Today is the 32nd anniversary of the 1992 Landers Earthquake that left much of the Morongo Basin in ruins from its 7.3 magnitude.
At 4:57 AM on Sunday, June 28th, 1992, a magnitude 7.3 earthquake awoke much of Southern California. It was a time where many were awaiting “The Big One,” and although it would evade that distinction, it was still powerful enough to cause significant damage here in the Basin; though because of our sprawling landscape and residents in more distant proximity, loss of life was minimal.
The quake packed a large punch into its initial 32-seconds, followed by a 6.1 aftershock four minutes later. Z1077 was on the air when it happened, during Marty “The Night Owl” Martinez’s show. In Hi-Desert Magazine’s Special Earthquake Issue in Fall of 1992, Martinez recalled that it was like “trying to keep your feet on the deck of a ship that was riding out a massive storm.” As he grabbed a hold of all the station’s equipment to keep it from crashing, luckily, the station’s backup generators had kicked in. By the end of the quake, the only means of communication for our then 80,000 residents was Z1077’s 3000 watt FM radio station, yet the lines were gridlocked with panic and concern.
In Yucca Valley there were residential and mobile homes aflame, the bowling alley annihilated. In the Landers epicenter, whole houses were cracked in half by the violent force of the quake while others had also caught fire, but with the Landers water system in pieces, firefighters had no water to fight the raging flames. The most tragic story was one of a three-year-old boy who had been killed from a collapsed fireplace in Yucca Valley. In all, 125 people were seen for earthquake related injuries.
Damage to the landscape included fissures that formed in the ground stretching for miles; one resident recalled dropping a 500-foot fishing line into one crack to deduce its depth before the line completely disappeared.
As the damage and rescues continued, Z1077’s Gary and Cindy Daigneault saw the need to prevent panic in the community, so they cleared the day’s programming and went to an all-news format to make it possible for people to report calls for help and to stay in touch with their loved ones over the air. The station quickly became not just a call and command center, but also a meeting place for volunteers and uprooted residents in need of emergency supplies. By this time, Z1077 had become the single entity through which all information could be communicated, eventually being asked by National Red Cross officials to allow the station to be designated as the Red Cross’s main collection and distribution center for all earthquake relief.
Read: “The Little Radio Station that Could” from Hi-Desert Magazine (PDF link)
