The Northridge Earthquake

One of the most magical aspects about Disney is its ability to block out the outside world. Spending a day at Disneyland is a great way to forget about your problems and just have fun. But like Uncle Remus said, "You can't run from trouble, there ain't no place that far." Every so often the real world invades the Magic Kingdom.

When I worked at the Disney Store, we had our share of real-world problems to deal with. In addition to trying to prevent shoplifting or having to call mall security to pick up a child whom a parent left behind for us to babysit while they shopped the rest of the mall, certain events impacted our little outposts of happiness.

I worked when the lawlessness of riots went on around us after the Rodney King verdict. We had to close the store early and get home before sunset because of a mandated curfew placed throughout Los Angeles. It was a little intimidating being at the front of the store as few guests came through our entrance but packs of gang members swept through the mall. A radio backstage kept us informed as to how close the unrest was to us.

I worked when a bomb threat was called in to the mall and the entire complex had to be evacuated. It was hard to explain to the guests that filled the store that we were suddenly closing without inciting a riot of our own. We waited at an evacuation center nearby while the bomb squad found and destroyed what turned out to be three bags of flour that were labeled Bomb 1, 2 and 4 before being allowed back to perform closing duties. I had to put back together a Plush Mountain that police thought might have made a perfect location to hide a bomb.

But the biggest intrusion by the outside world into my Disneyfied life took place 10 years ago this month. At 4:31 a.m. on January 17, 1994, a 6.7 magnitude earthquake rocked Northridge, California, where I both worked and lived.

We had our monthly cast member meeting the night before in the store. Little did we know when we left that evening that we'd never open the exact same location again. We wouldn't have imagined that some of the animated fixtures from above the showline would come crashing down to the floor where we sat listening to that evening's presentation. We had no clue that our hard work getting the store ready for guests the next day was in vain.

Disney did right by us after the tragedy. Although there wasn't a store for us to work at, they paid us for the next couple weeks the equivalent of our "average" weekly hours, which was more than the hours we would have been scheduled after the busy holiday season had ended.

We were given a choice to transfer to another Disney Store in the area; go on unpaid leave for six months, I think, and hope that the store would be re-opened in that time; or quit the company.

For those of us who decided to transfer to another store, we were given four L.A.-area locations that could take us -- Glendale, Thousand Oaks, Valencia or Century City. Because many freeways were closed after the earthquake, I didn't want to try to make it to the Century City or Valencia stores. Getting to Thousand Oaks was easiest for me and closest to my mom's house, so I asked for that to be my primary option while making Glendale my second choice. Most of the cast members with more than a year's experience were sent to Glendale, so that's where I was assigned.

This appeared in the May/June 1994 issue of the Scoop, the Disney Store cast member newsletter. I'm in the shadows in the left rear. We had to wear hard hats and sign our lives away to be in the mall, which was badly damaged by the Northridge Earthquake.

Before moving on to my new store, I had the chance to be a part of the clean-up crew at Northridge. We basically had to sign our lives away that if anything happened, we entered the mall at our own risk and didn't hold anyone liable for what could happen to us. Our job was to box up all of the merchandise that was still sellable so that it could be sent to other locations. It was a great chance to work with some of the cast members one last time while saying goodbye to a store that had become more than just some place to work. On top of all of the other things that we had just lived through when the world we knew was turned upside down, there was a profound sense of sadness standing in an empty stockroom and knowing that we'd never be back.

The Northridge Disney Store was the place where I met my wife. It was my first job out of high school. It was where I came to realize my dream of working for Disney. Time and space has kept me from keeping in contact with many co-workers through the years but one of my closest family friends today is someone that I worked with at Northridge.

I'd go on to spend another 6 years at the Disney Store in Glendale. The Disney Store in Northridge would later re-open, though down a spot from its original location. Life eventually got back to normal.

I can't believe that it has been 10 years since the earth moved. I have vivid memories of holding on to my bed, thinking we were being bombed while transistors exploded outside my bedroom window. I remember getting up after the shaking had stopped and feeling my way through the pitch-black darkness and noticing that my computer was no longer on my desk and that my refrigerator had moved four feet from the wall. I recall that the only light in those pre-dawn hours were of the science building at California State University Northridge on fire. After the sun came up, I drove around the Northridge area seeing buildings collapsed, parking structures in rubble. I went to visit my uncle and his family, who lived not far away, to be sure they made it through alright. I tried to find a working phone so that I could call my mom and let her know that I was alive. I'll support Arrowhead forever after they pulled up a tanker full of water to the local high school for us to drink when there was no water available. There was no better sound in the world than the refrigerator beginning to hum again when power was restored. A mobile McDonalds serving a limited menu was a great place to order not only a Big Mac but a piece of normalcy too.

I may have been a teen-age cast member when I first hired on at the Disney Store in Northridge. But I did a lot of growing up quickly after the Northridge Earthquake hit in '94.

- Story by Matthew Walker
Matt started working at the Disney Store as an 18-year-old in 1991. "I Was A Teen-Age Cast Member" is a look at the magical Disney memories of a former cast member as remembered years later.
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