As the ground turns to mush, the sky will turn to poison. : Waiting for the Big One

When the Killer Quake hits Southern California next May, the Malibu Colony will sink into the sea, but the San Fernando Valley will remain intact.

This has nothing to do with the moral standards of either area, but with the fact that the Colony is built on sand and the Valley is composed of more substantial material.

It also has nothing to do with the relative beauty of the two regions, though it brings to mind a reporter’s comment after the 1906 quake that destroyed San Francisco, but spared Oakland.

“There are some things,” he said, “that even the Earth can’t swallow.”

I come by my information regarding the Killer Quake from two generally unreliable sources, namely a writer and a psychic.

The writer is David Ritchie, whose book “Superquake!” has been the talk of L. A., cataloguing the conditions that are bound to precipitate the shaker that will leave us in ruins.

He has been on all the talk shows, and the book is selling briskly because everyone loves a good horror story, even though we are likely to be the victims of the horror. In the next quake, it is said, only lawyers will emerge from the ruins smiling.

The psychic is Nostradamus, a Frenchman who lived more than 400 years ago and whose writings have been interpreted by modern loonies to mean the Big One will occur in May of this year.

Local psychics go even further, according to the Widow of Sid the Squid, which is to say Barbara Fabricant. Her late husband was a famous race-track tout and, as such, a bit of a psychic himself. Sid, you might say, was the Oracle of Hollywood Park.

Barbara tells me the quake will occur May 10 at precisely 3 p.m. Everyone she knows is planning to call in sick that day, which will empty the streets of every psychic, trance-channeler and faith healer in the city, of which there are thousands.

“If it doesn’t happen,” she adds cheerfully, “we haven’t lost anything by staying home!”

I don’t hold much stock in the ability of a clairvoyant to predict an earthquake and will come to work as usual, fingering my rosary beads.

A friend with whom I discussed the prediction says he is similarly skeptical, but is stocking up on white wine and condoms just in case.

Back to David Ritchie. I don’t usually interview authors because they move through L. A. like herds of wildebeests and, if you pet one, you will be expected to pet them all.

But earthquakes, like gang wars, are so topical I couldn’t resist at least talking with him. I’d do the same if the chief executioner of the Eastside Cobras wrote a book.

We met at Veterans Memorial Park in Sylmar, which was the site of the VA hospital destroyed in the 1971 earthquake. I thought it would provide an appropriate background for a discussion of the Big One, but Ritchie seemed more interested in signs that warned of rattlesnakes than in the atmosphere of contemporary disaster.

He was, however, impressed with the view from the park and said he would like to live in the Valley. I ought to point out that the man is from Baltimore, and almost anyplace else by comparison looks pretty good.

Ritchie believes the Superquake is coming, but won’t speculate when, leaving that to the Widow of Sid the Squid.

He warns, however, that it probably isn’t a good idea to rely on pets to predict its arrival, notwithstanding tales of animal panic just before a shaker strikes.

“I was in Vermont during one earthquake,” he said, “and my two cats were on the bed. I felt the quake, but they slept right through it. The only thing that woke them was the sound of the can opener that opens their food.”

One especially frightening chapter in Ritchie’s book re-creates in dramatic detail precisely what the Big One might do to L. A. It could play hell, for instance, with the freeways.

Traffic chaos, I realize, is nothing new around here. The average commuter probably spends 25% of his adult life on a freeway waiting for something to be cleared from an area known as “up ahead.”

He often doesn’t know what’s holding traffic up and doesn’t care as long as a tow truck moves it out of the way. I suppose if it were the Second Coming, he might honk on the way by, but that’s all. Beer and chow are waiting.

The difference in the next quake will be the existence on our freeways of tanker trucks loaded with toxic chemicals. If they split open, we’ll need a Second Coming to save us, Ritchie says.

As the ground turns to mush, the sky will turn to poison, and the people who left Allentown, Pa., for the sunny beauty of Southern California will probably begin to regret it.

Ritchie is philosophical. “I’d rather risk a quake in the sunshine than freeze to death in a snowstorm,” he said.

His attitude is pervasive. There is more cheerful anticipation than panic among those awaiting the Big One.

Maybe Gore Vidal was right. Anticipating a superquake, he said, gives the people something to believe in.

Amen.