The Northridge Meadows apartment complex was one of the well-known affected areas in which sixteen people were killed as a result of the building 's collapse . The Northridge Fashion Center and California State University , Northridge also sustained very heavy damage – most notably the collapse of parking structures . The earthquake also gained worldwide attention because of damage to the vast freeway network , which serves millions of commuters every day . The most notable was to the Santa Monica Freeway , Interstate 10 , known as the busiest freeway in the United States , congesting nearby surface roads for three months while the freeway was repaired . Farther north , the Newhall Pass interchange of Interstate 5 ( the Golden State Freeway ) and State Route 14 ( the Antelope Valley Freeway ) collapsed as it had 23 years earlier in the 1971 Sylmar earthquake , even though it had been rebuilt with minor improvements to the structural components . One life was lost in the Newhall Pass interchange collapse : LAPD motorcycle officer Clarence Wayne Dean fell 40 feet from the damaged connector from southbound 14 to southbound I-5 along with his motorcycle . Because of the early morning darkness , he likely did not realize that the elevated roadway below him had collapsed , and was unable to stop in time to miss the fall and died instantly . When the interchange was rebuilt again one year later , it was renamed the Clarence Wayne Dean Memorial Interchange in his honor
Sylmar earthquake
1971 San Fernando earthquake
1994 Northridge earthquake