Getting Ready to Ride Out the Big One to a Fault

I was facing a window overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge when the tremor struck. “A weak aftershock,” the locals grinned, and went about their work. But I held my breath and counted--a habit I developed at the time of the San Fernando earthquake in 1971.

In the 15 years since then, other quakes have rumbled through cities and towns the length of California. These include the Coalinga quake of 1983, the New Year’s Day Santa Barbara quake in 1979, and last month’s temblor in Marin County. Each dramatic in its own way, none has been the much heralded “Big One.”

Most Southern Californians believe that a whopper on the scale of the 1985 Mexico City temblor is in our future. According to the sociologists Ralph H. Turner, Joanne M. Nigg and Denise Heller Paz in “Waiting for Disaster; Earthquake Watch in California” (just published by the University of California Press), people believe the predictions of scientific experts although some of us have misinterpreted their message.

Earthquakes, unlike tornadoes, hurricanes and floods, give no visible warning to the layman. In the past decades, however, seismologists have learned a great deal about ground movements and are able, in some degree, to predict a window of danger, a period of time in which a quake is expected in a particular locale. The window, however, is so large that it is hard to sustain a mood of urgency when it comes to making preparations for alleviating the anticipated loss of life and property.

Optimists depend on acts of unpremeditated compassion, heroism and altruism that have saved lives during other calamities. But the authors of this survey of public opinion caution against counting on this. They point out that in the New York City blackout of 1965 people were very protective of one another, while 12 years later a similar blackout unleashed an orgy of looting and vandalism.

Although they do not recommend any particular approach, the authors mention the large number of lives saved in recent quakes in China and Japan. The message is clear: Preparation prevents suffering.

Where people look for help, and how they prepare, can be divided into three parts. Government, at all levels, can shore up weak dams and insist on stringent building codes and civil defense preparations; in the neighborhood, grass-roots organizations can make contingency plans; and individuals can supply themselves and their families with stored foods and bottled water, first-aid kits, flashlights and battery-operated radios. In the wake of Proposition 13 and a general paring down of government responsibility, the latter two areas of preparedness seem the most practical. Yet the individuals polled during this three-year sociological survey seem to expect government at some level to be pretty much in charge.

The study also reveals that homeowners are more likely to be prepared than renters, and that preparedness rises with income and education. Not surprisingly, those who feel in charge of their lives in general tend to take the necessary precautions to continue being in charge during an emergency. Conversely and equally understandable, they discovered that women and members of minority groups tended to be more fearful and more fatalistic about the coming quake.

One of the interesting revelations of the study is the respect that most Southern Californians have for science. Many people were familiar with the latest theories of earthquake prediction and accepted the authority of experts from institutions like Caltech. At the same time they retained faith in their own intuition and in folk predictions such as “earthquake weather” and the premonitory signals of domestic animals.

Acknowledging that the threat of living with the constant knowledge of possible disaster can develop a head-in-the-sand attitude--which we as a population are often accused of--the authors conclude that we are, in fact, facing the realities of our situation rather well. Many people who have not yet stocked up on emergency supplies say that they plan to. Moreover, they do know how to find cover during a quake, and they have taught their children how, should the quake come.

Ironically, the greatest danger the study revealed is too much faith in the experts. Believing that seismologists know more than they do, many people believe that the warnings they have been hearing are simply first-stage alerts. They expect that there will be another short-term warning that will give them time to reach safety just before the big one strikes. It seems that a little less faith in experts and more individual preparation will help us ride that one out when it does come.