Margo Sugrue was headed out the door early Monday morning when she turned on the radio and heard about the Los Angeles earthquake.
Sugrue, who lives in south suburban New Lenox, has three brothers living in Los Angeles. Her parents were in L.A. visiting them. The telephone rang. It was her sister in Louisville.
“She was hysterical,” said Sugrue, 31, who works for a Los Angeles-based newspaper syndicate company. “She managed to talk to one of our brothers in North Hollywood. He had panicked. He didn’t know anything about the folks.
“Another brother said all the windows in their house had shattered. He said the water from the swimming pool was practically in the house. They were really shaken.”
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Sugrue, like many Chicagoans with family and friends near Los Angeles-and Angelenos who now live in or were visiting Chicago-spent much of the day trying and trying and trying again to make contact with loved ones in L.A. It was a frustrating experience.
Telephone lines were jammed. Most people repeatedly got busy signals or a telephone recording telling them that “due to the earthquake in the area you are calling, your call cannot be completed at this time.”
Instead, people were glued to the television or radio. Eventually, most people heard news about their relatives and friends in L.A. in a roundabout way: Someone living in San Francisco or San Diego or Louisville managed to get through to Los Angeles and relay a message to Chicago.
The news usually was reassuring. Walls cracked. Plaster buckled. Water pipes broken. But relatively few people were killed or severely injured in the largest earthquake to hit Southern California in two decades.
“I just talked to my sister again a minute ago, and she said the folks are fine,” said Sugrue, about an hour later.
Stacy Dixon of AT&T said Chicagoans were able to get through to Los Angeles in the first hour after the earthquake. But the telephone lines became jammed as people learned of the quake and began calling Los Angeles.
At first, AT&T blocked most calls going into Los Angeles and gave priority to Angelenos trying to dial out. But at about noon, an AT&T switching center in Los Angeles was damaged, severely limiting all telephone calls in and out of the affected region.
Lisa Howard of the Chicago Department of Aviation said that between five and 10 flights from O’Hare to Los Angeles International Airport were canceled early Monday. Some flights were also diverted from L.A. International to other airports in the Los Angeles areas, including John Wayne Airport in Orange County.
L.A. International opened at about 10:15 a.m. (Central time) and there were delays of up to 2 hours reported at O’Hare, Howard said. But few Chicagoans boarding flights for L.A. were complaining.
“Everybody is trying to be L.A. mellow,” said Ellen Schechtman, 40, a Palatine attorney who boarded United Airlines Flight 107 for Los Angeles at 12:20 p.m. to visit her aunt.
Dave Giblin, director of sales and marketing at Chicago’s Marriott Hotel, said that about 50 guests from Los Angeles checked out immediately after hearing about the quake. He said they wanted to “get back to their families as soon as possible.”