They’re Going for a Ride In and Out of the Water

Earthquakes measured at 7.4 and 6.5 that hit Southern California Sunday morning stirred several of the Op surfers. Especially Newport Beach’s Richie Collins.

He said the first quake, which hit at 4:58 a.m., woke him up.

“I ran outside in my underwear and stood there in the middle of the street,” said Collins, ranked sixth in the world. “Then my neighbors started running out in the street holding their babies. We looked around and we saw sparks flying (from power lines). It was radical.”

Said Australia’s Glen Winton: “It was great. It was like Disneyland without the long lines.”

Said Tim Buechler of Titusville, Fla., the Op Jr. champion: “I was in my hotel room bed when the first one hit. I thought somebody dropped a quarter in the massage machine.”

With the small one- and two-foot wave conditions, perhaps the best ride of the day went to DynoComm cameraman Joe Brady of Dana Point, who had a bird’s-eye view of the second quake at 8:04 a.m.

Brady was on a 60-foot hydraulic platform filming the first Op Junior semifinal.

“I could feel the quake about 10 seconds before the people on the ground,” he said. “It started out slow, but it picked up. I started grabbing my camera.”

Brady lowered the platform, but raised it later in the contest to film again.

“It’s like anything else,” he said. “You have to deal with it. My first Op Pro was in 1986, when they had the riot. Anything can happen.”