Earthquake
The 1994 Greenfield earthquake was a moment magnitude 7.5 (Mw), blind thrust earthquake that occurred on January 17, 1994, at 4:30:55 a.m. PST from the coast of Greenfield all the way to the San Fernando Valley region of the City of Los Angeles. The quake had a duration of approximately 10–20 seconds, Shaking was felt as far away as San Diego, Turlock, Las Vegas, Richfield, and Phoenix.
Two aftershocks followed, the first about one minute after the initial event and the second approximately 11 hours later.
Epicenter
The earthquake struck in the Greenfield Bay Area about 95 miles (152 km) Southwest of downtown Los Angeles. While the epicenter struck in Greenfield, cities in the san fernando valley, like northridge also suffered major damages.
The earthquake
Damage occurred up to 95 miles away, with the most damage in the Greenfield Bay area, and the San Fernando Valley. The area most affected by the earthquake were the neighbourhoods of Ashfield, Northpark, Clinton and surrounding areas like Glenview. Many older apartment buildings suffered major damages, and even collapsed, most famously the Carrien, which stood at 8 floors tall in Downtown Ashfield. Unfortunately the city saw major losses, The highway leading up to the bridge from greenfield to ashfield partly collapsed onto the brand new marina under it, An old historic warehouse on one of the piers completely collapsed, and so did 9 other buildings, the tallest finished structure was the 12 storey tall apartment building right nexto the bridge connecting downtown greenfield and ashfield. Many buildings in ashfield were badly damaged, and had to either be repaired or torn down. Ashfield quickly rebuilt most of its infrastructure in the weeks after, and during the 2000s and up many new apartments and condo buildings were built on the collapsed buildings, however things did not go quite as well with Northpark, clinton, springfield and western ashfield.
These districts were mainly filled with large warehouses and factories. A lot of these collapsed during the earthquake or had to be torn down after. The areas had large empty fields with half-collapsed buildings and empty lots, with some of the remaining businesses moving out to other industry parks near Greenfield. This was the case untill the city of Greenfield invested a large sum of money into the redevelopment in these areas called "the greater ashfield redevelopment plan", the plan was started in 2015 with the remaining abandoned factories being torn down and completely new areas being built, including the brand new mall in Clinton, large stores like the minekea moving into springfield and many new apartments and houses in both ashfield and northpark.
Other districts around the epicenter include glenview, westwood and downtown greenfield.
Glenview was a torn up mess of abandoned buildings and violence, while also having the brand new office buildings along the boulevard and the central library. The earthquake made around 24 buildings collapse in Glenview, many of them being empty apartment buildings or warehouses. Fortunately After the earthquake hit many younger residents moved in and the area has been in a rapid growth of population and wealth ever since.
Around 43 buildings collapsed in and around westwood, this area has and is still a very low income neighbourhood so many of the buildings werent up to standard and collapsed, this includes the Westwood Community Center which, during the earthquake, collapsed into the bay. Unfortunately this area today still has many collapsed buildings and unstable infrastructure from the earthquake as it was not a focus for the city of Greenfield.
Only 2 buildings collapsed in downtown Greenfield, as many of these were up to standard. Unfortunately however, one of the bridges overpassing the interstate INTERSTATE NAME HERE, and a couple other parts of infrastructure collapsed in the financial core.
Minutes after the quake
Chaos ensued in the minutes after. The power grid went down in eastern Greenfield, with neighbourhoods like los llanos being without power for 2 days after. A train derailed near Ramona and crashed into the neighbouring canal. water and gas lines broke all over the cities, many streets were flooded and homes got set on fire.
A minute after the original quake another magnitude 5.3 aftershock struck, the areas that still had power didnt anymore and the bay was filled with darkness.
With no police around, and infrastructure blocked people started looting neighbourhood stores or helped others get out of their homes.
GIA was chaos with many late night travelers hurrying out of the emergency exits into the airport or streets. A boeing 747 Golden Pacific flight 007 ran off of the taxiway into a nearby ditch, other planes were stopped on the taxiways. Flights going towards GIA were rerouted to the nearby LAX and SFO airports.
The roof of the eastern terminal 1 wing partly collapsed and an oil truck exploded at the construction terminal, after what witnesses claimed, a beam fell onto the truck. A part of the highway leading into the passenger terminals partly collapsed onto the road beneath crushing the people running out of the airport below.
Unfortunately during the aftershock, the 41 story "Bank of Despair Tower" in downtown Greenfield collapsed in on itselves. The building was built in 1971 and was one of the tallest building in the city. It was located on the end of the elevated section of downtown, right nexto the bridge connecting central ashfield and downtown, the building had a beautiful view of the city, and the mountains behind.
It collapsed due to a construction error. During the original quake the building stood, but had major destruction in the lobby and parking garage. One of the support beams for the western end of the tower was badly damaged, and collapsed during the aftershock, the northwest corner of the building collapsed, taking the rest of the building with it. The building fell onto the bridge and a few warehouses that stood beside the bridge.
This changed the skyline of the city forever, and many memorialize the building each year on january 17th.
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