Essay On California Earthquake

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The 1994 Northridge, California Earthquake
By: Hannah McLeod / 2nd period / due: 12/13/17 In the early morning, the people of Los Angeles, California were awakened by a shake, shift, and shatter. At 4:31 in the morning, on January 17, 1994, the citizens in LA were frightened. Buildings were tumbling down, schools were falling, and around 82,000 residential and commercial units were damaged along with 5,400 homes. People jumped out of bed to see what was going on. There were sirens blowing, lights flashing, and fires everywhere. At this time, nobody knew that this was going to happen. Nobody had any equipment to track the earthquakes and there was no warning at all. This only lasted 10 to 20 seconds which is too long considering the two main …show more content…

Schools had to close for over two weeks. Even people in Las Vegas, Nevada felt it. With an epicenter of 11 miles, bridges collapsed, and freeways broke down disrupting traffic. Meanwhile, the people stuck on the freeways and bridges were in danger. 12 people died from getting stuck on the bridges. A grand total of 466 wild fires were reported that day, including the ones after the earthquake. 8,100 people were injured along with a devastating number of 61 deaths. Los Angeles paid a total fine of 70 BILLION dollars in damage reparations and economic loss! If I was in these people’s situation, I would be freaking out because according to scientific research, this was the highest EVER instrumentally recorded earthquake in an Urban area in North America. The official magnitude of this earthquake was 6.7! That’s a lot of shake, shift, and shatter! An amount of 120,000 people we’re temporarily homeless for longer than three days. Five days after the earthquake had finished, 50,000 people still didn’t have food or water. People weren’t expecting this earthquake to ever even happen. The aftermath of the 1994 Los Angeles earthquake was a change in scientific research and before,

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