MANY DISCUSSIONS about Los Angeles revolve around the elements -- fire, water, the land itself. Disaster is a big subject as well. Earthquakes and floods and fire. The following segment is from an essay written by Richard Reeves, who describes a series of events that force him to ponder why he ever came to Los Angeles. Look carefully at how he "paints" the fire, how he evokes the very feeling of the earthquake. He's not just "telling" us, he's allowing us to experience it too -- with all the wonder and terror.
"It was midafternoon when I arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on October 23, 1978, but the sky was already dark. Driving home along the Pacific ocean, I could see black to north and west -- boiling clouds of smoke coming off the Santa Monica Mountains. By six o'clock, I was standing in from of my house, in Pacific Palisades, watching waves of orange flame break over the mountains. Houses in the path of the waves exploded silently just before the flames reached them. I counted eight -- puffs of bright gas, and then the houses were gone. By seven o'clock I was packing the car -- family photograph albums and insurance policies first -- and listening to a radio report of tires melting as people tried to escape the fire in automobiles . . . .
My first earthquake was on New year's Day of 1979. A friend and I were having a late lunch in a little place called the Inn of the Seventh Ray, in Topanga Canyon. There was a heavy jolt, and the floor vibrated. I thought a truck had hit the building. But the floor did not sop vibrating, as it would have if the building had been struck. I was confused. Actions seemed to be taking place in slow motion. People pushed chairs and tables aside, stood up, and began running toward the door. I realized that there was a sound -- a steady roaring, as if a freight train were coming into the room. Outside I still heard the sound and felt the vibration. Stones were clattering down a hillside into the roadway. The next day's Los Angeles Times reported that the quake was 'small' -- 4.6 on the Richter scale. It had lasted less than ten seconds, and there were twenty smaller aftershocks. While it was happening there was no way of knowing that this thing would be judged small by the instruments at the California Institute of Technology.
I had already begun to wonder whether God intended for people to live in Los Angeles."
from "Vulnerable" by Richard Reeves, taken from Unknown California
-- L.G.
(photo credit: Atwater Village Newbie, flickr creative commons)
This I found on my Facebook feed this morning; a quote from another L.A. journalist:
ReplyDelete"I live in the city that waits to die. I live in Los Angeles.
Of course, it’s not just Los Angeles that waits. Sacramento, Oakland and San Diego, among other California cities, large and small, bide their time. But since I live in Los Angeles, because places like Pasadena and Rancho Cucamonga sound too sleepy for such an ominous aphorism, and because San Franciscans turn their noses up at us, at the moment Los Angeles is the city whose destiny concerns me most.
According to experts, in the near or distant future, some part of California is going to experience a major earthquake. Makes sense. The occasional tremor notwithstanding, we haven’t had an honest to goodness earthquake since the 1994 Northridge quake that tossed me out of bed at four AM. (Speak of the devil. As I write this, Sunday, April 4, there was an earthquake. Centered in Mexicali, the capital of Baja, California, it registered 7.2 on the Richter Scale and was felt in parts of Arizona and Nevada.)
Based on recent global earthquake activity–China, Peru, Chile, Haiti–you don’t have to be Nostradamus or a seismologist to figure California’s turn for a big one can’t be far off.
And everyone in California knows it. We live with this weight of inevitability the way humanity understands tomorrow is promised to no one. Californians live with that idea AND earthquakes. "
Thoughts anyone?