Could a Quake Stir You to Leave?

B.J. Hutson has one foot out the door.

She had just moved to Huntington Beach from Scottsdale, Ariz., last month when the Northern California quake rattled psyches all along the San Andreas Fault. So the 55-year-old widow is re-evaluating her decision to go west. And until she arrives at a conclusion, she plans to leave most of her belongings safely stored in Arizona.

“I’m in a holding pattern,” Hutson said. “I might return to Arizona. I want to make a commitment one way or the other by the first of the year. Right now, I’m on the fence. It isn’t a good feeling.

“The other day, I was on a freeway overpass when cars were backed up and I thought, ‘I wonder how strong this bridge is.’ It (worrying about earthquakes) creates a lot of stress in your body that you’re not even aware of. On TV, geologists keep pointing out exactly where the faults are, and I think, ‘What am I, an idiot? I’m playing with fire.’ ”

Susan and Jack Moore, however, have all four feet firmly on the ground.

They were driving across the New Mexico desert on their way from Washington, D.C., to a new life in Irvine when they heard about the Northern California quake. “I have three grown kids back east, and the earthquake scared them more than it did me,” Susan said. “They all called and said, ‘Don’t you think you ought to come back?’

“It didn’t make me have a second thought about moving here,” she said.

An outbreak of post-tremor jitters could be expected among Californians north and south after the Bay Area tragedy, said psychologist Jerry Kasdorf, founder of the four PhobiaCare Treatment Centers in Orange County. “All of us are having thoughts of the Nimitz Freeway when we’re caught in a traffic jam underneath an overpass,” he said. “No one likes to be in vulnerable places right now. That’s not a phobia--that’s a rational fear.

“Certainly, some of that fear will diminish with time. But I have a feeling that this new, heightened sensitivity will become a part of us. It has made us aware that the Big One really might happen in Southern California.”

But while news stories about the somewhat distant 7.1 quake have given Orange County residents cause to pause, there is nothing like experiencing a disaster firsthand.

“No doubt about it--I had a lot more calls when the Whittier quake occurred, although this latest one was much stronger,” Kasdorf said. “If you don’t actually feel the quake, it doesn’t have the same impact.”

Mission Viejo psychologist Terry Schenk agreed: “After the Whittier quake, people were very terrified; they came to me complaining that they were having nightmares. But the Northern California quake is not that much of an issue with my patients. People must think, ‘Oh, San Francisco is far away.’ It’s part of the denial process.

“After all, if we walked around thinking about all the bad things that could happen to us, we’d be paralyzed,” Schenk observed. “If you’re a functioning, healthy person you say, ‘I’ll do the most I can to prepare for the event of an earthquake,’ and then you go on with life. Most of us are willing to pay that price--to live a little on the edge--for all the advantages Southern California offers. People are not moving out by the droves.”

Definitely not, according to Orange County realtors. “We specialize in handling transfer personnel, and not one of our clients has expressed concern about moving here since the San Francisco earthquake,” said Gloria Winkelmann, president of Clor, a Fullerton-based reality company.

“People forget very quickly; that’s just human nature,” Winkelmann said. “The interesting thing about this whole scenario is that even in San Francisco, people will forget. The quake will temporarily affect real estate values up there, but we won’t see a long-range effect.”

“There’s been absolutely zero reaction from Southern Californians,” concurred Ernest George, president of William E. Doud & Co. Real Estate Brokers, based in Corona del Mar. “It’s as though San Francisco were another state. Southern California is a different world, as far as Southern Californians are concerned. If a burglary occurs a mile away from your home, you don’t feel as threatened as when it occurs on your own block. It’s someone else’s problem.”

Said Jeanette Cabaniss, a sales agent for Tarbell Realtors in Orange: “I recently had a husband and wife who were going to move here from Texas, but when they saw the real estate prices, they were devastated and decided to stay put. But I haven’t heard any negative comments about the earthquake.”

Nor have employment-placement companies witnessed a surge in residents looking to evacuate sunny Southern California. “People act like, well, it happened in San Francisco, not in Orange County,” said Bob Booth, owner of Irvine-based Corporate Recruiters, which specializes in Fortune 500-rated corporations. “We hear a lot more complaints about the traffic and congestion than about earthquakes. More than ever, people are wanting to cash out and move to Eugene, Ore., or Boise, Ida. Problem is, the job market isn’t as good there.”

So even with all its faults and fault lines, out-of-state newcomers keep on pouring into Orange County--at an average of about 250 transplants a month, estimated Melanie Hodgson, vice president of Bright Beginnings, a neighborhood-welcoming service. “The San Francisco quake hasn’t deterred people from coming, but it has made them more conscious of earthquake preparation,” she said. “In the past couple of weeks, we’ve been selling a lot of earthquake kits made by the Red Cross.”

Still, the San Francisco quake shook the faith of least one longtime Orange County resident.

“I’ve lived here all my life,” said 50-year-old David Rice. “I never worried too much about earthquakes. But for some reason, that one in Whittier two years ago really scared me, and then the one in San Francisco made me all the more nervous.”

The La Habra schoolteacher would just as soon re-root on more stable ground, if only his wife would cooperate. “She’s not interested--otherwise, I would have left by now,” Rice confided. “But now that our youngest son is in college, I might try again to talk her into moving.

“I knew some people who left Los Angeles after the (Sylmar quake) in ‘71, and I laughed at them. But I’m not laughing anymore.”