By JAMIE WETHERBE Special to the Daily Press
Emergency workers had their hands full when they responded to Santa Monica College on Jan. 17, 1994 — a day etched into the minds of Santa Monicans forever.
Snakes and tarantulas were tossed from their cages and running free through the science building, which also was the site of a hazardous waste spill. The business building was flooded, and there was no power on campus — or anywhere in the city for that matter.
Bruce Smith, spokesman for SMC, said he couldn’t believe his eyes when he finally got to work that morning.
“My office was trashed,” he said, adding that most of the books in the library were on the floor and had to be sorted and reshelved. “I was shocked.”
All of the school’s Martin Luther King celebrations had been canceled. The campus was shut down for a week and was virtually empty — except for emergency workers and school officials working around the clock.
“We really worked hard to get the campus up and running,” Smith said, adding that the Red Cross had set up in the college gym. “It was weird because campus was a ghost town but there was this mini city in the gymnasium.”
Luckily, Smith said, it was winter semester at SMC, and there were fewer students enrolled. Spring semester was pushed back.
“It was a very long process of fixing everything,” he said.
One councilman — in bed at the time of the quake — rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, unaware of what had happened.
“I heard glass breaking, but it didn’t occur to me that it was my own windows,” Ken Genser said. He added that after he saw his neighbors outside with flashlights, he reached for his own.
“I went outside, and I was just astonished,” he said.
Genser said he then took a three-block walk from his home on San Vicente Boulevard to check on his mother, who was okay. “I felt like I was in a war zone.” He added that with the electricity out, the only lights were from passing cars, “and there weren’t many of them.
“Everything was so dark and quiet... You don’t realize how much light you get from buildings and other people’s apartments until everything is off.”
City Manager Susan McCarthy, also asleep when the quake hit, didn’t stay in bed for long.
She said she immediately drove from her Santa Monica home between frayed buildings to set up an emergency camp at the old fire station headquarters on Seventh Street.
McCarthy joined the assistant city attorney and the fire chief, and the three were the first on the scene at the emergency operation center.
Jay Fiondela — who has been in the neighborhood fifty years — collected his wife and 4-year-old son and headed to his restaurant.
Although whiskey, wine and beer flowed out the door and onto the sidewalk, the restaurant still had electricity.
“I opened up for lunch. It was the only place on the street opened up for lunch,” Fiondela said. “It was better than the movie of the week with all the action.”
He added that there was wall-to-wall business as people cried and worried about their homes.
Fiondela said that one customer decided to order a steak and said “After the shit I went through, it might be my last meal.”
And his customers were also telling their war stories. Some continued to tell them for years. And the stories got embellished or changed around, Fiondela said.
He recalled one tale: A customer who drank too much returned home the night of the quake to his dogs barking and pictures tossed to the ground. He started yelling at the dogs for causing the mess until a friend called to check on him after the quake, Fiondela said. “‘Thank you,’” he told his friend. “‘I was gonna kill my dogs.’”
“I’m a native Santa Monican, and (the Northridge Earthquake) made them all look like child’s play,” Councilman Bob Holbrook said. “It was the worst earthquake I’ve ever felt.”
“I’m a native Santa Monican, and (the Northridge Earthquake) made them all look like child’s play. It was the worst earthquake I’ve ever felt.” — — BOB HOLBROOK Santa Monica City Councilman
Holbrook crawled over rubble in his home and cut his hands and feet in the process. He said his neighborhood at San Vicente Boulevard and Vermont Avenue was hit particularly hard and reeked of gas.
“Everyone was out in the street in their jammies — if they had them,” Holbrook said.
He added that he and his neighbors searched for a working radio or television to find out what had happened. He eventually found a portable radio.
Holbrook said that many Santa Monicans were so shaken, they left California. “A lot of people moved away. They were saying, ‘I couldn’t go through this again. I’m moving back to tornado country.’ ”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 17, 2004. Read the original PDF.