Saturday Gets Off to a Shaky Start

Saturday morning’s earthquake may have sent harrowing memories of 1994 flying off the psychic shelves, but it didn’t trash San Fernando Valley residents’ expectations of a normal weekend.

If anything, the deadly 1994 Northridge quake, which measured 6.7, provided people with ready perspective on the 5.0 aftershock that shook them in their beds like cocktails at 3:37 Saturday morning.

At three places extensively wrecked by the 1994 quake--Northridge Fashion Center, Cal State Northridge and Northridge Hospital Medical Center--business Saturday afternoon was mostly as usual. And the human element was mostly at peace with the local seismic realities.

“I don’t mind certain earthquakes,” said Northridge resident Carol Lackey, 50, as she stood in a Northridge Fashion Center parking structure built on the site of one that collapsed in 1994. “This one last night wasn’t as rough as the ’94 earthquake. We didn’t lose power. I have two cats who sleep on my bed, and one of them ran and the other one didn’t budge. In 1994, they both ran and huddled in the closet together.”

In any case, she said, she wasn’t about to let any quake-related thoughts impinge on her Saturday plans. “I had things to do,” she said. “I had shopping to do.”

Bob Dunn paused in the parking structure, one hand clutching a folded pair of jeans he planned to exchange, and allowed that an earthquake can be invigorating.

“I don’t like it when one of them hurts people, but you’ve got to admit there’s an adrenaline rush you get from something that’s so spontaneous like that,” said Dunn, a 34-year-old telephone systems mechanic who lives in Reseda.

“Last night, I woke up and got bounced and jolted, and felt almost a kind of spiral effect,” he said. “As soon as I saw that the aftershock was less intense, I went back to sleep. It took me about 20 minutes. But I woke up earlier than I usually would on a Saturday morning, because I wanted to listen to the news about it--find out where the epicenter was and so on.”

“Oh, he loves it,” chided Maria Moreno, Dunn’s 32-year-old neighbor and shopping companion. “Me it bothers, so I came shopping to try to forget about it. But I’m OK . . . for now.”

At the central fountain inside the mall, Andrea Ybarra showed the damage she’d sustained in the earthquake. The 17-year-old Sylmar High School junior, who lives in San Fernando, held up her left hand. Each finger but one bore a long, curved artificial nail painted with pink and yellow flowers.

“When the earthquake woke me, I got up, and as I was running for my bedroom doorway I tripped on my curling iron and my nail popped off,” she said.

Nearby, seated near full shopping bags while her children played in front of her, 22-year-old Manisha Hunter of Van Nuys said she’d been unable to keep the earthquake from influencing her Saturday.

After the quake sent her 4- and 5-year-old children shrieking to her bed, she had let them stay and caressed their heads until they fell asleep.

For her, however, sleep didn’t return so easily. So Hunter rose and decided to pull her car out of the garage, just in case. Having lost a small crystal bowl to the aftershock, she pulled all her knickknacks from shelves and tabletops.

“Also we decided we’re going to spend some time in the park today, just to be outside. A safety precaution. The earthquake shook the kids up a little bit. I took all my little stuff down. I am pretty much ready. Ready for the Big One.”

At Cal State Northridge, meanwhile, the only sign of frantic post-earthquake activity was on the grassy expanse in front of Delmar T. Oviatt Library. There, West Valley Dogsports was holding a dog agility trial. While spectators basked in the brilliant sun or hid beneath shade trees, dog owners put energetic canines through a circus-like obstacle course. It was a fund-raiser for the library.

James Hamill, a 23-year-old student at Whittier College of Law in Irvine who had been studying in the library, said he was asleep in his parents’ Woodland Hills home when Saturday’s earthquake shook him awake. He shrugged it off and went back to sleep.

Not so his mother, he said. She’d been so traumatized by the Northridge earthquake that Saturday’s temblor kept her awake till after 7.

“She still has a hard time with them,” Hamill said. “She ran into my room last night to see if I was OK.”

The scene in the emergency room at Northridge Hospital Medical Center was near normal for a Saturday afternoon, with about 20 adults and children arrayed on bright-colored chairs while a pro basketball playoff game flashed unnoticed on a large television set.

The emergency room had presented a far different look the morning of the 1994 quake, said nurse Joy Hankowski. “We were basically managing patients out in the parking lot then,” she said. “Only the most critical of the critical went inside.”

Even so, when she came in for duty at 6:45 Saturday morning, three patients were in emergency being treated for maladies that might be earthquake-related. The quake may have sent the heart of one 33-year-old man into an irregular beating rhythm. The same thing had befallen the man, who ordinarily has no heart trouble, when the 1994 earthquake struck, she said.

“An earthquake does cause physical symptoms in people,” she said. “You see shortness of breath, cardiac dysrhythmia and stuff like that, from the stress and fear.”

Hankowski, who is 40 and a 16-year veteran of emergency rooms, said the ER staff at Northridge Hospital by now has instant earthquake assessment down cold.

“It’s kind of a joke anymore,” she said. “We came in today and asked the night crew, ‘Did you shake, rattle and roll last night?’ They said, ‘If there’s stuff flying around, we take cover, but if nothing’s falling, we just take it in stride.’ ”