L.A. to a Fault : Television: NBC’s earthquake miniseries will present the city’s ultimate shakedown--something many say we deserve.

When “Earthquake” was unleashed in 1974, complete with a vibrating Sensurround soundtrack, Mann’s Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard strapped a “safety net” across its ornate ceiling to heighten the thrill. That added to the fun of it all, along with another visceral appeal among audiences: their sardonic love-hate relationship with L.A.

As New Yorker magazine explained it at the time, “Who needs a reason to destroy L.A.? The city stands convicted in everybody’s eyes. You go to ‘Earthquake’ to see L.A. get it, and it really does.”

Well, we’re gonna get it again, this time in a four-hour miniseries on NBC. The network sees enough intrinsic entertainment value in “The Great Los Angeles Earthquake,” starring Joanna Kerns, that it is likely to air the drama during the November ratings “sweeps.”

The crew recently finished filming fictional 5.7, 8.0 and 7.2 Richter-scale shakers on the deadly Elysian Park Fault that runs under us. The quakes pretty much dispose of the major characters. Also demolished: City Hall, the Hollywood sign, Metrorail tunnels, Century City, Santa Monica--and virtually whatever time permits.

Much of the action was filmed on the ravaged “New York Street” at the Universal Studios back lot, where Charlton Heston, Genevieve Bujold, Ava Gardner, Lorne Greene, George Kennedy, Victoria Principal et al. were pummeled in the earlier “Earthquake” to the molto agitato soundtrack by John Williams. But executive producers Frank von Zerneck and Robert Sertner, who said their new L.A. destruction is costing $9.2 million, had to go to the desert to fire up and shatter their “miniatures” of the city.

Kerns, who has funnier duty as Mom on ABC’s “Growing Pains,” plays Dr. Claire Winslow, chief seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena. Her specialty: earthquake prediction. After the Big Ones, Claire finds herself clawing through debris in her home trying to save her daughter.

“It’s horrifying to look at those sets,” Kerns said, “and think that this is what it will look like. I have an incredible imagination and there was such a panic that set in when we were doing that scene. . . .”

It’s taken three years to make the movie: “It’s easy to get the idea to do the earthquake,” said producer Sertner. “The hard thing is to sell it.”

Von Zerneck quoted NBC execs: “L.A., so what? Our network covers 50 states. The attitude of most of the people in the country is, ‘Good for them. It deserves to fall off into the Pacific. People in California are crazy anyway.’ ”

Their research turned up the fact that there are faults all across the country and, in fact, the worst quakes in the last 200 years were in the winter of 1811-12 on the New Madrid fault involving Missouri and Tennessee. Three quakes were estimated in the 8.6 to 8.9 magnitude and were felt as far away as Boston.

There are 30 states in which the earthquake threat is as great as it is in Southern California, said Tony Masucci, NBC senior vice president for movies and miniseries and the yes-man on the project. That was the key selling point.

“Although it’s difficult to say public service when you’re talking about basic entertainment programming,” Masucci said, “we decided to do this for a number of reasons. . . . There’s a lot to be done in terms of earthquakes that the public doesn’t know about, and if we can do it in an entertaining fashion, let’s do it.”

(NBC isn’t alone in its interest. ABC had been developing at least two quake films, one on the 1985 Mexico City earthquake and one on last year’s Bay Area shaker, “Quake ‘89: 10 Days in October,” but both were dropped. A publicist said that the latter might have been canceled because of a USA cable network movie on the same topic, this one called “After the Shock,” scheduled for Sept. 12 airplay.)

Von Zerneck said that the theme for their movie was found in the bombing of Pan American Flight 103: “Ever since Pan Am 103, it’s very clear what the moral dilemma is: Information is found; somebody’s going to bomb the plane; no one was told. The people in charge say it may not be true, it could be a hoax, people will panic, no one will fly, it could mean financial disaster. And so nothing was done.”

In “The Great Los Angeles Earthquake,” there are clues to the impending doom: miniquakes at the lower-eastern shore of the Salton Sea, dropping oil pressures in the Baldwin Hills field, rising radon readings, jagged sidewalk ruptures on Sunset Boulevard, a new methane gas explosion in a Fairfax Avenue shopping center, boiling water bubbling out of long-dry wells, satellite measurements showing continued movement of Mt. Wilson toward Palos Verdes and swarms of snakes crawling out of the earth.

“Our hypothesis,” Von Zerneck said, “is that science has the ability to reasonably predict such an event (an earthquake). Should the government go public? If you evacuate L.A., do they go to the desert? How many people will die in a panic? What happens to the banking system when L.A. closes down on the prediction of some scientist? The notion is staggering.”

Claire Winslow sees signs that the Big One is imminent. But developer Wendell Cates, characterized as “the Donald Trump of the West Coast” and political pal of the governor, wants her to shut up because such talk will hurt California real estate values. What if there’s no quake?

For some of their background, the filmmakers met Dr. Lucille Jones, the U.S. Geological Survey’s project chief for quake hazard assessment of Southern California. From her base at Caltech, she focuses on foreshocks to help make “predictions with probability.”

Claire soon evolved into a lot of Lucy Jones: “I was a little surprised when I saw the script,” Jones said. “I took a lot of joking (as the script was circulating among seismologists). I mean, I’m not chief scientist like the script but I’m 35 and I have kids (a second is due in September) and wear glasses and study foreshocks.”

Her husband, Egill Hauksson, who studies earth structure at Caltech (using quakes to understand geology), got more teasing because Claire’s husband is a landscape architect.

As for the science of predicting quakes, Jones explained: “We can’t say there’s going to be an earthquake tomorrow at 3 o’clock, but we can do a lot of things about coming up with assessments of probability, especially if there’s foreshocks.” However, she said, half of all quakes foreshock, half don’t.

The forewarnings in the movie script--oil pressure dropping, cracks in the ground, methane release--have been documented from past quakes, she said, with the possible exception of the snakes: “That’s the cheery news,” although there was a Manchurian quake in 20- to 40-below winter in which snakes came out of hibernation and froze to death.

The old “Earthquake” film is a lingering joke in seismic circles: “I think it’s left us a rather poor legacy in that it has the image that the scientists would know that there’s an earthquake and withhold it. . . . A lot of people will call up and say that they’ve just got to convince us to let them know when the earthquake’s gonna happen.

“We sometimes joke when people are really convinced that somehow we know (an earthquake) is coming on.” She laughed. “Trust my ambition and greed: If I could predict an earthquake, I could have any job in the country.”