1971 Quake Herald Examiner Report

KILLER QUAKE

14 Killed, 9 at Two Hospitals;
Southland Damage in Millions

Scores Trapped
In Building Ruins

Fourteen persons were killed today, nine of them in hospitals as a minute-long earthquake rolled over Los Angeles and suburbs at 6:02 a.m.

It was the worst recorded quake in the city's history.

Heaviest death toll was in San Fernando Valley, epicenter of the jolting, rumbling temblor.

Sections of two hospitals collapsed. Seven lives were lost at the Veterans Administration Hospital, 39000 Sayer St. in the Sylmar area and two died in a structural collapse at Olive View Hospital and Sanitarium, 14701 Foothill Blvd., Olive View.

Three persons also were killed in the city of Newhall.

Another died when the front of the Midnight Mission toppled at Second and Los Angeles streets in downtown Los Angeles.

Retired druggist Elmer Hl. Schroeder, 70 of 5440 Quakertown Ave., Woodland Hills fell dead of a heart attack as he tried to help his wife when their second story apartment began to shake.

Scientists at California Institute of Technology said the quake measured 6.5 on the Richter scale. Its epicenter was 10 miles east of Newhall.

Emergency crews evacuated an 80-square-mile area in the vicinity of Van Norman Dam, Mission Hills, which has a crack down its center and is leaking water.

The area evacuated extends west of Balboa Boulevard, right on Van Nuys Boulevard, south to Ventura Boulevard and north to the Golden State Freeway.

The quake was the worst in the Southland since the Long Beach disaster of 1933.

Damage today was running into the millions. County and city engineers said it will be weeks before full extent of damages is calculated.

Streets were strewn with shattered glass, concrete and bricks, walls buckled in major buildings, bridges cracked and some fell, freeways split, and thousands of homes suffered structural and internal destruction from tumbling furnishings.

Olive View sanitarium, where two died, was declared a total loss. Upper floors of its main mental health building collapsed to the ground floor.

Persons were reported trapped in the facility's recreation room. Ambulances were rushing injured to hospitals.

Rescuers worked frantically at the Veteran's Hospital to free 60 persons reportedly trapped inside.

In Newhall, fire destroyed the J & J Tire Store, at Newhall and Lyons avenues, severely damaged Hart High School at First Street and Newhall Avenue, and triggered uncounted other fires.

Even as rescue and firefighting efforts continued, police arrested three looters in Newhall and reported others stealing form quake-damaged stores in the desert community and sporadic looting at shops along Hollywood Boulevard.

The giant tremor swayed Los Angeles' new forest of high-rise buildings. Jutting Occidental Towers three-building complex has been closed as building crews check for structural damage.

Olvera Street, a picturesque tourist attraction adjacent to the Plaza in the heart of old Los Angeles, is a shambles of collapsed stalls and strewn merchandise.

The quake was so intense it briefly knocked out some voice communications at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, according to a spokesman.

The agency said that it lost telephone contact with the Long Beach control tower.

Buildings swayed and cracked from Los Angeles west to Santa Monica, northeast to Hollywood and Burbank, then throughout the San Fernando valley and the Saugus-Newhall area.

Windows shattered. Highways cracked and buckled.

Merchandise in stores and household objects on tables and shelves tumbled to floors. Power and phone service was knocked out throughout a wide area.

Power transformers popped like firecrackers and high voltage lines snapped.

Three churches were severely damaged in Pasadena, one of them almost collapsing onto the street.

The Presbyterian Church at Madison Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, the Holliston Avenue Methodist Church at Holliston and Colorado, and the Calvary Baptist Church at Marion Avenue and Colorado were damaged.

The Baptist Church was reported leaning over onto Colorado.

The ornament atop Pasadena City Hall's dome was twisted at a 90-degree angle by the whip action of the quake.

All residents in the northern end of the San Fernando Valley were ordered by the City Health Department to boil drinking water as the area's chlorination plant was seriously damaged by the shock waves.

Evacuation centers for the area were designated as Granada Hills High School, 10535 Zelzah Ave., Frost Junior High School, 12314 Bradford Place, and San Fernando City Park, Jessie and Truman streets.

Downtown Los Angeles streets glittered with glass amid bits of masonry. Virtually all plate glasses in some stores along Broadway were knocked out.

Dawn had just broken when the quake hit, sending frightened hotel and apartment dwellers swarming into downtown streets. Congestion was like mid-day.

A huge cornice fell from the First Methodist Church at Hope and Eighth streets, narrowly missing people on the corner. The heavy material shattered like shrapnel across the intersection.

A five-inch crack was reported in a 12th-floor concrete wall at the downtown Hall of Justice, which houses some 2000 county jail prisoners.

At the decades old Hall of Justice, where Charles Manson and three followers are on trial in the Sharon Tate murder case, fourth-floor walls were laced with cracks and plaster littered the corridor. The new police building nearby had numerous broken windows.

"I was in my kitchen," said a suburban housewife. "I fell down and hung onto the sink and started praying."

"I was virtually knocked out of bed," said a resident of a Los Angeles suburb. "When I got out I could barely walk the floor was rolling so."

"I felt as though my car had a flat," said a motorist who felt the shock en route to work.

Broadway Department Store at Hollywood and Vine was overflowing with water from ruptured mains.

Heavy damage was reported at a roller rink on Sunset Boulevard at St. Andrews Place.

Other sporadic reports of damage pouring in included:

* Windows shattered on Crenshaw Boulevard from Coliseum Drive to Stocker Avenue, on the west side of the street only.
* Three-story long crack in Bank of America building, 111 W. Seventh St. Street was blocked off while damage was inspected.
* Heavy window breakage throughout business district in 10800 block of Zelzah Ave., Northridge.
* Traffic signals out throughout South-Central Los Angeles and motorists racing through them with abandon.
* Piers weakened but no collapses reported from the harbor area.
* Concrete and bricks from upper stories of the Subway Terminal Building, 417 S. Hill St., shattered on the street below.
* Bricks on sidewalks and show windows damaged on the Hill Street side of the downtown Bullock's department store and nearby and May Co.
* Pieces of stone facade from Coast Federal Savings Building, Ninth and Hill streets, strewn on sidewalks.

California Highway Patrol reported collapse of an overpass under constructing on the San Diego Freeway in the northbound lanes at the Golden State Freeway.

Rock slides on Angeles Crest Highway made the roadway impassable.

Cracks and holes were reported in the Golden State Freeway in the San Fernando Valley area.

Police said Third Street between Central Avenue and San Pedro Street was closed due to fear that weakened building fronts may topple.