The Bigger One : Scenes From the Earthquake That Scientists Fear Most--a 7.5 Jolt on the Newport-Inglewood Fault

“It is believed . . . that the assumption of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake on the Newport-Inglewood fault represents a reasonable upper limit for earthquakes in the Los Angeles basin.”

--A STUDY OF EARTHQUAKE LOSSES IN THE LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA AREA, BY THE NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION

WHAT, REALLY, IS “the big one”? Most Southern Californians assume that it will come rolling out of the northeast, from the San Andreas Fault near Palmdale. After all, the San Andreas is the longest fault line in the state; it can--and someday will--throw off an earthquake classified as “great,” meaning an event with a Richter-scale magnitude of 8.0 or more. There are few faults in the world capable of such violence, and this earthquake will be very destructive, one of the greatest natural disasters in the nation’s history.

But most scientists do not believe that the San Andreas poses the greatest danger to Los Angeles. The San Andreas quake will strike from 40 miles away, and those miles will provide some degree of cushioning. Other faults--some small, capable of producing only modest tremors; others significantly more powerful--lie directly under the Los Angeles basin. The most dangerous of these is believed to be the Newport-Inglewood, which runs in a broken line from Culver City to Newport Beach. This fault is deadly because it is large, runs through the midst of the city, and is known to be active. The Long Beach earthquake of 1933, estimated at Richter 6.3, was a product of the Newport-Inglewood.

The following scenario is a fictional account of a magnitude 7.5 earthquake on the Newport-Inglewood as it might occur sometime in the near future. It is a worst-case view; a 7.5 magnitude earthquake is believed to be the largest that this fault can produce. But all of the scenes described are more than mere possibilities; similar events have occurred during other large earthquakes or have been hypothesized in government planning studies. The studies drawn on here were published by the U.S. Geological Survey, the California Division of Mines and Geology, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The scenarios were written in consultation with California seismologists. Though the scenes were rendered as realistically as possible, the characters are imaginary. Any similarity to real persons is purely coincidental.

--THE EDITORS

4:30:01 p.m. ON THE SANTA MONICA FREEWAY

IT’S LIKE BEING stopped at the top of a Ferris wheel, John Anderson is thinking. He is settled in his Audi on his homeward drive, inching his way up the broad sweep of the transition ramp from the westbound Santa Monica Freeway to the San Diego, heading south. At the highest point on the ramp--when he can see west to the Pacific and south past miles of choked freeway--the traffic stops altogether, and Anderson perches over all the Westside, as if dangling in space. It’s a clear, late-November afternoon, Los Angeles at its congested best. In front of him a young woman begins to bounce up and down in her Mustang, keeping rhythm to some unheard song. Then, quite gently at first, Anderson’s car too begins to rock rhythmically, as though keeping time with the young woman.

Six miles down and just to the east of the freeway ramp, two huge blocks of the Earth’s crust have been in a locked embrace for decades. Now they are breaking free. In a sudden release of the old tension, the westward block, known as the Pacific Plate, grinds and jerks its way north past the North American Plate. The total movement is tiny, only some 27.5 inches along the Newport-Inglewood Fault, but the energy released is greater than that of several nuclear bombs. The energy radiates upward and outward in waves moving 5 miles per second. The first waves are small, only capable of inducing that rocking motion on the Santa Monica Freeway. The next waves will be much larger, and to some Southern Californians they will seem to last forever. Within minutes, seismology stations all over the hemisphere will record the quake: a 7.5 on the Richter scale. Big, not huge. In an average year perhaps two earthquakes this large will occur somewhere on Earth. But most, obeying the law of averages, strike in sparsely settled regions. Not this one.

4:30:10 p.m. OVER LAX

THE BIG commercial DC-10 banks right over the ocean and heads for New York. It is pushing its way to 35,000 feet when it passes back over the city. Alice Wong looks down from her window seat, trying to spot her apartment in Ocean Park. Then she notices dust clouds rising from parts of Venice. She looks east and notices more puffs just past the San Diego Freeway in Westwood--almost as if large windstorms have struck randomly across the Westside. By now others on the plane are noticing the dust, and there’s a buzz of comment in the coach cabin. Aisle passengers lean over to watch.

In the cockpit, the captain has seen the clouds and has called the LAX tower to ask about them. An answer comes instead from the air-traffic control center in Palmdale. The LAX tower has gone silent, Palmdale says. There’s been an earthquake of undetermined size. Nothing else is known.

