Moments That Shake Us Up and Twist the Course of Destiny

The Big One was on everyone’s mind as the state’s Seismic Safety Commission met to remember the Sylmar quake disaster, which occurred 20 years ago today and took 65 lives.

“The next one may not be this year or next year, but it’s coming,” warned James Lefter, a professor at the University of Illinois.

Southern Californians have gotten used to those warnings. They are sounded so frequently that they have become as much a part of the local background noise as freeway traffic and pounding surf. But Lefter’s words had special power inside the Odyssey Restaurant, perched above Granada Hills, which was converted into a Red Cross medical center after the 6.6 quake hit on Feb. 9, 1971.

The restaurant is not all that far from the arresting sight that a cut bank alongside the Antelope Valley Freeway presents to mostly oblivious motorists just south of Palmdale. There on the very edge of the San Andreas Fault, the rock strata of ancient seabeds, usually layered as evenly as a wedding cake, spiral and twist--tortured into curlicues by the relentless dragon in the earth.

Even though the discussion Thursday focused on such arcana as a report on the “Seismic Retrofit of Hazardous Unreinforced Masonry Bearing Wall Buildings,” the mood was heavy.

With a warm Santa Ana bending the trees outside, it was easy to imagine the strange whoosh of wind that witnesses reported hearing just before the quake struck at 6:01 a.m. two decades ago.

All this underscored the human tendency to celebrate catastrophe. Few people remember the date of VE Day, the joyful day that Europe was liberated from the Nazis. But the trauma of Pearl Harbor is commemorated yearly.

People fear disasters, yet write songs about them after they are over. There is nothing strange about this. Disasters teach lessons that good fortune cannot. Everyone knows how to deal with an award or a job promotion. The honoree smiles with self-satisfaction, convinced he was justified in thinking well of himself because now the rest of the world acknowledges his superior qualities.

But trouble is an X-ray for the soul, stripping away the carefully managed personas that people present to the world.

A lifetime of service can be wrecked by a failure of nerve in a crisis. People make heroes of those who reacted bravely when it was important, even if they had been scoundrels throughout their lives.

Today is a fitting day to wonder how Southern Californians will deal with the next disaster, not in terms of whether buildings and bridges will withstand the shaking, but in terms of how people will stand up to it.

There will be another round of earthquake drills, complete with fake blood and buzzing helicopters. Film of the drill on the evening news will show emergency workers rushing about efficiently.

But that’s a charade. A disaster cannot really be anticipated.

A truer indication of how well people will measure up next time can be found by looking back to see how people managed during the Sylmar quake, the worst to strike Southern California in decades.

Marie Smith was the assistant nursing director at the spanking new Olive View Hospital on that February morning, when she heard what she described later as an “awful crack.”

“Then the lights went out and the building started to shake.”

The shaking tore off part of the hospital, broke windows and plunged the building into darkness. She remembered her son was alone in her house on the hospital grounds.

“What’s happening to my son?” she wondered.

She decided he was probably all right and, besides, she had duties at the hospital. She stayed on the job, helping to evacuate 625 patients down narrow staircases. Her son came riding up on his bicycle later, carrying a clock that had stopped at 6:01.

“What amazed me was the way everybody worked as though nothing happened,” said John Barabba, electrical supervisor for the hospital at the time.

The collapse of bridges on the Golden State Freeway severed the links between the Santa Clarita and San Fernando valleys. Cars were trapped. Several never-identified people arranged railroad ties to form a kind of wooden highway from the freeway down to San Fernando Road so that the trapped drivers could escape.

Most telephones were out, so one man appointed himself supervisor of the public telephone at the corner of Maclay Street and Foothill Boulevard in San Fernando. Each person in line was limited to one call in order to give everyone a chance to reach loved ones.

Thousands of people had to be evacuated from houses below the Van Norman dams when it was feared that they might collapse. Some unknown person turned off the gas in other people’s houses before leaving.

And so on. People took in strangers who had been made homeless, and neighbors looked out for children whose parents were unable to get home.

This is not the heroism displayed by people who dive into icy rivers to rescue children but an almost more praiseworthy bravery of a more steadfast nature, requiring not only courage and initiative, but a thought for the welfare of one’s fellows and a recognition of the importance of doing one’s job.

It is a courage exemplified by the legend that the band on the Titanic continued playing in an apparent effort to calm doomed passengers even as the sinking ship took them all to their deaths. The musicians showed concern for something outside themselves even as they endured the most private experience a man or woman will face.

Yes, there were some looters during the Sylmar quake. But there was far more routine bravery and community spirit.

“You do the best you can,” Smith said.

Based on past evidence, that will be a good start.