daughter’s dance troupe that all of the jumping they had done during performances at Disneyland and Universal Studios was going to cause an earthquake.

“Now everybody thinks I’m psychic,” Morgan said. “I was just kidding.”