The pilot throws the intercom switch and tells the passengers about the quake. Their flight has been the last to leave LAX. Up in the air is a good place to be, he says, and as captain of the ship, he’s decided that they are going to stay there; LAX is no place for a DC-10 to land when the tower is down. New York is 4 1/2 hours away, and he has decided to continue as planned, and to move out of what is sure to be an emergency zone. Listening to the announcement, Wong decides the captain is being reasonable. Many of her fellow passengers don’t, however. They are in open revolt. First they ring the call buttons; then they pound on the cockpit door. They have homes down there, businesses, families. It does no good; the DC-10 flies east.

4:30:20 p.m. SAND GEYSERS AT VENICE BEACH

MARINA DEL REY IS relatively new construction; most of Venice is older. But the two neighborhoods share a crucial similarity: both are built on loose, sandy soils with high water tables. When an earthquake strikes, the intense shaking can transform soils like these into a fluid in a process called liquefaction. As the shock waves pass through the ground, the shaking separates the sandy particles. Losing their strength, they quickly become suspended in the salty water near the surface. Now, all over the Marina and Venice, buildings large and small suddenly are floating on a dark, gooey mixture that is no longer soil per se but a muddy liquid. And since the buildings are not balanced like boats, they begin to list toward one side or the other. Everywhere, buildings are tilting and collapsing. At gas stations along Washington Boulevard, the massive liquefaction produces another effect: buried gasoline tanks begin to rise in the liquefied soil. Like rusted whales they breach the surface, throwing chunks of asphalt and concrete aside as they emerge from the depths.

Just blocks away, the homeless of Venice Beach hear the quake before they feel it. In their tents and lean-tos, they stare mute as the awful, groaning sounds intensify. Then in the midst of the roar, the most remarkable, almost magical, side effect of liquefaction occurs in front of them: sand geysers begin spouting from playgrounds, sidewalks and yards. Underneath the hard surfaces, the sand is being agitated in a liquefaction of its own. The water is squeezed from the sand and finally bursts upward through cracks and gopher holes in great, spewing fountains 10 feet high that continue to erupt for the next 45 seconds.

4:30:22 p.m. DANGER OVERHEAD, DOWNTOWN L.A.

DUCKING INTO an alley between Olive and Grand, David Goldberg feels a certain pride. He’s been a messenger in the financial district for three years; he knows where to park. He knows his streets. When he feels the first trembling of the quake, he grins. He likes the adrenaline surge, the anticipation as he waits for the shaking to die down or grow stronger. This is nothing, he thinks as the first waves fade; just a little shaker.

Then it starts again, bigger and much worse. Suddenly he’s frightened. He wants to leap from his van and scramble toward the open street--to open ground, to safety. His van is poking out onto 7th, and he can see people fleeing the lobbies of the high-rises. The first chunk of masonry hits his van. Then another hits somewhere; then glass crashes over the hood. Goldberg is being bombed by the buildings as they shed their facades. He wrenches himself under the dash and waits; between the explosions of falling stone, glass and masonry, he can hear screams.

At the top of the high-rises, the buildings are swaying by as much as three feet. Inside, computers fly off desks and acoustical-ceiling tiles fall in a white blizzard. Office workers are thrown against walls, and several are pitched to their deaths through the broken windows. Hundreds are trapped in elevators that stall between floors and then rattle hard against their shafts. Some older buildings tumble, but the vast majority hold. Since the 1960s, building codes have required flexibility in the skyscrapers’ structure; and now, just as they are supposed to, the steel skeletons bend with the waves like river willows. In the offices, employees crouch under their desks and listen to sounds they have never heard before: the moaning of steel as it grinds against itself, the popping of windows, the snapping of pipes. Some of the broken pipes carry natural gas; soon there will be a half-dozen fires above the 10th-floor level in downtown alone. The fires will burn for hours.

4:30:35 p.m. THE WESTSIDE INFRASTRUCTURE FRACTURES

WIRE BY WIRE, PIPELINE by pipeline, the utilities that feed the hard-hit Westside are snapping and being crushed. From the Hollywood Hills to Long Beach, from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica, most of the freeways are being rendered impassable. Overpass after overpass rains concrete chunks onto the surfaces below. This will pose a major obstacle in the recovery; rescue and repair workers will not be able to use the freeways for the next 24 hours, until passageways are cleared through the debris by heavy equipment. Roughly half of the electrical supply will be lost, more than half the water. And there are interconnections: if a water-treatment plant loses its electricity, it cannot treat water and pump it to homes. Homes that do have water will not be able to get rid of it; the sewage lines are cut. Very few toilets will flush after the shaking stops.

