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Fifty years ago this Sunday, Kern County was shaken to its roots by the third largest earthquake in recorded California history.

The town of Tehachapi was heavily damaged, and 12 people were killed. A month later, an aftershock heavily damaged Bakersfield, killing two.

Today, some Kern County residents vividly remember the earthquake, but several more would find themselves unprepared in the event of another big quake.

No news frustrates serviceman overseas

By MISTY WILLIAMS Californian staff writer
e-mail: mwilliams@bakersfield.com

Monday July 22, 2002, 07:00:00 PM

While Pat Gracey was coping with the aftermath of the 7.5 earthquake that hit Tehachapi on July 21, 1952, her husband was in Korea, beginning to panic.

Doyle Gracey, a 28-year-old Marine at the time, was stationed just outside P'ohang on South Korea's southeastern seaboard with the 3rd Amphibious Tractor Battalion.

"We had a radio, but we couldn't play it because we didn't have any power," Doyle Gracey said.

Eventually, he found a generator and hooked it up. The first thing he heard emanating from the speakers was that the small town of Tehachapi, where his wife and two children lived, had been flattened.

The other men in his company did not care about disaster in a small Californian town, Gracey said, so one of the men in search of music reached over and turned the dial.

"I had an 18-inch crescent wrench in my hand, and I hit him on the forearm with it," he said.

Reports throughout the country grossly exaggerated the extent of the damage inflicted by the quakes that hit Tehachapi and Bakersfield.

A headline in the Chicago Sun-Times read "Quake Wrecks W. Coast City!" in reference to the 5.8 aftershock that rocked Bakersfield on Aug. 22, 1952.

Colleen Carroll / The Californian Pat Gracey, 73, was 23 at the time of the Tehachapi earthquake.

Other headlines included the Detroit Free Press - "Deadly Quake Strikes Bakersfield!," The Oregonian - "California Quake Deals Death" and The Denver Post - "California Town Crumbled By Quake."

Reports of the Tehachapi quake were upsetting for Gracey.

"It shook me real bad," he said. "I was quite concerned."

Gracey's nerves remained on edge for two weeks until he received a letter from his wife.

"I was developing a fine case of ulcers until that word came in that my family was all right," he said. "It's just a terrible thing to be a thousand miles away from your family and know they've been subjected to quite a terrible ordeal and not be able to find out about."