Quaking With Anticipation : Seer’s Forecast Prompts Some to Leave Town; Others Pooh-Pooh the Whole Thing

It wasn’t enough that masseur Fred Spanjaard encountered the “Shake, Rattle and Roll” notice. The sign, posted at his Venice Beach apartment building, warned tenants to remember to pay their May rents--despite a prediction by 16th-Century prophet Nostradamus that has been popularly interpreted to mean that a major earthquake will hit Los Angeles in May.

Spanjaard also found that several of his regular massage clients had suddenly, inexplicably, fled Southern California for the month.

“I know a lot of people who are going away but nobody will admit it’s because of the earthquake predictions,” he says. “It’s amazing. These people say they’ve just suddenly decided to leave town.”

Other Southern Californians, equally jittery but more open about their travel reasons, are admittedly taking off because of the Nostradamus prediction, popularized in the hot-selling videocassette, “The Man Who Saw Tomorrow,” narrated by the late Orson Welles.

Travel agents, moving company workers, bottled-water suppliers, real estate agents and earthquake preparedness specialists say they’re observing a small but significant minority of Southern Californians either getting out of the area or getting prepared to survive the Big One.

By some highly controversial interpretations of Nostradamus’ predictions--which were based on planetary alignments--the quake could occur Tuesday. And a Southern California temblor has been targeted for May by several other prognosticators.

“Everybody’s talking about a possible earthquake,” says real estate agent Elaine Young of Alvarez, Hyland & Young in Beverly Hills. “We’re getting a lot of phone calls about people leasing out their homes for the month. I’m not worried personally. I’m going to stay here and make money with all the people who are splitting. I’m leasing so many houses I can’t believe it.”

At the Griffith Observatory, so many panicky Californians have been calling to ask about Nostradamus’ prediction that a Nostradamus Hotline, (213) 663-8171, was instituted to debunk the notion that planetary alignments can create earthquakes.

Lots of People ‘Generally Fearful’

“There are lots of people out there who are genuinely fearful. They’re not crazy. They’re intelligent,” reports observatory director Ed Krupp. “We need everybody to do sensible planning for earthquakes and have those fears allayed. I even heard a talk show on which there was a call from a man who said his family was breaking up because of a fight over what to do about the earthquake.”

But even though the observatory’s hot line has three lines devoted exclusively to playing the 3 1/2-minute Nostradamus message, “They’re jammed. Apparently, even at midnight it’s hard to get through,” says observatory program supervisor John Mosley.

Stand-up comic/weatherman Fritz Coleman, who’s been spotlighting the hot-line number during his KNBC-TV weather reports this week, also found his station’s phones “ringing off the hook,” after he showed viewers a joke bumper sticker urging “Honk If You Believe Nostradamus.”

“A lot of people are taking this real seriously,” says Coleman, who also offered a house-sitting service for folks leaving town and told viewers they could believe his forecasts because “it’s not actually me talking--it’s Nostradamus channeling through Fritz Coleman’s voice.”

“We have fun with it to deflate a little of the collective Angst, “ Coleman reasons, “but every time we do it we get a lot of calls. The thing that makes me mad is that we have satellites and all this technology and people would rather believe this guy with a beret from the 16th Century.”

Los Angeles- and Downey-based psychologist Robert R. Butterworth, who last year began working with children affected by the Oct. 1 Whittier earthquake, has instituted his own earthquake hot line, (213) 923-8011, offering instructions on decreasing prediction-related anxieties. But it’s turned from “a hot line to a jammed line,” he says. He also suggests that people call the 24-hour crisis hot line, (800) 262-1414, at Charter Hospital of Long Beach, where he will also be giving free Saturday and Wednesday evening seminars on calming earthquake fears.

“By my own informal survey, I’d be willing to say one out of 20 people are worried about earthquake predictions,” Butterworth says. “Everybody seems to know at least one person who’s really concerned.”

At Warner Home Video, which distributes the Nostradamus video, secretary Virginia Green notes that “sales have risen 40% since April.” The firm has received so many calls from worried individuals that Green has found herself occasionally cast in the role of counselor. “One really nervous woman who had six kids wanted to know if I personally thought she should move out of town,” Green says. “I just told her she had to go by what her instincts told her.”

Others convinced by the Nostradamus prophecy or similar predictions by contemporary psychics have already moved out of town.

“We had some inquiries in April from people asking if they could be moved at the end of the month,” says office manager Linda Chavez of Western Mayflower moving company in Montebello. “They indicated they wanted to move because they feared the coming quake.”

It’s not just fearful clients that Chavez has had to accommodate, however. There were enough worried employees in her office that the firm sought outside help. “Some of the (employees) who aren’t longtime California residents, or who are newcomers, seem to be upset,” she says. “We’ve had the Montebello Fire Department explain to them the steps to take to be disaster prepared.”

