Those Anniversary Aftershocks

The Upland temblors and the San Francisco Bay Area aftershocks this week were sobering jogs to the collective memory that Californians live on top of an Earth that regularly shakes, rattles and rolls. But many simply don’t focus on preparation for a quake until it has already hit. Unfortunately, the Legislature and the governor have demonstrated that they are like everybody else. They will react to a crisis, but once the pressure is off they lose momentum, and problem-solving either slows or grinds to a halt.

The series of Bay Area quakes, occurring, coincidentally, on the 84th anniversary of the great earthquake of 1906, were all aftershocks of the quake of last October that killed 67 people and caused an estimated $7 billion in damage. After that killer quake, a flurry of activity in Sacramento led to a temporary quarter-cent sales tax that had generated more than $100 million for quake relief by the end of February.

But the Legislature is waffling on its commitment to provide additional earthquake-related programs, such as the creation of a “revolving” loan fund that could be used not only to help Northern California counties continue their recovery from last year’s quake but also to help future victims. Considering the state’s usual fiscal limits, it is reasonable that the Legislature is not going to be able to address every earthquake-related problem quickly. But legislators somehow manage to set better priorities when the horrible destruction of a major quake is fresh in mind.

The aftershocks this week remind us that we will not always have the luxury of time to consider how best to prepare for what we know is surely coming. The Legislature--and the governor, who still has not submitted a proposal promised three months ago for mandatory earthquake insurance on high-risk property--should remember that the disaster that motivated action last year could revisit sooner than anyone dares to think.