Spirited Debate Over What to Do After a Quake

My daughter-in-law’s humanitarian foresight in adding a bottle of cognac to our earthquake kit has brought mixed comment about booze and disasters in general.

Lois R. Koch of Santa Maria doubts that a snifter of the genuine French article would sharpen my senses in dealing with the emergencies caused by the Big One.

“Just how aware and in contact with what is going on around you would you be with the liquor in your system?” she asks. “I assume during and after an earthquake you would want your senses to be as sharp as they could be so you could deal with whatever situation you are in.”

There is no argument against Mrs. Koch’s thesis. One ought to face up to any emergency sober. However, I think she goes too far in her interdiction:

“I have admonished you before about your liking for a drink in order to enjoy the view, the country or whatever else you are doing at the moment. . . . Because I think so much of you I want you to be in total control in any given emergency or difficult time.”

Still, I can hardly ignore that sort of concern, and I promise Mrs. Koch that when the Big One comes I won’t touch the cognac until after my wife has shut off the gas valve and taken whatever other security measures one must take.

As for Jay L. Ambrose’s recollection that during the 1921 Pueblo (Colorado) flood the government passed out free bourbon to its victims, I am corrected in my assumption that, since Prohibition was then the law of the land, and distilling spirits was illegal, the government must have drawn on confiscated supplies of contraband.

Not so, according to Lawrence S. Dietz, whose father was in the business; when Prohibition came in, many distillers had large stocks of bottled-in-bond spirits in warehouses labeled “for medical purposes only.” Rather than put such valuable public assets to the ax, our humane bureaucrats saved them for such disasters as Pueblo.

Col. Edward J. Costello recalls that he was a 6-year-old in Pueblo when the flood struck. “At the age of 6, there was no reason why I should have been aware of the suspension of Prohibition for the 30-day period. Yet, for me, there is an odd twist to this unusual moratorium. The story was that for many weeks after the flood there was no potable water available, and the workers involved in the cleanup were forced to drink whatever was available while on the job. Some years later my father was forced to resign from the Santa Fe because of a ‘drinking problem’ and the family came to believe that it all began with the aftermath of the flood. . . .”

Surely that sad tale reflects the wisdom of Mrs. Koch’s warning.

Dirck Z. Meengs of Westlake Village recalls that the distillation of whiskey and other spirits “for medicinal purposes” was allowed during Prohibition. Small amounts could be obtained from drug stores by prescription. (Doctors must have been as much in demand as bootleggers.)

Even after Prohibition ended, Meengs says, “my father’s parishioners would explain the presence of alcohol in their homes during his visits as being ‘for medicinal purposes only,’ accompanied by a sly grin.”

Georgia Seibert of San Francisco reports that on Oct. 17, 1989, at 5:04 p.m., she was stranded in the underground at Powell Street Station.

“Before the first aftershock, at approximately 5:45 p.m., I was poured three glasses of Chandon Brut in The Compass Rose in the lobby of the Hotel St. Francis on Powell Street. I was not charged for the champagne.

“Moses, a gentleman patron of The Compass Rose, had told me on a previous occasion that the room had survived the fire/quake of 1906. With the help of the Chandon Brut, we survived the aftershock nicely that day also.”

You see, in San Francisco they know what to do after an earthquake.

At the foot of her letter, Mrs. Seibert notes that she sent a copy of it to Herb Caen, the bard of the San Francisco Chronicle. I’m sure it didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.

I must confess that after I discovered the cognac in our earthquake kit, I opened it and took a snort just before retiring. Helps one sleep.

Surely Mrs. Koch can’t have any objections to that.