THE NEWPORT QUAKE : High and Low, It Rolled, Shook and Rattled ‘Em

High on the list of places not to be when The Big One hits is a swinging platform, suspended from the top of a 10-story building.

Take it from Mike Wiley, owner of Orange Coast Window Cleaning in Irvine, who had two-man crews washing windows on high rises in Costa Mesa and Orange when the Not-So-Big-One hit on Friday.

“It got a little exciting for them,” Wiley said. “They can get some pretty good lateral sway.”

“They got a feeling weak in the knees and wanted to get down as quickly as they could. They didn’t know if there was going to be another one following immediately.”

The damage from Friday’s earthquake was minimum, but it will be memorable for those who felt the temblor that hit so hard it turned attention away from 100-degree temperatures. Nevertheless, just about everyone escaped intact, save a few grated nerves.

As Wiley pointed out, all went well for his window washers in the wake of the 4.6-Richter Scale jolt.

The wire ropes used by high-rise window washers and the built-in sockets tied in structurally to the roof tops ensure that “the building would have to go before we would go,” Wiley said.

Of course, “the guys on ladders, heh, heh, can be a little concerned,” Wiley conceded. “The ladders are even more dangerous than a (suspended platform) is. A ladder can . . . come down. Thankfully that didn’t happen.”

If it was crystal clear to window washers what was happening at 1:07 p.m. Friday, it wasn’t quite as apparent to some others.

For example, Gloria McDonough was minding her own business, waiting at a stop light at Beach Boulevard and Westminster Avenue in Westminster when the driver in front of her climbed out of his car and stormed toward her with an intense, angry glare.

“He wanted to punch me,” McDonough said. “He looked so fierce. . . . I put my head out the window and yelled, ‘It’s an earthquake! It’s only an earthquake!”

McDonough said the fellow sheepishly put his hands over his head, then over his face, “like in shame,” and walked back to his car.

“He actually thought I had hit his car,” she said.

There are those, like McDonough’s antagonist, who react. There are those who plan ahead.

Take for instance the case of Dave A. Dickstein at Amies Advertising & Public Relations in a 10-story building in Irvine. Dickstein was in the midst of a discussion with two colleagues on a mock earthquake drill he was preparing when his office began shaking.

A shaken Dickstein left the office a short time thereafter.

Or take the case of Frannie Winslow, the city of Irvine’s emergency-management coordinator, who was at Stone Creek Elementary school Friday morning for its annual earthquake drill.

Less than 2 hours later when the quake hit, the kids knew what to do. They got under their desks.

But Winslow was leaving the Sizzler restaurant in Irvine, where she had been eating lunch. She said she didn’t even know there had been an earthquake, though she did hear something.

“I thought a truck had run into a pole,” she said.

Today, Winslow will participate in the “Ready or Not Emergency Expo” at UC Irvine to kick off California’s Earthquake Preparedness Month.

“We’re hoping this little bit of encouragement will help people if they have to choose between the beach and the expo--that the expo is the place they should be,” Winslow said.

Winslow could meet some of the 180 people who were dining Friday in the popular Bistango Restaurant, the first floor of the 10-story Atrium building at 17900 Von Karman Ave. in Irvine, when the earth shook.

“It worked out to be convenient because we had four tables where people had finished eating but were still talking, and they left immediately,” said maitre d’ Barry Nestande. “So that opened up room for more customers.”

One couple “took off like a shot,” leaving an unpaid bill. But a woman called later to apologize, saying she wanted to check on her baby at home, Nestande related.

While a couple of other people dived under tables, one patron “immediately grabbed the wine on the table and made sure it didn’t spill.”

A few miles to the west, about four cases of wine rattled off a rack and onto the floor at Carpi’s Restaurant, 2200 Harbor Blvd., Costa Mesa. Owner Dan Carpi estimated the damage at about $1,000.

Elsewhere, business picked up.

“We sold quite a few drinks right afterwards,” said Mike Stomp, the bartender at the Alley bar and restaurant in Newport Beach.

Linda Bonniksen, a spokeswoman for Pacific Bell, was nursing a glass of water at a meeting in Irvine when the table “went up and slammed down.”

“The water was about 3 inches above the rims of the glasses,” Stomp said. “It seemed like it hovered there and then splashed on the table.”

While the earthquake altered midday dining habits, it only briefly interrupted George Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell,” which was being staged for high school students in a special matinee at South Coast Repertory Theatre.

