Forced to take a stand and defend home with rifles

Forced to take a stand and defend home with rifles.
Aside from natural disasters, man made events such as riots or looting can take place in which survival skills are put to the test. In this survival story, Andy P recalls the chaos that were the Los Angeles riots.


If you have never been in a manmade or natural disaster you may not realize how quickly our cities go from civilized communities to an unorganized mess. In a very short time you find that you and your family are on your own - with no protection or civil order provided by any government agencies. This is mainly due to the unexpected nature of both manmade and natural disasters. I have experienced this twice. I lived in Los Angeles for many years and those years included the LA Riots in 1992 and the Northridge earthquake in 1994.


This story relates to the Los Angeles Riots in 1992. The catalyst for the riots was an incident caught on video tape where 4 police officers were seen beating a motorist. The police officers were put on trial.


The trial was watched by millions of people in Los Angeles (many of which expected a guilty verdict). When the 4 officers were acquitted many people in Los Angeles decided to express their frustration by burning down buildings, looting, assaulting innocent civilians, and committing murder - there were over 50 murders during the LA Riot.


Within 2 hours of the verdict I received a phone call from my screaming wife telling me that there was gun fire in the mall where she worked and I needed to come to get her immediately. I was with my brother at the time and we immediately armed ourselves (legally) and went to pick her up. As we were driving through Los Angeles we could see fires erupting in every direction and people were running through the streets. The smell of burning buildings was intense. Simultaneously a fellow pilot and good friend was in the process of filming the now famous video of a truck driver being dragged from his truck and nearly killed by an angry mob from his helicopter - it was considered a miracle that he survived the brutal beating. When we arrived at the mall people were running out and we were attempting to run in. The mall had been evacuated by security guards to allow management to close the mall to protect the stores from looters. My wife was gone. She was ordered to leave her store with nowhere to go. We finally made contact when I conducted an emergency phone patch on my ham radio - she had received a ride with her girlfriend and was home traumatized by the event. By the time my brother and I got home the city was in the grips of a full blown riot and people were filling the streets and running by with stolen TV's, stereos, and other merchandise (an interesting note was that the book store near our place was not looted). We finally made it back to my place and began to get ready to defend our home against looters. My first thought was to gather my wife, my brother and his girlfriend and get to the Santa Monica Airport and fly us out of there, but that was impossible. The riot had gone out of control and you could not drive through the streets. Also, we had reports that people were shooting at airplanes going in and out of Santa Monica Airport and LAX. I later heard that airliners landing at LAX were directed to land (with the wind) with their final approach over the ocean to prevent being shot at - I do not know if that actually happened. Our block was completely overrun and we were actually forced to take a stand and defend our home with rifles - in Los Angeles! Several times we had to take aim at looters and thank god they ran - because I had every intention of shooting. It was literally like a war zone. The riots lasted days and did not stop until the National Guard showed up. I have since read that it was the 7th infantry division and additional Marines from Camp Pendleton that were deployed to Los Angeles. From our perspective it didn't matter where they came from they were a welcome site. It was surreal to see US Soldiers walking through our neighborhood. We could not travel more than a block from our home for days without the chance of major conflict. Police cars were overturned when they arrived at the scene of a crime and were forced to retreat. It really was complete chaos in a major American city. Luckily I was prepared for this scenario and had everything we needed to both survive and defend ourselves for an extended period of time. I had water, freeze dried food, guns, ammo, and radio communications via ham radio. The grocery stores were impossible to get to and if you could it didn't matter. They were closed or already looted and were empty. It is very difficult to relate how large of an event this was (historic really) unless you were there. There were over 3000 fires burning throughout Los Angeles, thousands injured, nearly a billion dollars in damages, and over 50 murders. At one point during the riots we were standing on our roof top and it looked like the world had gone insane - I could not believe I was looking at Los Angeles. The bottom line is expect the unexpected and be prepared for as many scenarios as possible. I will never forget how good it felt to be prepared to protect myself and my loved ones. Being prepared paid off again when the Northridge Earthquake hit several years later in 1994 and again Los Angeles was tested.


Andy P