4:30:42 p.m. AT THE J. PAUL GETTY MUSEUM

AT THE ERSATZ ROMAN villa housing the J. Paul Getty Museum, almost all is in ruin. A small irony: After 41 seconds, the replica is already in worse shape than some of the ancient buildings it was modeled on. Greek vases from the 4th Century BC, Roman busts, French Impressionist paintings, all are torn from their moorings and covered in debris. But on the first floor of the museum, a miracle. Several of the Getty’s most valuable sculptures stand on one of the most ingenious earthquake-compensating mechanisms ever devised. As the shaking begins, the pedestals absorb the energy; during the worst of the quake, the statues move gently from side to side as though surrounded by shock absorbers. When the quake subsides, they stand like sentries amid the rubble.

4:30:44 p.m. LANDSLIDE IN THE PALISADES

SMALL LANDSLIDES are everywhere, but in Pacific Palisades an old nightmare comes to pass. A huge chunk of the bluffs, weighted down by early winter rains, loses its grip. With a great sigh the cliff breaks free, taking a dozen homes with it. A stretch of Pacific Coast Highway is buried beneath millions of cubic yards of rock and soil; it will be closed for nine months.

4:30:47 p.m. ONE-SECOND WAVES HIT WEST L.A.

WITH MOST earthquakes, much of the terror that people experience comes from the apparent capriciousness of the destruction. One house goes down, another stands; one hillside slides, another stays firm. Each quake has a different set of rules--rules born in the physics of the event itself, when the tearing of rock strata produces a set of energy waves as distinctive as a person’s fingerprints. In some earthquakes, short waves will predominate; in others, longer waves. The shorter frequencies will shake buildings like a vibrator; the longer waves resemble the motion of a bullwhip.

In general, longer waves--ones with oscillating periods of 1.5 to 2 seconds--are most dangerous to mid-rise and high-rise structures, which tend to sway at the same rate as the waves. In an earthquake with long waves, tall buildings sway more and more with each wave, like a child on a swing being pushed higher and higher. The Mexico City earthquake of 1985 was like that, and dozens of mid-rise buildings collapsed in the heart of the city.

But this earthquake is dominated by much shorter waves, about one second or less. These waves most affect small structures, like homes and low-rise buildings. In Venice and the flats of Brentwood and Westwood, where the damage caused by the intense shaking is compounded by liquefaction, homes go down by the score; the same happens in Long Beach, San Pedro, Paramount, Huntington Beach and Newport. All have loose, sandy soils and high water tables in the flatlands. Even when liquefaction does not occur, the soft soils magnify the energy waves, making them far more lethal. Other towns are spared the worst; Compton, Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo beaches are all planted on bedrock or dry, firm soils. The waves pass through the harder material with little amplification, and in these towns, most of the houses remain standing. It’s an odd thing: Few, if any, residents thought about soil when they chose their houses. It was a detail beneath notice. And now that detail is making the difference between survival and destruction.

And it’s not just homes. A major wing of UCLA Medical Center lists and sinks like a great ship in the pool of liquefied soil underneath it. The high-pressure petroleum lines that crisscross the Westside are ripped apart when great masses of liquefied soil begin to slide downhill. The gas-soaked areas burst into flame, ignited by sparks from downed power lines. Hundreds of toxic spills occur as holding tanks and pipelines fail. In Inglewood, a manufacturing plant spills 10,000 gallons of sulfuric acid onto the ground, and soon a greenish cloud is crawling over nearby neighborhoods.

Though a given earthquake will have only a single Richter magnitude, the shaking intensities it produces will vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Scientists measure these intensities with several scales. The most commonly used scale is the Modified Mercalli, which rates shaking at levels 1 through 12. Days later, the shaking intensity for this earthquake will be rated a 7 for the Hollywood Hills; in Santa Monica and Inglewood, 8; in Venice and parts of Westwood, 9. The Modified Mercalli scale characterizes a shaking level of 9 this way: “General panic. Masonry D (buildings with poor earthquake resistance) destroyed; masonry C (buildings with better construction but unreinforced) heavily damaged, sometimes with complete collapse; masonry B (buildings reinforced) seriously damaged. General damage to foundations. Frame structures, if not bolted, shifted off foundations. Frames racked. Underground pipes broken. Conspicuous cracks in ground and liquefaction.”

