By Amy Perritt
The recent earthquake still rumbles in my mind. For starters, it was my first one ever. Tell me: Did it have to be California’s strongest since 1999?
When my computer started to shake in front of me and the office blinds started to sway back and forth, banging their metal hinges against one another, a feeling of alarm and dread rushed through my body. I stood only long enough to be reminded of how I felt on the cruise ship my family and I took years ago from Florida to the Bahamas. Then... I sat and waited.
“That was a long one,” my colleague, a California native, said about a minute later when it sort of felt like the earth had stopped moving. She casually turned on the office television so we could learn that it had been 6.5 in magnitude.
Over the next couple of days, we heard more of the earthquake’s outcome in the epicenter northeast of San Simeon, and the devastation in surrounding areas such as Paso Robles where buildings were destroyed, cars demolished and, more importantly, two women lost their lives. My thoughts and sympathy go out to their families and friends.
Although one of my colleagues was disappointed that he hadn’t felt the quake in his car on the way to work, others who have lived through earthquakes over the course of their lives wondered why they had responded with such unease to this recent one. Other veterans felt nauseous for the rest of the day after it occurred. Could’ve been the numerous after shocks, but I’m doubtful.
The fact is, unless perhaps you’re a seismologist, most of us don’t know when an earthquake is going to strike. But when it does — and when the ground starts to move underneath you — it’s odd. Take it from someone with a new perspective.
A stranger in the washroom about an hour after the quake said: “This was a roller. Just you wait until your power goes out and things are a lot bumpier, sweetie. The jolts are pretty rough, and you don’t want to be in an older building. That’s when it’s really scary.”
“Great,” I said as I smiled weakly and washed my hands next to her. I made a mental note: Avoid old buildings.
Yet, as I returned to my desk, I thought back to the day when my brother and I were driving up a windy mountain road to go snowboarding. “You must always respect the mountain,” he told me. “We must always respect Mother Nature.”
Family and friends gathered in the San Bernardino Mountains to enjoy their natural surroundings on Christmas Day. Then a mudslide struck their celebration, and many lives were lost. Who was respecting whom in Iran on Dec. 26? At last count, the earthquake had buried over 30,000 people.
Certainly, my brother isn’t suggesting that he is showing disregard when, as a ski enthusiast, he goes cat skiing. Is he? When friends and I flipped while white-water rafting because the current was particularly strong, should we not have challenged the unsettled rapids a second time? Where’s the fun in that?
I think of the young teenage surfer who lost her arm to a shark in October. Her plan was to get back in the water, on her surfboard, as soon as possible. I’ve been told she has. I hope so.
Apparently it was only a matter of time before the next earthquake hit here, and therefore it was only a matter of time for me to experience my first. Another California friend told me that earthquakes are just something you accept as part of living in California. You exist with them. And he’s right. But each time I live through another, for one quick moment my heart will skip a beat and I will have the nearest door or table in my sight. Just in case. (Amy Perritt is a new resident of Santa Monica and a free-lance writer on the side.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 12, 2004. Read the original PDF.