80th Anniversary of 1933 Long Beach Earthquake: A Present-Day Wake-Up Call

Today (Sat. Mar. 9), the day before the 80th anniversary of the 1933 Earthquake, Long Beach City Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske (a Registered Nurse Practitioner and a former Emergency Medical Technician) is holding a free, public Earthquake Preparedness Workshop at the El Dorado Community Center, 2800 Studebaker Road from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. The public is invited...and LBREPORT.com plans full coverage..

(March 9, 2013, 5:00 a.m.) -- Eighty years ago from this Sunday, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck Southern California on March 10, 1933 (a Friday at 5:54 p.m.) In many ways, the quake served as a wake-up call for a complacent California that would eventually make the state a leader in earthquake preparedness. The legacy of the 1933 Long Beach earthquake, is that California has become a leader in earthquake technology for building construction, earthquake forecasting and earthquake preparedness.

With its epicenter off the coast southeast of Long Beach along the offshore portion of the Newport-Inglewood fault, nine miles underground, the earthquake would become forever known as the Long Beach Earthquake of 1933.

It was the first major earthquake measured by the new motion detector instruments called accelerographs and studied in detail by the seismic lab at CAL Tech in Pasadena. The ten seconds of shaking was felt throughout southern California, but Long Beach bore the brunt of the estimated $40-50 million dollars in damages [in 1933 dollars] and gave the killer quake its name. Major aftershocks continued for over a week and minor aftershocks for months.

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One hundred and fifteen people died mostly due to collapsed buildings, houses and being stuck by falling debris as they ran out of buildings. Five of the dead were students at Long Beach Poly High School who were killed when the gymnasium collapsed. Long Beach deaths from the earthquake numbered 53 with more than 500 injured in the city. Nineteen fires raged in Long Beach throughout the night due to broken gas lines.

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Most of the building damage across Long Beach and a three block area of Compton occurred to buildings with unreinforced masonry walls. Seventy school buildings were destroyed (over 120 suffered major damaged and 130 minor damage) throughout the quake affected areas. School buildings throughout Long Beach collapsed, including the brick Franklin Junior High School on Cerritos Avenue. School buildings with architecture modeled on East Coast designs with elaborate brick towers were hit especially hard, while school buildings made of reinforced concrete (like the LB Polytechnic auditorium) survived the quake. The early evening timing of the earthquake saved countless student and school staff who would have been in the buildings that collapsed during school hours.

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The city's proximity to the stationed Pacific Fleet at the Long Beach Navel Station and the U.S. Army base at Ft. Mac Arthur in San Pedro gave the city access to emergency supplies and assistance from 2,000 U.S. Marines and naval personal. Overnight the California National Guard set up food centers in parks across Long Beach and was serving breakfast the next morning, while water was trucked into areas were 127 water mains had ruptured. The relief effort was coordinated out of the Long Beach City Manager’s office.

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The magnitude of the destruction and damage to 75% of the area's schools pushed the California Legislature pass the Field Act just one month later on April 10, 1933. Named for author Assemblyman Charles Fields, the law established strict earthquake resistant design and construction on California K-12 and community college buildings. No school built under the Field Act and its revisions has ever collapsed. All surviving pre-Field Act schools have been retrofitted under subsequent laws.

In 2007 numerous California agencies with earthquake oversight joined with the U.S. Geological Survey to produce the first statewide estimate for earthquake location probabilities for the next 30 years. Using the best available science, the 2007 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities developed the model (see link below) called the Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast.

In 2003, the Southern California based Earthquake Country Alliance was started. In November 2008 it organized the largest earthquake drill in history, the Great Southern California ShakeOut involving an estimated 5.3 million people. In 2009 Earthquake Country Alliance it became a statewide alliance an conducted its first statewide ShakeOut drill with over 6.9 million participants. In 2012 it grew to include the state's rail system. The ShakeOut drills are now held across the U.S. and around the world with over 19 million participants registered for drills worldwide last year. The 2013 Great California ShakeOut drill for this year is scheduled for October 13. At 10:17 a.m. millions of Californians are scheduled to Drop, Cover and Hold for the state’s largest earthquake drill ever.

LBREPORT.com provides links to the following information resources:

Long Beach Earthquake Tracker

California Earth Quake Country guide

CAL TECH Earth Quake Preparedness Map

Catalog of Significant Earthquakes and Faults

The Uniform California Earthquake Rupture Forecast by the 2007 Working Group on California Earthquake Probabilities