I remember hearing things come out of my kitchen cabinets and breaking on the floor. So it was. Glass went to turn on the light couldn't turn on the light. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, tacy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light.

Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast. Today I was going to talk about the first day of school, because a lot of kids started school this week, but as I was preparing to record the episode, we had a pretty sizable earthquake here locally, and so today I'm going to talk about earthquakes instead. I grew up in the Los Angeles area, and so I'm very familiar with earthquakes. I grew up with them, I've been experiencing them my whole life and mostly they don't bother me. But I will say that the Northridge earthquake that we had in the 90s was a pretty sizable jolt and a pretty significant experience for me, and since then I'm a little bit more wary and a little bit more respectful major earthquake here in Los Angeles and I remember it so well because it was my parents' anniversary that day and we woke up to the earthquake and my mom then looked at my dad and said happy anniversary. So she had a sense of humor about such things and she loved earthquakes. She just loved to know and understand all that.

There was had experts that study the earthquakes. There's one woman, Dr Lucy Jones, who was at Caltech or California Institute of Technology here in Pasadena, who has been a very visible site on our TV news channels after every earthquake and she understands and knows a lot about the science if you will, if that's the right word of earthquakes. I think they've studied them as much as they possibly can. They still can't predict them with very much success. We did have one actually last week that was centered in just outside of Bakersfield, which is a pretty good distance from here, and that was a 5.1, I remember, and we felt it. I felt it, it was pretty good, but it was quite a distance, so it wasn't quite as strong or so from us here when the earthquake occurred and there was the initial jolt which really shook our house. There was the noise of the jolt and the house moving, if you will, I guess that's what it was and our pets, the dog and the cat, both kind of went flying through the house. They didn't know what it was, they didn't like the sound, they wanted to move, and so I told the woman that I was on the phone with that there was an earthquake, and then she waited and felt it. I would say it was between 30 seconds and a minute later, so I'd never been on the phone with somebody in an outlying area. That was an interesting science experiment to experience that with her and see how long it took before it got to her. Now it wasn't as strong for her, of course, because of the distance, but she did feel it.

Back when we had the Northridge earthquake, I was living in Hollywood and I had already met Bill, my boyfriend at the time. We hadn't been together too long, maybe a year or so, and he was at work. It was nighttime. He worked the graveyard shift at this particular job. I was asleep.

I was awoken by the tremendous shaking. Things were falling all around me. However, I couldn't see anything because the lights had all gone out I think all the transformers or however that worked Well. I mean, I had the lights off anyway, had the lights off anyway, but then when I went to turn on the lights, there was no electricity. But I was in bed and I heard all these things falling around me, and the thing that was different about that earthquake was that it went on for a long time Now, a long time being, maybe closer to a minute, but when things are falling around you and when the earth is shaking below you, that can be a long time. Today's earthquake was maybe I don't know, maybe 10 seconds, 15 seconds Still unnerving, necessarily Still unnerving to have your house shaking. But the Northridge earthquake was longer, definitely, and so I remember hearing things come out of my kitchen cabinets and breaking on the floor.

So it was glass went to turn on the light couldn't turn on the light, so I thought I would get to the window and then I would be able to see from the streetlights. I would be able to at least see something if I pulled up the blinds. And so I went to the window, pulled up the blinds and I was met with total darkness. All the streetlights were also out, which made perfect sense considering the jolt and the activity. So now this was really before a cell phone and certainly a cell phone flashlight. And I didn't have a flashlight and I don't think I had candles. But they say in the case of an earthquake you're not supposed to light matches anyway, because there could be a gas leak and then you could go boom.

So I was sitting there in total darkness wondering what I should do, where should I go, and then I heard Bill at the door and, gratefully, I've never been so happy to see anybody in my whole life. He had made his way back from work. He was on the I believe it was the 13th story of an old building near downtown LA, and so he and his brother had been up there with their boss, who was an older gentleman, and the elevator went out and I guess they didn't feel good taking the stairs. So they took the fire escape route and they had to help this older gentleman down the stairs for 13 stories in the dark, not a pretty sight. But he had looked out over the city when this happened and he had seen the transformers blowing out on the utility poles across the city kind of gotten an extra show there. So they made their way home. He lived in the same apartment building that I did. That's how I met him and he had a light source I think he had a lighter that he had picked up and helped me out of the building, which I was very grateful for. The sun was just starting to come up and we went and we sat out on the front stoop on the sidewalk and saw a lot of other people out there as well.

So after that experience I became a lot more respectful of earthquakes and the damage that they could do, because there were so many buildings, so much damage in our area certainly the Northridge area, which is a town that's in the San Fernando Valley here but also people died in that earthquake and it was a scary experience for somebody like me who was an earthquake veteran. And then I did experience a couple of earthquakes when I was working in downtown Los Angeles and I wasn't necessarily in a high building. I was on the sixth floor of a 12-story building but buildings still rocked a lot. It seemed to sway. I heard stories. I had friends that worked in 40-story buildings and one friend told me that she was in the elevator and the elevator was hitting the sides of the elevator shaft. She was in the elevator, so not a lot of fun. I'm not a big fan of the skyscrapers. I'm not a big fan of those, and certainly in an earthquake I don't want to be swaying back and forth. I mean I'm sure they're fine, but still so.

It reminds us that if we do live in earthquake country and nowadays even more areas that didn't used to be earthquake prone have had earthquakes, right, there's been instances where you know cities and states that never had earthquakes have had earthquakes, never had earthquakes have had earthquakes. But if you don't have earthquakes, you have other things like tornadoes and hurricanes and snowstorms and floods, and it brings to mind the idea that we need to be prepared. We need to be prepared in case we can't get to the market, in case there's damage to our property or the streets. I mean, it could happen and you want to be prepared. So you want to have your earthquake preparedness kit. They talk about that a lot here.

Have water for yourself and your pets in case the water supply is low, not accessible. You want to have extra medications, which is difficult If you have prescriptions. You can't get extra prescriptions, right, so I don't know what they mean about how you're supposed to do that. Have food on hand, non-perishable food that you could prepare or eat if there was a problem. I'm not very good at this. I'm going to admit it, I'm not very good about this. We always have water. We always have extra water. I try to buy extra water and have it on hand just because. But the medications I try to stay up on for all of us, even the pets, and I try to always have food stuff here. But it's difficult to always be prepared because you have to think of sometimes you just have to think of your immediate needs, right? So we're all good here.

Today's earthquake felt a lot stronger. It was a 4.4. It felt a lot stronger because it was centered seven kilometers from our house. So that's the Highland Park, pasadena, south Pasadena area. That's pretty close to us and it was a good jolt. So hopefully there's not a big aftershock and the depth was seven miles for whatever that's worth. So there has been some concerns of damage in Pasadena. I've been watching on the news, but I think overall we're okay. I've checked in with some people and hopefully we're all okay.

So, wherever you are, whatever you face, try to remember to be prepared and have extra cash on hand in case you can't access the ATM, or you can't get to the ATM or credit card services are down. I mean, is that going to happen? I don't know, but I always have some extra cash just in case. So I'm going to go and try to inventory my water supply now and take care everyone. If your kids start at school this week, I hope they're doing well and they're enjoying their new teachers, and next week, well, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page Only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the Only Child Diaries.