A Los Angeles Times Special Report : Coping With The Quake : Recovering From Disaster, Preparing for the Future

With a brief moment of trembling, the earth left a swath of destruction that, this morning, we must sift through, pack up, put behind us. But how? The urgent things come first, of course, from first aid and how to turn off the gas to securing food and shelter. Crawling, literally, from the wreckage, we survived fires, freeways caving in, flooding and landslides. But in these coming days and weeks, we face mundane but difficult tasks. With our lifeline severed, how does one travel from home to office or market? In time, do we or don’t we rebuild in this place plagued by natural disaster, and how do we mend and patch what remains? How can we help others? Here is a guide to dealing with life after the fearsome quake-and to getting ready for the next one.