Southern California House lawmakers knew they were going to witness history on Jan. 6, 2021.

They just didn’t know what sort they’d be witnessing.

Local legislators were on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the gallery overlooking it and in their offices near the U.S. Capitol as a massive rally turned into a protest and then into people fighting their way into the building in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying that Joe Biden had won the 2020 presidential election. Many of those rioting alleged that election irregularities and changes in election processes implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic were illegal, fatally compromised the election, or both.

Due to concerns about COVID-19, Speaker Nancy Pelosi only allowed a few representatives at a time on the House floor. Others waited in the gallery above or back in their offices.

About 10 minutes before the House convened at 1 p.m., Rep. Mark Takano, D-Riverside, went to one of the office building cafeterias for lunch while he waited for his turn to come to the floor to vote.

“I start getting texts from constituents and friends, asking if I’m OK,” Takano recalled a year later. At that point, “I hadn’t had a chance to look at any media at all.”

He ended up carrying his lunch from site to site throughout the day, he said, in response to repeated orders to evacuate and shelter in place as the situation at the Capitol evolved.

Rep. Ken Calvert, R-Corona, was in his office as the House began its session.

“I looked out the window and I saw all these people coming up Independence (Avenue) toward the Capitol,” he said in a recent interview. “I didn’t think too much about it until all of a sudden, a little bit later, I heard that some barriers came down and people were breaking into the Capitol. … I’ve been in Washington for a long time. I’ve never seen anything like that in my career.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Glendale, was on the House floor as lawmakers debated Arizona’s election results.

Lawmakers evacuate the floor as rioters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“The first sign I had that something was going wrong was the speaker was suddenly not in her chair presiding,” Schiff recounted. “I knew she had been intent on presiding for the whole session, and I thought that was strange. Then I saw Capitol Police officers rush on to the House floor and grab our number two, Steny Hoyer. … I remember thinking to myself, ‘I never saw Steny move that fast.’”

Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, was on the floor of the House at the same time.

“We were showing our phones to each other on the House floor, like, do you see this on Twitter? Like, it says, they breached, it says the crowd’s big. So we’re all kind of figuring this out on the fly,” he recalled.

Rep. Brad Sherman, D-Sherman Oaks, returned to his office after the house voted to certify Arizona’s election results, where he encountered the protest — on the office television.

“I said, ‘Hey, I’m turning down the sound. These didn’t seem to be happy people,’” Sherman remembered. “What scared me the most afterwards was finding out that some were shouting, ‘Hang Mike Pence,’ and others were shouting, ‘Hey, where’s Nancy?’ Had I known that at the time, I would have been considerably more scared, or afraid, both for myself and for the country.”

Related Articles

Shortly after Pelosi and other congressional leaders were removed from the House floor by security, rioters were pounding on the doors to the chamber, about 20 feet behind Aguilar.

“I keep a little notebook with me,” he said, “and I wrote in it, at 2:34 p.m., ‘I’m scared now.’ “

The U.S. Capitol Police returned to the floor with increasingly serious warnings.

“There were rioters in the buildings,” Schiff said. Police wanted lawmakers to get their gas masks and prepare to get on the ground, he remembered.

“I took out my gas hood that was underneath the chair and it took a while to figure out how to get them open,” he added. “The police ultimately told us they had an escape route, they needed us to get out.”

There was a jam as everyone attempted to get out of the doors, Schiff said, so he hung back to wait for the crowd to dissipate.

“A couple of Republicans came up to me and said, ‘You can’t let them see you,’ ” Schiff said. ” ‘I know these people; I can talk to these people. You’re in a whole different category.’ “

Schiff ended up leaving beside a Republican colleague carrying a wooden stand for hand sanitizer.

People shelter in the House gallery as protesters try to break into the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

“He ripped it out of the floor and was ready to use it as a club,” Schiff said. “I said, ‘Are you really that worried?’ And he said ‘I think I just heard shots.’ And I think he was right, I think it was when Ashli Babbitt was shot.”

Babbitt was one of five people who died as a result of the riot. She was fatally shot as she tried to climb through a broken window of a barricaded door at the Capitol as lawmakers were being ushered out.

Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Big Bear, was in his office when the rioters broke into the Capitol. When he served in Sacramento, his office was on the same floor as the largest hearing room in the California Legislature.

“Quite often, we had lines of very agitated people waiting to speak in the hearing room. And it wasn’t unusual for them to accost me, even when I was on the same side of the issue,” Obernolte said. “But this was qualitatively different.”

Locked into his office, and protected by the Capitol Police, Obernolte said he never felt threatened, but he said he was “incredibly worried” for the police officers. One officer, Brian Sicknick, died of a stroke a day after he was assaulted by two men during the riot. At least three police officers who responded to the riot killed themselves in the year following.

More on the Capitol riot

As Capitol riot anniversary nears, more than 2 dozen Southern Californians still face charges
Insurrection anniversary: Southern California defendants and court dates
What Southern California House Republicans say about Jan. 6 riot one year later
Southern California Democrats on Jan. 6 riot committee say democracy is vulnerable

Rep. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, recalled he was in the gallery when the rioters broke in. One of the last legislators to be evacuated, Ruiz said he remembers hearing gunshots and glass breaking. He and the others reviewed mass shooter protocols, which tell legislators and staff to hide if they can, flee if it’s safe to do so and — worst-case scenario — rush the shooters.

“People understood that it meant that some of us would die in order to save the majority of us” if it came to rushing the shooters, Ruiz said. “I said, ‘Are we in, are we going to do this?’ And they all said yes. At that point, the reality of death was the closest I’ve ever gotten.”

Rep. Norma Torres, D-Pomona, was in the gallery with Ruiz.

“Trying to hear the radio traffic coming out of the officers’ radio was impossible,” she recalled. “Even with the 17-year experience of being a 911 dispatcher, I could not make out what the officers were shouting, because it was all ‘help,’ ‘help,’ ‘help.’ “

After he was evacuated, Ruiz said, he took a flight home to California. Other passengers, wearing red Make America Great Again hats, high-fived each other, bonding over their participation in the protest.

Staff writers Ryan Carter, Jeff Horseman and Brooke Staggs contributed to this story.