And The Earth Did Roar

And she powerfully shook the complacency of its inhabitants .

As a native Californian the phenomenon of earthquakes is certainly not new to me .  I can recall as early as childhood listening to my mother talk about earthquakes .  I wish I could remember the details but all I can recall is about fireplace bricks falling across a doorway exit .  After doing a little research it looks like the year may have been 1933 in March with magnitude of 6 .4 .  My oldest brother would have been one year old and they lived in the Los Angeles area .  And, this would have been about five years after she came from Minnesota to California .

This subject certainly brings memories of my own life experiences  with earthquakes .  My first recollection of any earthquake was in 1971 (6AM) San Fernando Valley-Sylmar earthquake of 6 .5 magnitude.  At the time, I was living in San Gabriel Valley which is about 30 miles from the quake site.  It had been less than 2 years since I became a single parent and I was working as a Registered Nurse at a local hospital .  The quake awakened us and it was a very frightening experience for the three of us .  My children's father never had much involvement after leaving , so we were on our own.  After getting the children settled with child care I went to work - of coarse !  I don't think we had much damage at the house other than the typical items falling off shelves .

Going to work was a new set of experiences . I worked on the surgical third floor . There were wide open cracks in the floors . All elective surgeries were cancelled .  Patients were discharged if possible.  Obviously , patients looked to staff for reassurance !!!  The aftershocks persisted for days and were very unnerving .

The year 1989 brought us the Loma Prieta earthquake with a magnitude of 6 .9 .   The Quake site was near Santa Cruz and I was living in San Jose and had not been home from work very long when the earth shook at 5.04 PM .  I recall putting my precious pets  (Pixie, a Yorkie and Puff, a cat) in their crates and taking them out to the front sidewalk of the house where neighbors were gathering . This earthquake was far reaching and very catastrophic to many regions .  San Francisco freeway system was horrendously effected.

At the time I was working as a Rehabilitation Nurse Specialist which meant that I was a liaison between a Sick/Injured Individual and the Responsible Payer of expenses .  Kind of like "helping the Right hand to know what the Left hand is doing" .   A rather  simplistic explanation ! 😃

What does this have to do with anything ?  It just so happened that in my workplace I was referred a case of an earthquake victim that was dealing with Post Trauma Stress Disorder . Interesting , his case was reported in the Reader's Digest (remember the Digest) in August 1990 .  I am not sure of the date that I received the referral .  He was a very impressive person as well as his story !!!  It was a pleasure to work with him .

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The Digest article has many stories of the 1989 earthquake experiences that were catastrophic life altering tragedies .

WOW , that took me down memory lane .

My Best Thoughts and Desires are with everyone who has or is impacted by the recent earthquake events .

Mary