Some locals have taken steps to safeguard their financial holdings, moving quickly to sell homes they feel would not survive a large quake. “We sold our house, which I thought was not structurally sound, because of a possible quake but the deal doesn’t close until June,” laments a Brentwood mother who has stocked bottled water, canned foods, first-aid equipment and other emergency supplies. “When it didn’t work out for us to move until June 10, I said, ‘To hell with it. Let the house slide down the hill. I don’t care. We’ll be OK. And we have earthquake insurance.’ ”

Heading to Modesto

Though many astrologers put little stock in the Orson Welles version of Nostradamus’ rhymed prediction (they claim that verses from two different predictions were compiled to come up with the quake theory), some psychics have warned of Los Angeles earthquakes on a variety of May dates.

Thus, to be on the safe side, Sharon DeJong, a Manhattan Beach systems engineer, says she’s not only stocking up on bottled water but heading for Modesto this weekend.

“We’re also going to celebrate my mother’s birthday, but if anyone’s the worry wart in the family it’s me. . . . We took out earthquake insurance a couple of months ago. We’ve made sure we have a first-aid kit. And we’ve stored glassware away that we wouldn’t want broken. I plan to buy a wrench to put outside by a gas valve and that’s about it,” she says.

Earthquake jitters are translating into sales for companies specializing in bottled water and other disaster rations. Extend-A-Life, a Pasadena firm that calls itself “the largest purveyor of disaster supplies in America,” claims that the Nostradamus prediction has triggered a 10-fold increase in sales this week of such products as pouches of purified water, 1,200-calorie survival cookie bars, first-aid kits, thermal blankets and AM-FM radios that derive their power from “hand-cranking.”

“Since Monday, the calls have become almost hysterical,” says chairman and co-founder Roberta Goldfeder. “A gentleman called from Beverly Hills who said that most of the people on his street were going to Florida and he didn’t know what to do.”

Goldfeder told him that proper disaster preparation could allay his fears, the same message she says she’s given to scores of local businesses. Security Pacific Bank, Wells Fargo Bank, CBS and “upwards of 100 corporations” have purchased disaster supplies from her firm in recent months, she says, spending anywhere from as little as $3 per employee per day of provisions to as much as $10 per employee per day.

Ron Burke, marketing manager for Sparkletts drinking water, reports that sales of six-packs of one-gallon containers of water designed to be stored for earthquakes increased 500% during April. At two Woodland Hills offices of the Prudential Insurance Co., for example, 43,000 gallons of Sparkletts were bought for office and home use of employees, according to Irene Duddy, the firm’s senior personnel consultant.

At Ralphs grocery chain, sales of bottled water are up 15% and senior vice president Jan Charles Gray jokes that Ralphs is “the water store.” Gray and others point out that not all the action can be attributed to the predictions of Nostradamus or other psychics. It just so happens that April--this year and every year--is Earthquake Preparedness Month, a time when public and private education efforts are heightened.

But even with all the hoopla about possible quakes, it would seem that most Californians are not skipping town or taking elaborate protective measures.

Indeed, travel agent Fred Zielony, manager of the Ask Mr. Foster Travel Service office in Century City, says he knows of no local residents planning to travel out of the area because of quake predictions. And he is not aware of anyone canceling a planned arrival here out of quake fear.

Lou Piatt , executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Jon Douglas Co., the largest independent real estate company in California, claims to be unaware of any serious concern about current earthquake predictions. “The subject is simply making cocktail party conversation,” he says.

At the Greater Los Angeles Visitors and Convention Bureau, Frank Santos, director of sales, convention/marketing, brought up the quake prediction issue at a midweek sales meeting. He discovered his staff “hadn’t heard anything on the subject from professional meeting planners contemplating Los Angeles. . . .”

The only time Santos recalls learning of such concern from visitors was after the Whittier quake of last October, which registered 5.9 on the Richter scale.

Even residents with purported psychic abilities are not staying away from Los Angeles this month.

Van Nuys-based psychic Carol Ann Dreyer, who has worked with the Los Angeles Police Department and been acknowledged for her services in Tina Turner’s autobiography “I, Tina,” was in New York City earlier this week and found people repeatedly asking her about earthquake predictions for Los Angeles.

“People were saying, ‘Why are you going back to L.A.? Isn’t there going to be a big earthquake?’ ” she recalls. “I said to them, ‘Do you think I’d be that foolish going back to L.A. if I felt there was going to be a big earthquake?’ I think the earthquakes where there will really be big changes are about 10 to 15 years away, much closer to the turn of the century.”

In the meantime, Dreyer isn’t worried about the fear kicked up by the predictions of Nostradamus and others. “The more we put emphasis into something, the more we dissipate its energy,” she reasons. “It’s the filibuster technique. When you see something negative, talk it to death.”