‘Big One’ on Shaky Ground : Television: The consensus of scientists was that many of the specifics as dramatized in the movie were ‘credible’ and ‘possible’ but ‘not probable.’

In the latest offering of disaster-as-art, the NBC miniseries “The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake” amounted to a beyond-worst-case scenario, according to scientists and specialists in earthquake watching.

The consensus of those surveyed by The Times was that many of the specifics of earthquake science as dramatized in the movie Sunday and Monday were “credible” and “possible” but “not probable.”

Earth scientists and emergency-service officials who saw the movie at an NBC promotional screening seemed pleased with it, even joyful, on the grounds that it might shake people into more fervent preparations for major tremors. The plot--which “starred” shakers of 5.7, 8.0 and 7.2 Richter magnitude--included some instructional details, such as using survival kits and turning off gas pipes into the house.

But some were unhappy with the catastrophic depictions, among them Paul Flores, executive director of the Southern California Earthquake Preparedness Project, a state-sponsored information clearinghouse. He said, with harsh understatement, that “The Big One” was “counterproductive.”

“I’ve been at this nine years,” he stated angrily, “and you work so hard to get over this notion of apathy or futility--and this is what this movie is showing.” If anyone thought a magnitude-8 earthquake was likely here, there wouldn’t be any point in trying to meet earthquake-resistant building standards, Flores maintained.

He said the movie had many misrepresentations. For one thing, he insisted that buildings would not all topple as the program suggested, “especially steel-framed high-rise buildings.”

And geology professor Kerry Sieh of the California Institute of Technology, a pioneer in the attempts to predict earthquakes, complained that the miniseries had its Big One running five minutes long: “It would be more likely a minute long. And they had so many aftershocks. That was pushing it.” Emphasized Asst. Fire Chief Frank Borden, who runs the Disaster Preparedness Division that is probably the largest of its kind in the country, “Yes, we’re going to have a major earthquake, and, yes, people do need to prepare because earthquakes are survivable. That’s the key issue. The first part of the movie was semi-educational. (But) one of the problems at the end is that it went on killing people.”

Tom Heaton, scientist in charge of the U.S. Geological Survey field office in Pasadena, noted that viewers got a mixed signal from the movie--that they were left with an impression that one out of four people were killed, “which would mean millions dead; then they came on and said it’s hundreds of thousands.”

The experts also said that NBC’s drama was “at the extreme” in its depiction of predicting earthquakes. To a quiet but ominous undertone of music, the movie showed miniquakes at Bombay Beach, dropping oil field pressures in Baldwin Hills, rising radon readings, a methane gas explosion in the Fairfax district, gurgling in the La Brea tar pits and satellite laser measurements showing slight movement of Mt. Wilson toward Palos Verdes.

“Well, if all those things actually happened,” Heaton speculated, “we still wouldn’t have the theory to tie them all together. But if all those things did come in--which, by the way, wouldn’t happen because we don’t have the funds to do it--there’d be a lot of sweating.”

But California does have a very precise quake response plan, as opposed to the movie images about battles over what and when to tell the public. In fact, the state has issued five quake advisories in the last six years based on data from the U.S. Geological Survey.

“The last time we did it was the Upland earthquake,” said Lucile Jones of the survey staff, who specializes in foreshocks as clues to predicting probabilities and was a key source for the screenwriters, providing much of their model for the character of Claire Townsend (played by Joanna Kearns). “It was having so many aftershocks that we did this advisory that they could get larger than the first one. In fact, we had three earthquakes of 4.7 or 4.8 and the main shock was only 5.2. So in that sense we were right.

“We managed to get that statement out (to emergency management organizations) and issued to the press within an hour and a half, and along with it was information and suggestions for appropriate responses on the part of the public and local government.”

The problem, Heaton said, is that most members of the public are reluctant to act on such predictions because of the very long odds involved: “Probabilities today are one in 10 or one in 20. Those are numbers that are high enough to concern us but low enough that it still means that it (an advisory) could mean a false alarm. Some people would say, ‘Big deal.’ ”

Cmdr. George Morrison, chief of staff to Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates and an architect of the city’s Earthquake Prediction Response Plan, said that people want two-to-one odds that the next quake is in, say, 47 minutes: “But we aren’t close to that. We can say, ‘Yes, there’s enough activity that we can expect an earthquake in the range of 3.5 to 5.8 within the next three weeks. And people say, ‘Ho hum, I’m going to roll over and go back to sleep.’ ”

Heaton found “The Big One” fraught with irony.

“Somebody told me the budget was $10 million (sources told The Times it was $9.5 million), and that’s 10 times the budget of our office. And it struck me that this is so indicative of Southern California society, that they’re willing to spend 10 times the money in a fictionalization of something than on the real situation. The perfect example of Southern California denial.”