When the earthquake hit Northridge, California, I was not born yet. My parents only had two children at the time , my brother and my sister. They were, “about four or five”. The earthquake struck, “approximately at 4:31 in the morning, January 17, 1994”. My parents woke up startled and heard the cabinets falling over and spilling all of their clothes out of the drawers. Mirrors and pictures that hung on the walls were broken, smashed, and left broken glass all over the floor. Luckily, my father knew how to react because when he was a child, he experienced the Sylmar quake. He knew it was the same incident when, “it was shaking, rattling, up and down, and it felt really strong.” My parents’ first reaction was to save my brother and sister, who fell asleep in the same room as my parents, “thank God, if not, we would have needed to look for them in the other room on the other side of the house.” My father was looking for a flashlight, “but the floor was rocking back and forth, jumping up and down, I couldn’t gain my balance, but I did my best and grabbed a flashlight that barely worked, to check where everything was at.” I can imagine how it must’ve felt and my father remembers it well. He, “pointed the flashlight towards the ground, making sure nothing fell off the walls, such as mirrors and pictures, and that way we didn’t step on glass. Being barefoot, it could be very, very dangerous.” My father heard transformers exploding and booming on the streets down the block and my father was thinking in his mind, “when will the earthquake end and if everything will be okay.”

Once the shaking ended, they quickly put their shoes on and headed out in the front yard to check-in with other neighbors. They were asking each other if they were okay and if no major injuries occurred. My father remembered that his dad always told him to turn off the gas from the house so there won’t be any fires. My father even had to help the neighbors turn theirs off. When my father visited a few houses of the neighbors, he noticed that, “most people were confused, scared, they were trying to help out each other as best as possible.” The neighbors had, “light scratches, light cuts, but that’s about it. When the sun rose up, my father went to the nearest liquor store, searching for canned food and extra water, “everything was expensive, but it didn’t matter at the time.” My father told me about the people in the store and they were afraid of aftershocks for the reason that they didn’t know if those could produce more damage and potentially destroy their house, because, “having one of those quakes, that huge, it’s very very scary.”

I asked my parents if the earthquake affected the perspective of the American Dream, and they responded saying, “Well, the house didn’t burn up and that’s one of the things in the American Dream, owning a house. Being a professional at whatever you enjoy doing and if you can own your own business and go as far in life as you can, and that’s what the American Dream is to us.” I realize that the earthquake could’ve ended their lives, but thank God it didn’t, and I am very thankful for that. My father did not receive any injuries, so it didn’t affect his ability to work, but the next week, he was working again. The business and house needed a little sweeping around, but it was better than looking for a place to live with a relative if our house would’ve fallen down.

Ever since the earthquake, my parents have felt more prepared, such as storing plenty of water and canned foods. My father told me that we must have a flashlight in our room at all times for the reason that we sleep in different rooms and it will be very difficult to reach one another if the earthquake strikes in the night time. We also have a back-up plan that we constructed when I was younger, it is in each of our rooms, hanging on the wall. It contains phone numbers of nearby family members that we can contact just in case another devastating earthquake strikes again.