"Twenty five years ago, at 4:30 a.m. on Jan. 17, 1994, the Northridge earthquake shook Angelenos from their beds. For those of us who lived through it, the memories of chaos early in the morning are unforgettable.

"We were just literally startled awake by a freight train driving right through our bedroom," said my father, Mark Margolis, who along with my sister, my mother and myself, was sleeping just about seven miles from the epicenter. "I mean the blinds that were supposed to be hanging vertical were like out horizontal. So, there was a tremendous amount of movement."

I was only five, and remember being pulled from my bed into the dark hallway by my parents. Our house was trashed, with everything from our shelves and inside our refrigerator thrown to the ground."

Jacob Margolis reports for NPR January 17, 2019. [2]