Earthquake Fair Offers Shake of Reality : Safety: Simulated temblor, other demonstrations try to get public ready for the Big One.

First came the thunderous rumble. Then, the small room began to shake. The children looked at each other knowingly as the tremble roared louder.

“Earthquake!” bellowed 11-year-old Maynard Lee, before he wrapped his arms around his stomach . . . and laughed.

His friends, too, were chuckling.

“I wasn’t scared for one minute,” Tony Ulloa, 11, said afterward as he stepped out of a van whose loud engine had been running. “Now, if it had been a real earthquake, man, I don’t know what I would have done.”

The fearful temblor the children “survived” was only a simulation, designed to demonstrate what an earthquake would feel like.

It all took place inside the “Quakey-Shakey Van,” one of many activities Tony and several thousand others participated in Sunday at the Earthquake Preparedness Fair in the parking lot of the Los Angeles Zoo.

Sponsored by various city departments and agencies, the fair promoted earthquake awareness by teaching children and their parents how to get ready for the Big One.

First, they had to know what a temblor felt like, and that is where the Quakey-Shakey Van came in. Decorated inside with stuffed animals and teddy bear wallpaper, the van drew throngs of parents and children curious to “take a ride in an earthquake.”

Rigged to simulate a quake, the van shook and rumbled wildly for about two minutes while children watched Yogi Bear on video, telling them to “stay cool.”

Not only were the youths calm, most spent the entire ride laughing and questioning why, if it were an earthquake, the stuffed toys remained in place?

“The van sure did shake a lot, but I knew it wasn’t real,” said Maynard, who came to the fair with his Boy Scout troop. “If it were a real one, I wouldn’t have laughed. I would have hit the floor. And prayed. But, since it wasn’t real, it just seemed really funny.”

A favorite demonstration for the children was a rescue drill with police officers and firefighters jumping into an air cushion from a basket hoisted 100 feet on a firetruck ladder. The basket was lowered to half that height for Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, and several in the crowd shouted: “Jump! Jump!”

But the mayor apparently did not hear them. He merely waved.

“No one asked me to jump,” he laughed, after getting out of the basket. “And I’m glad they didn’t.”