The Long Beach earthquake of 1933 took place on March 10, 1933 at 17:55 (5:55 P.M.) PST (March 11, 01:55 UTC), with a magnitude of 6.4, causing widespread damage to buildings throughout Southern California. The epicenter was offshore, southeast of Long Beach on the Newport-Inglewood Fault. An estimated fifty million dollars worth of property damage resulted, and 120 lives were lost. Many of these fatalities occurred as people ran out of buildings and were hit by falling debris.
The major damage occurred in the thickly settled district from Long Beach to the industrial section south of Los Angeles, where unfavorable geological conditions (made land, water-soaked alluvium) combined with poor structural work to increase the damage. At Long Beach, buildings collapsed, water tanks fell through roofs, and houses displaced on foundations. School buildings were among those structures most generally and severely damaged.
The earthquake supported some ideas regarding the need for earthquake resistant design for structures in California. So many school buildings were damaged, with more than 230 school buildings that were either destroyed, suffered major damage, or were judged unsafe to occupy, that the Field Act was passed by the California State Legislature on April 10, 1933. The Field Act mandated that school buildings must be earthquake-resistant. If the earthquake had occurred during school hours, the death toll would have been much higher.
Pacific Bible Seminary (now known as Hope International University) was forced to move classes out of First Christian Church of Long Beach and into a small local home due to damage from the earthquake.
The earthquake struck during the filming of the comedy International House (1933), and film supposedly exists of the quake striking the soundstage during shooting. However, the director of the film, A. Edward Sutherland, later claimed that the footage was a hoax, concocted by himself and W.C. Fields, the star of the film.
The earthquake also interrupted filming of "The Shadow Waltz," a musical scene in Gold Diggers of 1933, nearly throwing choreographer Busby Berkeley from a camera boom, and rattling dancers on a 30-foot (9.1 m)-high platform.
Famous quotes containing the words long, beach and/or earthquake:
“Why has mankind had such a craving to be imposed upon? Why this lust after imposing creeds, imposing deeds, imposing buildings, imposing language, imposing works of art? The thing becomes an imposition and a weariness at last. Give us things that are alive and flexible, which won’t last too long and become an obstruction and a weariness. Even Michelangelo becomes at last a lump and a burden and a bore. It is so hard to see past him.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Your last words as you led the charge up the beach were, “Okay, men, let’s show ‘em whose beach this is!””
—Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981)
“Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the most Oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage nature, in which Scythians and Ethiopians and Indians dwell. What is echo, what are light and shade, day and night, ocean and stars, earthquake and eclipse, there? The works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity of nature. The AEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)