EARTHquake

As a Californian I have grown up with earthquakes and if one lives through one-it's pretty much over and you move on to deal with the aftershocks.

Tornados scare the bejebbers out of me.

I remember very well the first time I visited Colorado-Longmont to be exact-outside Denver on the way to Laramie I think-its the plains-flat, windy, temperamental weather.

Richard and I were there to do a Country Folk Art show-its was windy and rainy-mid-june.

We decided after checking in to a hotel to walk to a local restaurant a few blocks away-I was unaware the Tornados could hit Colorado at this point.

I was very aware of the leaden, grey sky occasionally ripped with huge golden forks of lightening and loud, Zeusian rumbles of thunder (Angels were bowling a tournament that afternoon).

I do not like to be outside, unprotected in a lightening storm.

We made it to the café and got seated and everyone seemed very tight lipped and somber for a place that smelled that good at dinner time.

I noticed the TVs around the room were scrolling and when I focused in it was a Tornado warning.

I am still unclear about which is worse watch or warning-either way I was ready to go back to Los Angeles and wait for an earth quake.

 Obviously no devil wind struck during dinner, nor on the walk (more like a jog) back to the hotel-as we passed through the lobby the manaher offered that she should probably show us the Tornado shelter and explain the bell alarm...this did NOTHING to make me feel a bit better.

That was 30 years ago and I still don't want to go to Tornado states.

BTW, interesting aside we dove through Colorado Springs just a couple hours before a devastating Tornado hit that town on the same trip.

Earthquakes...the first one I have a dim remembrance of was 1952-the Tehachapi quake which I believe was the last huge quake on the San Andreas Fault-I don't remember the shaking I do remember my parents coming to get me and standing with me in a doorway-we has lasting mementos-we had just moved into the house in Pico Rivera and the folks had poured concrete all of which was cracked by the quake.

1971 I was living in Apartment 101 of the Lynne Manor Apartments in Hollywood on Franklin Ave-a 5 store, unreinforced brownstone-I was awaked by ---something_ I ran to the window from which I could see Hollywood down the hill-all was black-the sky was lighted by a huge green flash and I decided in a split second that either they had dropped "THE bomb" or Aliens were invading-I dove under the Murphy bed and then heard the footsteps ponding down the stairs and shouts of Earthquake...since I was not crushed-that was that...

I do remember that in the evening I had a rehearsel of a musical review I was doing in Whittier and there was a LUNAR exlipse so the full moon turned RED and everyone was just sure there would be another quake-didn't happen.

That was the famous Sylmar quake-lots of damage-I don't think there was a plate glass windo in one piece anywhere on Hollywood Blvd. The freeway collapsed in several places and buildings in Downtown L A did collapse (partially or totally).

There were smaller quakes between-I was on the Pomona Freeway early one morning headed for an art show in San Diego when the radio in the car went dead and the Whittier Narrows quake hit-even though I was on the epicenter I didn't feel it because the car was so loaded down with displays and merchandise.

That quake pretty much ruined Whittier and lots of places around it in the San Gabriel Valley.

The quake that left the biggest impression on me (and Los Angeles) was the Northridge Quake-it was a new kind of quake since we are used to slip faults and that quake was a thrust fault-the government lied about it: I was told it was pronbably close to a magnitude 8 quake-I didn't remember any quake being that violent before-it really devastated the San Fernando Valley, SantaMonica and several outlying areas-it caused underground water to disappear, took down freeways, shopping malls and parking structures...had it been a few hours later in would have been a cause of many deaths but it happened in the dark, early morning.

My most vivid memory was how beautiful the sky was with all the electrics off-there were a million stars and the milky way clouds were visible, probably for the first time in decades from L A.

I was crossing my back yard and saw a bright blue meteorite followed by a green one-spectacular.

When the sun came up the aftershocks made dust clouds rise from the foothills-another thing I had never seen before.

It moved the chimney on the front house in Burbank about 2 inches away from the house itself and emptied the contents out of all the south facing cabinets in the house-I had dozens of bottles of paint on the floor but my delicate mermaid collection stayed in place.

My sisters home and garage were devastated in Northridge-she lived directly between the mall that collapsed and the apartment building that killed a number of people when it also collapsed-there were no brick walls standing anywhere in that area.

The quake broke a regulator clock in half on the wall where it hung-put a grand piano through a wall-blew the sashes off the windows-the garage went up and the land went down and when they remet the building had turned about 45 degrees on its foundation...it was surreal.

A friend who worked for the U S Geological survey told me that if one could follow the shockwave from the upward thrust of the quake into space it would be traveling outward through the solar system for several days and would pass Jupiter before it dwindled.

But we all lived-and the after shocks went on for months.

We lived almost 400 miles from San Francisco but we felt the jolt from the Loma Prieta quake that hit there on the first day of the world's series one year...they often feel quakes in California in Las Vegas, Nevada-300 miles across the desert ...

Part of California is on the Pacific Plate which is revolving counter clockwise and the rest in on the North American Plate-the San Andreas fault comes up through the imperial valley and bisects the valley where Palm Springs is located it continues north past San Bernardino and the goes along the back of the San Gabriel Mountains into the central Valley and finally into the ocean just north of San Francisco-the fault system continues all the way north past Oregon and Washington where there are a string of Volcanos anchored by Mount Saint Helens on the south followed by the Olympia range to the north-both Portland and Seattle have active volcanos just to the east of the cities.

Even In California we have places like Calistoga where carbonated water comes out of the ground in a spring and Mount Lassen which is referred to by some ads the "Mini-Yellowstone".

Mammoth in California is also a volcanic field punctuated by hot springs, cinder cones and craters-all of these are active-dormant in the recent past except for Mt St Helens which erupted in my lifetime...

The big quake in California was Fort Tejon, nearly a magnitude 8 in the early 1800s-the quakes are often named for a city/town or geographical feature that is nearby-that quake was a part of the area where the Faultline goes into the central Valley.

We will have more quakes-we wait every year for the next BIG ONE-people expect the fault to break near San Bernardino an area that has been quiet and "locked" for too many decades.

Others believe that some of the other quakes caused mirror cracks at the "dog leg" the area where the fault makes a sharp turn near San Bernardino...that quake could be devastating for the Inland Empire area of California and Los Angeles as well as orange County where I live which is just over the hills.

There is also the Inglewood fault that runs through the ocean off Long Beach-its pretty much flattened that town in 1933 and is now overdue to break again...

But which would you rather? a quake every 20 years or so or a Tornado season every year? We don't have many blizzards in this end of the state...but California does have the most Tornados of any state west of the Rockies-mostly around Sacramento.

(We had a water spout that started during a thunderstorm off the coast and came on land just 5 miles south of me through Sunset Beach where it became a Tornado-so there ya go)

No matter where you live you face something-I am used to Earthquakes I guess-I have never been injured by one nor had severe damage from one directly (other than my sis)...

We used to have floods in California-we thought they were over since we have all this flood control but the weather is changing....and now they say that Yellowstone may go off sooner rather than later (I'm sure all the conspiracy nuts are having orgasms over that piece of news.)

I really don't want to live through an extinction level event so I hope it waits 50 years or so-I have been lucky so far.

But then-I believe in reincarnation so...............