In Honor of San Fernando – Department of Homeland Security today

At 6 a.m. on February 9, 1971, a reservoir guard at Lower Van Norman Dam in Southern California tried to get out of bed.

He couldn’t. A 6.6 magnitude earthquake jolted his home at the bottom of the dam. After checking his wife and child, he drove up to the dam to check for damage. “It was hard to believe what I saw,” he said.

The Lower Van Norman Dam, which lies above the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles County, had nearly collapsed following the earthquake. The Los Angeles Times reported that “as wind-blown waves chewed into the damaged lip of the 1,100-foot Van Norman Dam, police deployed a nine-square-mile area between the reservoir and the Ventura Highway, warning residents to evacuate.” February 10, 1971. About 80,000 people were evacuated as officials lowered water levels in the dam.

The 1971 San Fernando or Selmar earthquake was the worst to hit an urban area in California since the 1933 Long Beach earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4. It resulted in 64 deaths and over $ 500 million in losses. That prompted Governor Ronald Reagan to declare Los Angeles County a disaster area and President Richard Nixon to send Vice President Spiro Agnew to inspect the area.

After the San Fernando earthquake, California enacted the Alquist Priolo Act to limit construction along faults that would likely have caused earthquakes capable of rupturing the Earth’s surface in the last 11,000 years.

At the federal level, Congress has renewed interest in earthquake safety, held hearings and introduced new bills to create a national seismic research program. Congress eventually passed the Earthquake Risk Reduction Act of 1977, which led to the National Earthquake Risk Reduction Program, or NEHRP, and was pivotal in helping to establish what is now known as the USGS Earthquake Hazard Program.

Over the years, NEHRP agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Science and US Geological Survey, have provided research and policy recommendations that have partially contributed to the City of Los Angeles enacting a decree in 2015 to amend wood frame buildings weaker than the floor The first are non-retractable or brittle concrete buildings, both of which are more likely to collapse during strong vibration. In 2013, San Francisco enacted the Mandatory Soft Story Retrofit Program, which was based in part on work sponsored by NEHRP and the consequences of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.

“The NEHRP is founded on the belief that while earthquakes are inevitable, there is much we can do as a nation to improve public safety, reduce losses and impacts, and increase our resilience to earthquakes and related hazards,” Gavin Hayes, Chief Science Officer at the Survey Authority American Geologist An earthquake and geological hazards consultant said.

Unforgettable earthquake

An earthquake large enough to stimulate legislative action and help shape new federal programs has garnered media attention.

“Major disaster,” The New York Times printed February 10, 1971. “The cost of an earthquake in death, the damage is staggering,” the Valley News and Green Valley reported on February 11th.

The last newspaper published an article that captured the devastation of the earthquake in a paragraph. “The cities of San Fernando and Selmar have been left in ruins. Some damage has been reported throughout the Newhall and Saugus districts, 10 miles west of the epicenter. The devastation has spread, like the ring on a pond after the initial scattering of rocks.”

The earthquake was the first disaster in the United States to occur after the Disaster Relief Act of 1970, which directed federal agencies to provide assistance to state and local governments. At the time of the earthquake, FEMA was not present.

The epicenter was 14 kilometers north of San Fernando, in a sparsely populated area in the San Gabriel Mountains. It was 5.6 miles (9 km) deep and generally more than 80,000 square miles (208,000 square kilometers) felt from California, Nevada, and Arizona.

There were more than 200 aftershocks of 3 or more magnitude over the following month. Upper San Fernando Valley, including the northern part of Los Angeles, has suffered the most damage to buildings and facilities.

There were 64 cases of injury directly related to the earthquake, which killed 49 people at the San Fernando Veterans Hospital. The earthquake completely destroyed two of its buildings. Others died at Olive View Hospital under collapsing highway bridges and elsewhere. In Olive View, four 5-storey suites withdrew from the main building and three of them tipped over.

Read more at USGS

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