4:30:50 p.m. THE STATE REACTS

IN THE OFFICE of Emergency Services in Sacramento a pulsing red light begins to flash. It means, simply, that somewhere in California there has been an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 4. At this moment, that is all the duty officer knows. He picks up the telephone and calls the agency’s director. The rescue operations have technically begun.

4:30:52 p.m. BACK ON THE SANTA MONICA FREEWAY

THE EARTHQUAKE ends. For 51 seconds, John Anderson has watched the cars ahead of him dance as if they were part of a conga line as the ramp bent in waves. The ramp is buckled and impassable now, but it has not fallen. As the movement ends, the cars’ occupants jump from their vehicles and scramble off the ramp, all of them mindful of aftershocks. Anderson takes one last look and sees a great river of abandoned cars on the San Diego Freeway, stretching for miles into the gathering dusk.

4:30:55 p.m. A SYSTEM SAVES ITSELF

ALL ACROSS the basin, telephone receivers have jiggled off their cradles. The switching centers, housed in faceless buildings throughout the city, have tolerated the shaking; they have been built to some of the highest earthquake standards anywhere. But inside the buildings, the computers that handle telephone traffic register an overload. Each phone shaken off its hook has demanded a dial tone, and the system has a finite number of dial tones that it can produce at any one time. Pushed beyond capacity, the computers automatically begin to shrink the system, cutting off 90% of the phones so that the remaining 10% continue to function. The 10% are phones assigned to emergency agencies and medical facilities.

4:31:00 p.m. ISOLATED IN INGLEWOOD

KIM ANDERSON IS in her backyard; she is not sure how she got there. What she remembers last is being in the shower when it all began, and then running, naked, to stand in a doorway. A doorway was supposed to be the right place. She remembers trying to hang on, and the terrible sounds of the house grinding against itself. And then the house starting to come apart. She does not, specifically, remember running into the backyard. Now she notices she is covered only by a throw rug that is being held very tightly by her clenched fists. And she notices she is shaking.

The house is standing, more or less. A 1930s Spanish-style stucco, the side facing the driveway now droops, as if the house were very tired. When she looks closer she notices that the house has rotated off its foundation. From the open door a faint cloud of dust from broken plaster is emerging.

More than anything, Anderson wants to talk to her husband. Has he left his office downtown? Is he dead? She is too afraid to enter her own house, but the house next door seems untouched. No one is home, but she knows where the key is hidden. Inside, she reaches for the phone. No dial tone. It will be two days before anyone makes a standard phone call from Inglewood. John Anderson, her husband, will arrive home, on foot, at 10 that night.

4:43 p.m. EMERGENCY CENTRAL

IN LESS THAN 45 minutes after the quake, Los Angeles establishes its Emergency Operations Center in the fourth level of the basement at City Hall, a room that could probably withstand a nuclear attack. Police helicopters have picked up some officials from major city agencies at prearranged locations; others have arrived on foot. Now they gather around a huge, U-shaped table to begin the process of putting the city back together. A radio frequency that usually broadcasts smog alerts is converted to a disaster broadcasting service. All around Southern California, other agencies are setting up emergency centers of their own. State officials are flying into the military airfield at Los Alamitos, the designated operations center; federal emergency officials will join them there. But progress will be agonizingly slow. Many of the damaged areas will be very difficult to reach with heavy equipment. For the first 24 to 48 hours, the residents of the ruined zones will be pretty much on their own. Most rescues of those trapped in destroyed buildings will not be accomplished by government professionals but by ad-hoc neighborhood groups.

Needing to find the most damaged neighborhoods quickly, the state Office of Emergency Services asks the Defense Department to fly a U-2 reconnaissance plane over Los Angeles. The military is willing but night is fast falling; they advise that the flight be delayed until dawn.

6:30 p.m. THE FIRST CORRIDOR

LOS ANGELES COUNTY initiates its road-clearing program. Several major streets have been designated as thoroughfares for emergency vehicles--information that had been classified till now--and now the county dispatches bulldozers and other earthmovers to shove aside the tons of debris that cover the streets. The work goes on steadily through the night, leaving the litter in huge piles on the sidewalks.

