When I first moved to California, thoughts of earthquakes always lurked in the recesses of my mind. Seismic activity didn’t consume my thoughts (selling a screenplay had that job), but there were certainly an awareness of what could happen. And in 1999, after a night out barhopping on Sunset Boulevard, I finally felt my first significant earthquake.
The epicenter was Joshua Tree, some 100 miles from my apartment in Hollywood. But the magnitude was 7.0 and I lived in a shoddily constructed building on the 3rd Floor. I thought it was The Big One.
It was 2:46 a.m. and I was getting ready to eat my burger from Jack In The Box when the room starting rolling. I’d had several beers that night but I knew the sensation wasn’t from alcohol. It felt as if I were on a boat, or straddling the top of Jenga sticks. Although measured in seconds, to me it felt as if it would never end. I honestly thought the whole apartment complex was going to topple over.
I rushed outside expecting to see destruction and hundreds of people in fear. But June Street in Hollywood was mostly empty, except for a couple of guys smoking a joint. One of them said, “Dude, that was pretty freaky, huh?” From the upper floor of a 1960’s apartment complex it felt if the world was ending. But from the street it was just an amusing 10 or fifteen seconds.
In the history of Earthquakes, the1999 Joshua Tree one is not very memorable. It was centered in the desert and did not cause any major injuries or destruction. With a 7.0 location is everything. You transplant that magnitude close to a major urban area and you have a natural disaster on your hands. But that wasn’t the case, and for most it was just “dude, that was freaky”.
Last night I had my second encounter with a moderate earthquake.
A 5.6 one struck just outside of San Jose, which is about 50 miles away from San Francisco. This time there was no rolling (I live in the basement), but I did feel a jolt and the house rattled. I knew it was bigger than a 3 to 4 magnitude quake- of which I’d felt several times through the years, but I was pretty sure that if it were The Big One it couldn’t be that close to The Bay Area.
So instead of rushing outside I turned on the TV. About ten minutes later KRON 4 (the local independent station) got their coverage going. I watched for about an hour or so, and there were no reports of injuries or significant damage. But from the calls coming in close to the epicenter, it certainly jangled thousands of people’s nerves. One second you’re getting ready to watch the Charlie Brown Halloween special and the next you’re wondering if your $2000 Plasma TV might fall off your wall.
From my location in San Francisco, the jolt and shake just got my mind racing. And then watching the news I learned a very interesting fact: This 5.6 Earthquake was the biggest one in the Bay Area since 1989 . . . the one that killed 62 people, injured 3,756 and left more than 12,000 people homeless.
But on this October night in 2007 it was just a pre-Halloween scare, a grim reminder of what will eventually happen. A major earthquake will strike both San Francisco & Los Angeles at some point in the future. One day from now, 5 years, a decade or two . . . it’s a scientific inevitability.
So this weekend I will put together something resembling an Earthquake Kit (I did the same thing in 1999 and haven’t done it since). I’ll do some reading on the web and my ears will perk up whenever I hear people talking about seismic activity. But then things will go back to normal. Being prepared is smart, but only fools live in fear.
The epicenter was Joshua Tree, some 100 miles from my apartment in Hollywood. But the magnitude was 7.0 and I lived in a shoddily constructed building on the 3rd Floor. I thought it was The Big One.
It was 2:46 a.m. and I was getting ready to eat my burger from Jack In The Box when the room starting rolling. I’d had several beers that night but I knew the sensation wasn’t from alcohol. It felt as if I were on a boat, or straddling the top of Jenga sticks. Although measured in seconds, to me it felt as if it would never end. I honestly thought the whole apartment complex was going to topple over.
I rushed outside expecting to see destruction and hundreds of people in fear. But June Street in Hollywood was mostly empty, except for a couple of guys smoking a joint. One of them said, “Dude, that was pretty freaky, huh?” From the upper floor of a 1960’s apartment complex it felt if the world was ending. But from the street it was just an amusing 10 or fifteen seconds.
In the history of Earthquakes, the1999 Joshua Tree one is not very memorable. It was centered in the desert and did not cause any major injuries or destruction. With a 7.0 location is everything. You transplant that magnitude close to a major urban area and you have a natural disaster on your hands. But that wasn’t the case, and for most it was just “dude, that was freaky”.
Last night I had my second encounter with a moderate earthquake.
A 5.6 one struck just outside of San Jose, which is about 50 miles away from San Francisco. This time there was no rolling (I live in the basement), but I did feel a jolt and the house rattled. I knew it was bigger than a 3 to 4 magnitude quake- of which I’d felt several times through the years, but I was pretty sure that if it were The Big One it couldn’t be that close to The Bay Area.
So instead of rushing outside I turned on the TV. About ten minutes later KRON 4 (the local independent station) got their coverage going. I watched for about an hour or so, and there were no reports of injuries or significant damage. But from the calls coming in close to the epicenter, it certainly jangled thousands of people’s nerves. One second you’re getting ready to watch the Charlie Brown Halloween special and the next you’re wondering if your $2000 Plasma TV might fall off your wall.
From my location in San Francisco, the jolt and shake just got my mind racing. And then watching the news I learned a very interesting fact: This 5.6 Earthquake was the biggest one in the Bay Area since 1989 . . . the one that killed 62 people, injured 3,756 and left more than 12,000 people homeless.
But on this October night in 2007 it was just a pre-Halloween scare, a grim reminder of what will eventually happen. A major earthquake will strike both San Francisco & Los Angeles at some point in the future. One day from now, 5 years, a decade or two . . . it’s a scientific inevitability.
So this weekend I will put together something resembling an Earthquake Kit (I did the same thing in 1999 and haven’t done it since). I’ll do some reading on the web and my ears will perk up whenever I hear people talking about seismic activity. But then things will go back to normal. Being prepared is smart, but only fools live in fear.
No comments:
Post a Comment