News

Northridge Earthquake: Shaken Los Angeles Firefighters Helped Save the Day in 1994

Dana Bartholomew

01/11/2014

Jan. 11--NORTHRIDGE -- The fire chief woke with a start before dawn on Jan. 17, 1994, just like any other Angeleno tossed from his bed by the 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake.

But Battalion Chief Larry Schneider, wedged on the floor between his cot and the wall at the new Fire Station 28 in Porter Ranch, kept his cool. Like dozens of shaken firefighters under his command, he was ready to respond to widespread havoc.

To overcome the initial shock. To emerge from the rubble of once-tidy firehouses. To quickly respond to the eerie chaos. Without power. Without fully working radios. And without enough water or men to quell the blanket of fires bursting across the San Fernando Valley.

"Everything failed," recalled Schneider, 86, of Torrance, who retired from the Los Angeles Fire Department six years ago after 63 years of firefighting experience. "I never saw anything like it.

"When I looked over the Valley, it was dark, without power. And dust was rising, almost like a fog. And there were transformers shorting and exploding across the Valley. Then we started seeing the fires, red glows in the sky. To the east of us, the whole sky was red."

The Northridge earthquake rocked the Los Angeles region at 4:31 a.m. with the most violent ground motion ever recorded under any city in North America, according to geologists, and ultimately the most expensive at $20 billion. Freeways crumpled. Homes, storefronts and shopping malls collapsed. Hospitals stood crippled. Trains derailed, spewing toxic chemicals.

Nearly 800 fires were reported across Los Angeles. And those were just the ones called in.

As the dust settled, 57 residents lay dead, while more than 9,000 lay trapped or injured in the debris.

All that Battalion 15 Chief Schneider knew was that he and 50 firefighters on duty at nine fire stations from Canoga Park to Northridge would swing into earthquake emergency mode.

That meant leaving their stations, radioing in their status and then responding to the most critical emergencies while canvassing each and every neighborhood, street by street.

But the same quake that just damaged some 58,000 homes and businesses had also turned firehouses upside down -- cutting power, jamming doors and leaving fire trucks temporarily trapped inside.

At Fire Station 70 in Reseda, the jolt was so violent that each firefighter "bunked out" of their beds, just before a hail of bricks rained down on their mattresses. Walls cracked, plaster fell and floors buckled, while firefighters saw two engines and a ladder truck "hop" across the floor.

At Fire Station 8 in Northridge, the shock was so severe a cast-iron six-burner Wolf stove was flip-flopped, its gas line broken, in the middle of the kitchen.

At each station, darkness prevailed amid powerful aftershocks as firefighters struggled to open fire engine doors by hand, while some stations seemed on the verge of collapse.

"It was the most violent ever recorded in history, that's why it was so sharp," said Schneider of the quake that is the strongest ground motion ever recorded. "It literally knocked people down."

The challenge for L.A. firefighters was to stymie a post-earthquake inferno like those that had once obliterated San Francisco and Tokyo, and to identify which fallen buildings contained trapped residents.

For Schneider, who had lived through the 1933 Long Beach, 1941 Torrance-Gardena and 1971 Sylmar quakes, it meant sending what few firefighters he had to where they might save the most lives. And to battle blazes without water pressure because of busted mains.

On Balboa Boulevard, a 20-inch gas feeder main exploded, spewing flames 100 feet into the air atop a geyser shot from a blown 56-inch water main. "A guy in a pickup truck drove in the hole igniting the gas," he said. "There was so much heat, it ignited five houses on either side."

If a recently installed oil line beneath Balboa had ruptured, the chief worried it could have launched a downhill river of burning, flaming crude past two hospitals, two medical buildings and into a supermarket parking lot across from Fire Station 87. It didn't.

On Reseda Boulevard, the three-story Northridge Meadows apartments pancaked atop its parking garage below, killing 16. It was some intrepid firemen from Station 70 who initially tunneled deep into collapsed bedrooms, crawling on their hands and knees to rescue seven more crying out for help.

On Tampa Avenue, a three-story Bullocks at the Northridge Fashion Center buckled. Nearby, a parking garage trapped a morning street sweeper beneath three floors of crushed concrete. Firefighters were able to free Salvador Pena, a married father of five -- who suffered crushed legs and a partially dislocated spine -- and get him airlifted to UCLA Medical Center.

Atop a soaring Highway 14 interchange where it sheared off onto Interstate 5, firefighters scaled a mountain of broken concrete rubble to rescue a woman, seven months pregnant, from her crushed car. A county fire helicopter whisked her to a working hospital.

Meanwhile, a four-story Kaiser Permanente medical clinic collapsed, fire raged through a Cal State Northridge science lab, and a 24-car Southern Pacific freight train derailed, spewing 2,000 gallons of sulfuric acid.

Across the northwest Valley, more than four dozen Battalion 15 firefighters scrambled to respond to some 60 major fires and fallen buildings at businesses, schools, condominiums, apartments, homes and mobile home parks, where many seniors lay immobilized by the temblor. Grass fires also threatened to engulf more homes, with winds gusting up to 25 mph.

Under normal circumstances, each incident would call for a greater-alarm response. But Valley firefighters could only wait for help to dribble in from across the region.

Not since the Bel-Air-Brentwood blaze burned nearly 500 high-priced homes in 1961 had Schneider seen such widespread devastation.

After escaping the firehouse, Schneider worked to piece together radio fragments from his 13 rattled companies, then restore communications with fire headquarters. It was hours before he knew his battalion lay at the heart of the earthquake epicenter, in Reseda.

With firefighter Sandy Johnston at the wheel, they drove through dark streets to incident after incident, past rows of collapsed buildings, dodging downed power lines, bridges and debris, then skirting emerging crowds of dazed residents.

"People running in the street," recalled the 6-foot-1 battalion chief, who holds the record of the longest serving in the department. "People driving without lights on. People going crazy. My main concern was getting hit."

With few resources, he had to choose which incidents to respond to that could save the most life and property. Emergencies such as the train derailment and the CSUN fire, however, didn't immediately threaten residents and would have to wait, he said.

"Sometimes, it required great courage and strong discipline to drive past burning and/or collapsed buildings and frantic citizens demanding their attention," he said in a report written days after the earthquake.

By 8 a.m., he set up a command post at Nordhoff Street and Reseda Boulevard, at a supermarket parking lot devoid of power lines where helicopters could land. By noon, he and his 50 men were exhausted.

By then, seven battalion chiefs, eight trucks and 33 engine companies and other units were flooded into the district to render aid. His son, Capt. Larry S. Schneider, was aboard one of them.

By nightfall, they had rescued hundreds of residents, treated 1,100 more and beat back a potential urban earthquake firestorm, without sufficient pressurized water, by employing swimming pools, water trucks and from helicopters dropping water.

"The biggest challenge was keeping the firemen from being killed or injured from further collapse of buildings, fires and downed parking structures," said Schneider, from a home office festooned with fire photos and commemorations. "We were drastically short of manpower.

"It was important to show leadership, to stay in contact, to convey accurate information and encourage them. Without it, pretty much the whole San Fernando Valley would have gone down the drain."