8:44 p.m. STRAINING TO MEET DEMAND

THE JOINT state-federal Emergency Operations Center, still not fully operational, is swamped with appeals from community officials for rescue teams, helicopters and heavy equipment to lift the wreckage of buildings. The supply of rescue equipment can meet only a small fraction of the demand, and most rescues have been frustrated by the arrival of darkness. Adding to the difficulties, most communication can only be accomplished with two-way radios, and the number of frequencies available is extremely limited. Officials in stricken areas are finding it difficult to reach those who can help them.

The fragility of modern civilization becomes more apparent as the evening wears on. Fire department teams cannot put out many of the fires because there is no water pressure; other fires burn without their knowledge because communication has been cut. The fire department has equipment that can reach at least to some mid-level floors in high-rise buildings, but the equipment cannot get through the clogged streets to the buildings themselves.

8:50 p.m. A FIERY NIGHT IN BRENTWOOD

FAMILIES, OR PARTS OF families, gather on their front lawns with what goods they have retrieved from their houses. The succession of aftershocks keeps them from venturing inside for long. Campfires are built on lawns for warmth, fed with debris from the wreckage. Up and down the streets of Brentwood, fires can be seen burning through the night. One family has stored 10 gallons of water and some emergency food; they and their neighbors will consume it all before morning. Some families will live on their lawns for several days; the homes are too damaged to be inhabited, but the contents must be guarded from looters.

9:10 p.m. ON MULHOLLAND DRIVE

THE PERCHED HOUSES of the Hollywood Hills, long regarded as the epitome of earthquake vulnerability, make it through the event in relatively good shape. Planted on bedrock, most suffer some damage but survive. From the top of the hills, the usual night view of the basin has been altered: the glow of electric lights is missing from large chunks of the Westside. In its place is the flare of dozens of fires from burst pipelines and industrial plants. Toxic fumes from some of the fires will carry for blocks. On the other side of the hills, the same black swatches can be seen in the San Fernando Valley. Five miles or more from the epicenter, the Valley is not as devastated as parts of the Westside; still, many homes on the soft alluvium of the Valley have been destroyed, the Ventura Freeway is blocked at Coldwater Canyon, and much of the Valley will go for days without electricity.

11:35 p.m. THE FINANCIAL NETWORK UNRAVELS

THE EARTHQUAKE has shut down the computer systems of several major banks. Without electronic data processing the banks cannot operate. Without banks, there will be no credit the next day--no checks issued, no checks accepted for credit to accounts. No automatic tellers. The flow of money between major corporations will be halted. Not only Los Angeles is threatened; the downtown financial center provides banking services for businesses all over California. Through the night after the quake, computer technicians work to put together an emergency system, but they fail. The next day the governor will declare a statewide bank holiday.

6:00 a.m. LINES TO THE OUTSIDE IN SANTA MONICA

AS DAWN COMES, a yellow pall hangs over Los Angeles, from fires that are still burning. Residents have made it through the night virtually without help from official disaster agencies. Now the first evidence of an organized rescue effort appears: GTE rolls a mobile telephone station, mounted on a truck, to the curb at Santa Monica City Hall. It incorporates a satellite dish that provides telephone service for a dozen portable phones. Until regular service is re-established, the truck will offer the only phone service available to Santa Monica residents. A line quickly forms at the truck. Since phone lines throughout the region are out of service, Southern Californians find themselves calling out-of-state relatives for news of missing neighbors and family.

4:30 p.m. DAMAGE REPORT

THE EARLY assessment of damages comes in at $20 billion. Months later, the figure stands at $60 billion. Twenty thousand people are dead; 80,000 more have required hospitalization. More than 7,000 buildings are rendered uninhabitable. The city’s infrastructure takes a catastrophic blow: 30% of fire stations seriously damaged, 40% of the police stations; there are 2,600 broken water mains and 3,200 breaks in natural gas lines. A fourth of the city’s electrical supply is knocked out; 345 miles of sewer lines are damaged. Most freeways within the city are impassable. Two local dams have failed. A few neighborhoods have all but disappeared. Recovery--the restoration of most components of a functioning city--will take a full year.

More information is available from the Southern California Earthquake Preparedness Project, 600 S. Commonwealth Ave., Los Angeles 90005.