The show, as every school child knows, must go on, and it did.

At the same time, KDOC Channel 56 in Anaheim was taping a show of its own, “News Watch.”

Anchor Michelle Merker was interviewing a public health adviser for the Orange County health department when: “All of a sudden, everything started shaking sideways while I was answering a question,” she said.

“I sort of lost my trend of thought for a moment,” Merker said. “It was amusing.”

The folks at Trinity Broadcasting Network in Tustin, where country gospel singer Walt Mills was addressing a nationwide, 160-station hookup, were also taken by surprise.

“I thought the power of God was so strong it was shaking our building,” said studio volunteer Dottie Lamonte. “We’re just wondering if the Lord was coming. We were just praising the Lord all the way through it.”

The quake also put a scare into Gary Flournoy, 38, an electrician working on the 11th floor of the Marriott Hotel building under construction in the 500 block of Anton Boulevard in Costa Mesa.

“My heart stood still,” said Flournoy, who was thrown to one side of a doorway. “Dry wall was falling in the hallway and there was dust. I . . . jumped out an opening onto the roof. If it was going down, I didn’t want anything on top of me.”

Afterwards, Flournoy said, he grabbed his keys and ran down the stairs, two, three and maybe four steps at a time. “If the building goes down, I do not want to be digging around in the rubble looking for my keys. I want to get in my car and go home.”

Not everyone’s precious belongings escaped unscathed.

A 2-foot bust of Abraham Lincoln shattered when it fell from a desk in the fifth-floor office of Orange County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez at the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana. The quake also ripped a quarter-inch-wide crack in the wall, running from floor to ceiling.

“I believe this building is earthquake-sound, but when you see something like this it makes you wonder,” Vasquez said. “I’m sitting here, looking at the crack, and I can see daylight on the other side.”

Even though none of the inmates awaiting appearances in Newport Beach’s Harbor Municipal Court saw daylight, the jolt rattled quite a few nerves in a first-floor jail holding tank.

They Wanted Out

“There were about 80 guys that wanted out immediately,” said a bailiff in Judge Russell A. Bostrom’s court.

Some reactions to the quake seemed based entirely on territorial inclinations.

Consider Mary Jane Blackwell, Santa Ana Heights resident, who explained: “I’m from Texas and I hate these earthquakes. At least in Texas you get a warning when the tornadoes are coming.”

“It knocked me down,” Blackwell complained. “It was like the floor dropped 2 feet, and I fell down on my knees. It scared me to death. It took me almost 45 minutes to stop shaking.”

And there was Mariam Bazell, a 68-year-old former resident of Chicago’s Hyde Park, who lives on the 14th floor at Costa Mesa’s Bethel Towers where glass knickknacks were broken in good number but where none of the 300 retired seniors living there were injured.

Bazell said she was terrified.

“For someone who’s not used to this, it’s a very frightening experience,” said the retired library clerk who has lived in Costa Mesa only 4 months. “At first I thought, ‘My God, maybe a plane fell down on my roof.’ ”

Then the building started to sway and “my knees turned to water.”

Outside the building nearly 3 hours later--just in case there might be aftershocks--Bazell spoke calmly and even joked.

“This was my initiation,” she said. “Now I can say I’m a real Californian.”

As far as Tina Soria is concerned, Bazell can have California and its earthquakes.

The 63-year-old Soria was behind the counter at the El Gaucho Market at MacArthur Boulevard and Fairview Street in Santa Ana, where bottles, cans and boxes spilled into nearly every isle and ceiling panels came tumbling down.

“I called to my husband who was in the back, ‘Let’s get out of here,’ and I just ran out onto the street,” she said.

“I’ve been in this country for 25 years, but I’m moving back to Argentina; it’s poor but at least it doesn’t shake.”

4.6 EARTHQUAKE CENTERED IN NEWPORT BEACH

WHEN: 1:07 p.m. Friday

EPICENTER: Along the Newport-Inglewood fault, 7 miles under the West Newport section of Newport Beach.

MAGNITUDE: 4.6, reported as a sharp jolt near the coast and a rolling motion inland.

BREADTH: Quake was felt from San Diego to Santa Monica and as far east as San Bernardino County.

INJURIES: Hospital reported treating five persons with minor injuries.

DAMAGE: No major damage reported. Brief interruptions of telephone service in the Irvine-Costa Mesa-Newport Beach area.