Growing up now, I never knew asked my father more about his view of the Northridge earthquake. I would always hear him tell small stories of him being in the event when it happened which was in 1994, three years after I was born. I never really knew what the experience was when it happened and I will never know in my experience. On the other hand, my father was a witness and was there when it first happened. I never knew what it was like first hand, but I always wanted  to ask my father about the Northridge event. If he knew anyone who had died of lost during the disaster. I was still too little to understand and thought it was just a small quake and that it would never happen here, but I was still too young to understand what that one event meant for my father and for everyone that was a witness to the earthquake in California.

My dad came to California to find a better job and help support his family (before he had me) in 1993. At the age of 34 he stayed in California so far for a whole year in an apartment building somewhere in San Fernando. He didn’t live alone, he was with his brothers in a building. Everything for him was like a normal day and nothing new has changed. To my surprise he came to America one year before the event happened, which was the Northridge Earthquake and for my father, he never knew that it would ever happen in California as strong as what he had witnessed 20 years ago.

One morning he awoke from his sleep and saw:”everything was shaking and things started to fall to the ground.” He thought that it was a truck entered the apartment building but it wasn’t. When he finally realized that it was an earthquake, he:”had to wake up my brothers and everyone else that an earthquake was happening.” As it was still continuing he told me he saw everyone in a panic running everywhere for safety from the building collapsing. After the earthquake stopped, he described how much damage it caused and how people looked after the horrible event. Even his home; which he lived with his brothers; was destroyed and found most of their things destroyed by the earthquake and found mostly rubble of what was left of his home.

During the search for his things he, like other people in the apartment, had to live in the park for three days or even more ,which was the Palmas park where my father had to stay after the disaster. As he tried to remember, he told me that:“he had to get his stuff from the disaster because they couldn’t live there anymore and they had to start living in the park since  the apartments were destroyed and they had no where to live.” Imagine all the destruction and havoc that was going on while buildings were collapsing and people running everywhere in terror while in some areas where water and gas pipes exploded during the earthquake.

”After a few hours after the earthquake stopped and we were received notice that Northridge, the University was destroyed with many deaths in the area, although I don’t remember how many people died at Northridge.” Northridge was the center of the earthquake and from there in San Fernando that’s how powerful the earthquake was and the destructive power of it as well. “ Know one he knew either be loved ones or friends lost their lives, but as he looked around he knew that other people from families did in fact died from explosions and/or buildings collapsing. It was shocking for my father that just a new day came something horrible that no one would have seen before.

After 20 years with a family, a wife and a son he still is living his American dream that he so long did when he was 34 years old. The earthquake didn’t make him run away from his dream to be in America, but that day gave him a reason to foresee what might come in the future. He still remembers that day very well and is: “something that will never be forgotten.” He will never forget that event in his life. For me to hear his story from his point was shocking to me even though I was never born in that event. All that from just one earthquake that caused so much pain and destruction of others around him. He told me that:” We should always be prepared for the worst and that even a stronger earthquake will happen than the one he had experienced in 1994. Today I have taken in my father’s advice and to prepare myself for the worst that is to come.

Knowing that he was there at that time makes me proud that he was there to the event so that he can teach me and prepare me for the worst that is to come from than he had experienced from the earthquake and hoping that it will never happen in his lifetime or my own stronger and dangerous than what happened in 1994. For my father, he was grateful that he survived the horrible event that the earthquake had created.