Quake

["Cotter_Cindy" <cotter_cindy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

It wasn't the Big One.

But don't tell that to the people in the Valley.

I don't live in the Valley.  We were woken up at 4:30 on Monday morning by an
earthquake.  The first thing I noticed was the rumbling.  In my half-awake
state that only confused me.  The shaking was unmistakable.  My husband Alan
and I ran for our daughter Tina who was awake saying, "What is it?"

We rode it out in her bedroom doorway.  Door frames are reinforced and less
likely to collapse than other parts of the house.  We've discussed earthquakes,
she and I, so she pretty much understood what was going on.  Nothing was
falling or breaking, seemed like no big deal.  When it was over I stayed with
her for a few minutes, then we all went back to bed.

Eight a.m. she woke up and wanted to watch cartoons.  There were none, only
quake news!  This quake was on a kind of fault that has, within the past few
years, been discovered to be quite common in this area.  Not the huge, slipping
sliding kind, like the San Andreas, but a small, local compression fault,
closer to the surface.  It's capable of causing much more damage than would be
expected at that level of severity, but over a much smaller area.  I was
stunned.

The epicenter was in the San Fernando Valley where both my brother and my
mother live.  I tried calling them but couldn't reach them.  Long distance
calls have a better chance of getting through, so I figured the longer the
distance the better.  I tried calling my sister in Wisconsin, but didn't have
her number.  (They've just moved there.)  I called information, but in my
flustered state gave the operator my sister's first husband's name.  (We've GOT
to stop changing our names like this.  It's too confusing.)  No luck.

I spent the morning watching tv and trying to assess their repeated warnings
not to travel into the area (freeways down, traffic lights out, leave the road
clear for emergency vehicles) and weighing that against the big story, an
apartment building that collapsed into the parking structure below, crushing
the first story under the second and third stories.  The death toll there kept
rising, finally stopping at 15 last I knew.  I worried about my mother.  I
paced a lot and called a lot and finally got through to her.  She was ok.  She
gave me my sister's number.

More pacing, more calls.  Finally I reached my brother.  He and his wife were
ok.  Called my mother to let her know.  Called my father, couldn't get through.
 Called my sister and asked her to call my father.  Everyone accounted for,
everyone ok.

But ok is a relative term.  Ok in this context means no physical injuries and
no structural damage -- the roof isn't falling in.  It also means no gas
(cooking, heating, hot water), no water (drinking, cooking, washing, cleaning,
flushing toilets), no electricity (no lights, no refrigeration, no tv), no
phone (no help, no solace).  My mother kept saying she'd be ok when the lights
were turned on and she could vacuum.  There was broken glass everywhere and she
couldn't see well enough with only a flashlight to even try to go into her
kitchen.  She's in her middle seventies, lives alone.  Most of her neighbors
left.

The next day, Tuesday, Alan and I took off work, left Tina at the preschool,
and went to the Valley.  Until you get really close to the epicenter, you don't
notice much.  A block wall down here and there, bits of debris of unknown
origin in unexpected places (the middle of the road), some traffic lights out,
a road closed.  The strangest sight was the parks.  They're all full of people
camping out -- all of them!  I'd seen it on the news, but I'd supposed the
media had found one park somewhere and played it up.  They didn't.

My mother was fine.  She couldn't make outgoing calls, but some incoming calls
made it.  She had electricity and water (though they were being warned to boil
it) and had pretty much cleaned up the place.  There were cracks here and there
in the walls, but none looked serious.  She's planning on going back to work
Thursday (Tuesday and Wednesday are her days off anyway, so she would have
missed only one day), but only if the gas is back on.  She needs hot water to
do her hair, and she won't go back with her hair a mess.  She also needs the
gas for heating.  She was COLD Monday night.

It took us a long time to get from my mother's apartment to my brother's house.
 The traffic lights were out with police only at the major intersections.
Traffic was very slow.  More damage to buildings was apparent to the casual
observer.  People were camping on the lawns, loading furniture into U-hauls.
The smell of barbecuing was everywhere.

We passed a large office building that had collapsed, thankfully empty due to
the holiday.  The third floor folded into the first.  The facade on the front
buckled with huge bends of re-bar tangled and jutting out, but otherwise stayed
mostly intact.  Where it had broken away-on a corner of what is now the second
floor-I could see an office with desk, chair, and even pictures (which must
have been bolted) hanging on the wall.  A group of three men on the sidewalk
were giving a press conference, gesturing at the building.  About ten cops and
several police cars were grouped off to one side.  People with cameras were
wandering around, looking for the best angle.  The street directly in front of
the building was blocked off with sawhorses and yellow tape, slowing the
traffic even more.

My brother was a few blocks away.  He said when the quake hit, he had a
flashlight nearby but couldn't reach it.  Too much broken glass and he couldn't
find his shoes.  (I remember very vividly from the tv coverage one woman's
account of trying to reach her daughter after the quake.  She crawled through
broken glass.  As she spoke she held her arms in front of her, elbows bent,
heavily swathed hands up.  She had long, polished nails, and she kept gently
touching her face with them as she talked.  That image will haunt me.)

It took Jimmy 15 minutes to find his pants and his shoes and his light.
Neighbors were outside calling to him.  He had a water leak and they said they
could smell gas.  He went out to turn off the gas and water.  There was talk of
evacuation.  They're downstream from a damn and the area was evacuated after
the Sylmar quake for fear the damn would break.  A house a couple of houses
away was burning and huge flakes of ash were landing in Jimmy's yard.  No water
(except for the possible flood), no phone, all emergency services stretched to
the max.  He said as he stood there he couldn't decide what was most likely to
get him, quake, flood or fire -- and he was only covered for fire.  (This, in
case you didn't catch it, is an example of quake humor.  I laughed heartily,
but maybe you had to be there.)

His wife Joy suffered brain damage some years back, and she's not in great
shape.  I set myself the task of cleaning up the kitchen.  There was glass
everywhere.  I was SHOVELING the kitchen floor, not sweeping.  The whole time
we were there (a couple of hours) Joy spent  rubbing a dirty spot on the floor
with a dry towel.  Jimmy tried to get her to help me pick up glass, but she
refused.  "I like my mugs" she said indistinctly.  She didn't want to throw
away those shards.

She was once a very dynamic woman, a commercial artist with lots of artistic
hobbies including ceramics.  Many of the mugs were her creations.  This would
always hurt, but Joy has lost the capacity to ever make another mug.  It's just
one more disaster, wiping out one more piece of her life.

Well, the utilities are slowing coming back.  The mess is being cleaned up.
The heavy damage was confined to a small area.  No one I know was hurt.  But
boy, that Big One, when it comes, sure as hell won't be any fun.

I'm ok.  I really am.  And we'll all be here tomorrow, and tomorrow we'll be
even more ok.

Cindy Cotter
Cotter_Cindy@xxxxxxxxx