Earthquake Memories Saved for the Future : Video: Brownie troop and others relive fears and lighter moments that came later. The tape will be included in a time capsule.

SANTA CLARITA —  Girl Scout Troop 385 has a message for earthquake victims of the future: It’s OK to be scared.

Squirming in their seats and nervously twisting locks of hair, the band of eight girls from Canyon Country on Saturday gazed into a video camera and recorded their tales of the Northridge earthquake for a time capsule that could reach future residents of the Santa Clarita Valley.

One by one, each girl related in her own way how frightened she were when the quake hit. Some, like 7-year-old Samantha Connor, spoke so softly they could barely be heard. Others, like 8-year-old Lyssa Adams, gushed the words like rapidly deflating balloons.

“During the earthquake, we had glass everywhere and 10 gallons of water everywhere and my dad came to get me and we ran outside and it stopped,” Adams said to the camera, which was set up by King Videocable in a Valencia restaurant.

The project, part of the city of Santa Clarita’s second annual Emergency Expo, in the River Oaks Shopping Center, collected earthquake testimony from residents from throughout the Santa Clarita Valley. City officials said the videotape will be placed in a time capsule next year, on the anniversary of the Jan. 17 temblor, and be opened at some undetermined date.

Troop leader Lillian Shaw wanted to include her Brownies in the time capsule videotape for therapeutic, as well as historic, reasons.

“We lost three girls out of our troop because of the earthquake,” said Shaw, whose troop contains 24 girls. “One whose trailer was destroyed, and we had two others whose parents decided to pack up and move. They just couldn’t handle it.”

Since then, Shaw has encouraged her girls to talk about the incident, but no effort reproduced the same sense of candid fear as Saturday’s videotaping. One of those tales came from Jennifer Shaw, Lillian’s 7-year-old daughter.

“I felt scared during the earthquake because I was in my bed during the whole thing,” said Jennifer. Fortunately, a net holding her stuffed animals above her bed caught a glass frame that would have crashed onto her when it was dislodged by the quake.

“I’m really glad to be here,” she said, smiling.

But the girls were nearly upstaged by Omer Murray, a 52-year-old Newhall resident who recalled the confusion of being on a treadmill in a gym away from home when the quake struck.

“I didn’t know if the room was still moving or not because when you get off a treadmill your sense of balance is still off,” Murray said.

Murray’s neighbor encountered an even worse surprise. When he asked how Murray was, Murray’s wife replied, “He’s gone.” She meant Murray was at the gym, but the neighbor took it that Murray had perished in the quake.

Then Murray pulled into the driveway, shocking the already battered nerves of his neighbor.

“Here’s the ghost driving up, in effect,” Murray said, tongue in cheek.

Brownie troop leader Shaw hopes future quake victims find the videotape reassuring, proving that children and adults can survive a major temblor with their sense of humor intact.

“Maybe if kids see it coming from other kids, it will help in the future,” Shaw said.