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Some notes on the news coverage of the earthquake:

The TV coverage I saw on Monday night emphasized the gas
fires, presumably because the flames were bright and in
motion. The NY Times the next day had a more comprehensive
collection of crisp, clear, photos of collapsed structures.

However, the Times didn't show the photo I would have 
expected: an air view of the collapsed Northridge apartment
building. There was a spectacular picture of the 
parking garage at the shopping center, though.

It could be that the apartment building wouldn't have
looked noteworthy from above because the whole thing had
collapsed more or less as a unit and crushed the apartments
on the first floor, as accounts s said. The roof of the
building might not have shown much damage.

It's not clear what the "first floor" to that building was.
The Times referred to the "ground floor" parking area
being the weak point of the structure. Then, I take it,
the "first" floor of apartments was the floor directly
above that.

In general, though, the Times's articles described vividly and
in detail the destruction from the quake. Compare this to
the curiously flat coverage they've had of the Bosnian war,
especially of the purported shelling of Sarajevo. And their
reporter won a Pulitzer prize for it.

The bit of TV coverage that I saw on Monday I viewed under
ideal circumstances for seeing visual oddities: the sound
was off. I think it was NBC, because the main reporter
looked like Tom Brokaw, who was on NBC back when I used
to watch TV regularly. Among the repeated shots of gas fires,
they had one clip of an apparently distraught young woman,
shown in close-up, raving about her plight. At quite
regular intervals her gaze would dart to her left briefly,
as if she were reading que cards.