Word: fernando
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...common denominator in many of these symptoms is excessive anxiety triggered by the realistic fear of a quake's havoc. Explains Dr. Stephen Howard of the San Fernando Valley Child Guidance Clinic: "If something bad happens, children feel responsible: maybe their bad thoughts caused it." Adults, too, can regress to atavistic fantasy. "Their first response is to think it's the wrath of God, maybe even the Apocalypse," says Dr. Edward Stainbrook of the University of Southern California...
...million Olive View Medical Center, which had been considered quake-resistant. Surprisingly, only three persons were killed: an ambulance driver and two respiratory patients, who were not seriously injured but died because they were separated from their breathing equipment. At the nearby Veterans Administration Hospital in San Fernando, by contrast, a patient survived only because his iron lung protected him from being crushed by a fallen ceiling...
Beyond the human agony, the quake spread vast physical destruction. In almost every one of the residential blocks of Sylmar and San Fernando, at least one house was either leveled or tilted. On the inside, thousands of homes were a jumble of overturned refrigerators, shards of glass, cracked furniture. The legs of baby grand pianos gave way. Severely damaged was the San Fernando Mission, founded in 1797, which had been rebuilt in 1818 after an earthquake destroyed it. In most cases, there was no insurance coverage...
Jolting as it was for Californians, last week's earthquake was even more of a shock to scientists. In a typical year, the Golden State is the site of 300 noticeable quakes, and seismologists have long predicted that a major quake is overdue. Yet the San Fernando quake struck an area that has been seismically inactive at least since the end of the last Ice Age-about 10,000 years ago. The region was still trembling when scores of scientists arrived with their portable instruments, anxious to find out why they had been caught so completely by surprise...
...active faults that are associated with it. They originated some distance away, along a swath roughly 20 miles long, running at approximately right angles to the big fault. It is in this area that the San Gabriel Mountains, north of Los Angeles, meet the San Fernando Valley. Judging by ruptures in this surface and readings from their instruments, scientists concluded that the mountains had either pushed a few feet over the valley, or that the valley had thrust underneath the mountains. However they occurred, the sudden, complex movements led to a significant quake-strong enough to tumble walls and knock...