Dateline>City of Angels

I feel soooo left out. I missed Tuesday’s “big” seismic event.

No, I wasn’t out of town, but rather on the road with the Daring Doberman Duo in my Jeep, which is seldom a smooth ride to begin with. Thanks to all the shakes, rattles and wind noises of open-top driving, I and the dogs remained blissfully ignorant of any earth moving under our wheels.

Not that there weren’t clues. Cruising along Riverside Drive I passed a few businesses where people were rushing out the doors with weird looks on their faces and wondered what the commotion was.

Then the radio began blaring the news of a 5.8 quake centered in the Chino Hills. (Later downgraded to a 5.4.) I rushed home to check the house, but not a knick-knack was disturbed.

Damn, I thought. Another missed blogging opportunity. After all, who could possibly care about a relatively minor quake and/or my non-experience of it? Certainly nothing to write home (or blog) about.

Shows how much I know.

This morning my writer pal from Atlanta contacted me asking if I was OK. She’d called yesterday, but the lines were jammed, leaving her a little concerned.

I had to explain that the switchboards always get tied up after light quakes if only because the first thing we Angelenos do is call everyone we know and ask, “Did you feel it?”

“No damage, nothing toppled,” I reported, joking that “while a 5.4 may seem big, here in L.A., it’s just a minor annoyance. We don’t usually start panicking until they hit a least a 6.0 on the Richter Scale.”

“I think it’s kinda funny that a 5-something doesn’t hardly rate in L.A.,” she replied. “I experienced a minor quake while visiting L.A. back in 1989 or ‘90 and I didn’t like it one bit.” Plus, she added, images from the temblor were still all over the news.

I rushed to the TV to survey the cable-news channels. Sure enough, a full day later, our little jolt was still the talk of the Global Village.

Hardly a Shocker by Comparison…

I have to admit to some surprise. California has seen more than its share of powerful temblors: Northridge in 1994 (6.7), Loma Prieta in 1989 (6.9), Whittier Narrows in 1987 (5.9), and the 1971 Sylmar Quake (6.6), for starters. Of course, the one that really made history was San Francisco’s Great Earthquake of 1906 (photo, left). A whopping 8.25 on the Richter Scale, the quake and subsequent fires left as many as 700 dead and 250,000 homeless. And before that, in 1812, a series of Southern California quakes (one reaching 7.1 in magnitude) devastated a number of California missions, and (according to legend) caused a small tsunami in the Ventura-Santa Barbara region.

Those are what I’d call BIG quakes. By comparison, yesterday’s officially “moderate quake” hardly rated. Was it really worth this much media attention?

And that’s when it dawned on me how complacent I’ve become. In many parts of the world, where structures are substandard, a 5.4 would be a big deal, killing hundreds. Here, it’s just fodder for meaningless water cooler banter. Most of us will laugh about the odd places we were when it hit, what we did or didn’t feel, the embarrassing reactions we had, and then forget the whole thing in a few days. Briefly shaken, but not the least bit stirred, we’ll put off quake preparation for another weekend, another month, another year.

We natives can always spot the transplants during mild tremors. They’re the ones whose faces still register shock long after the seismographs return to normal. But this is one area where we may want to take a cue from the newbies and stand in awe of Mother Nature: She sent us a playful wake-up call yesterday. We all know she’s got The Big One brewing on the back burner.

When she finally serves it up, I doubt any of us will find ourselves blithely cruising through it feeling left out.