This day in L.A. history: Northridge earthquake

Mangled parking structure at Cal State Northridge. Southern California Earthquake Date Center

No, I'm not going to start pulling some random event out of the archives to fill space every day. There just happens to have been two good pegs today and yesterday. This is the 18th anniversary of the Northridge earthquake. Pretty much anything to do with earthquakes and seismology is relevant here.

The Jan. 17, 1994 earthquake went in the books as a magnitude 6.7 quake that woke up millions about 4:31 a.m. It was the largest earthquake to strike under the city of Los Angeles (beneath Reseda to be precise) since the record-keepers began writing things down. And it was the first earthquake since Long Beach in 1933 to strike directly under any urban area of the United States. Fifty-seven deaths are attributed to the quake, fewer than in the Sylmar quake of 1971, which had its epicenter under the San Gabriel Mountains.