A Loud 6.6 on the Moral Richter Scale

Well, my beloved L.A. burst its moorings. Went ape. Tired of being taken for granted. No more Mr. Nice Guy. Time to teach these strangers on the land a lesson.

It was more than an earthquake. It was a moral reawakening, a terrible warning, God, or Nature, stepping on the anthill we call the world. Nothing can trivialize human behavior more than a natural catastrophe. This was the real Super Bowl. That other one’s just a football game.

Man and boy, I guess I’ve seen 200 earthquakes in my half-century here. I’ve never seen one like this one.

It’s pernicious. It won’t go away. It’s not done with us yet. It’s like a bad relative who comes to dinner and won’t leave. It’s almost as if it’s trying to drive us out.

We expect earthquakes in Southern California. They come with the geraniums. But we expect them to come, do their mischief--and get out of here. Your time is up, signal when through.

This one lurks. Aftershocks is a word the seismologists use to describe the offspring. But a quake measuring 5.5 is hardly an “aftershock.” It’s an earthquake in its own right. It has its own aftershocks.

That’s what is noticeable this time. The proliferation of aftershocks. This earthquake is a renegade. If it were human, you would institutionalize it. It’s a runaway sociopath. We’ve always had a pact with our earthquakes--you’ve made your point, now go away.

Not this one. To be sure, past earthquakes have had their aftershocks. But they’ve often been detectable only to seismographs and the people who read them. You don’t need a seismograph for this one. Your eyes and ears (outer and inner) are instruments enough.

You never forget your first earthquake. Your first realization that Lotus Land is not the tranquil Eden that it appears. There’s a snake in it, too. The palm trees have rats in them, the hills are tinder, and the beautiful scenery masks a malevolent presence that belies its angelic appearance and turns from choirboy to serial killer.

I was working on the old Examiner at 11th and Broadway when I had my first. It was in the 1940s and the room began to sway and pitch. The fluorescent lights crackled. I thought I would have a fainting spell when the city editor, Hicks Coney, looked over. I was going to describe him as “sadistic city editor” but that would be redundant for a Hearst paper. Coney looked at me, leered, “What’s the matter kid? It’s only an earthquake. We get one a month out here, but don’t worry--Mr. Hearst built this building so it can roll over three times!”

So, you learn to live with earthquakes. You’re just happy you don’t have to learn to die with them as well. Too many people have.

But until it gets offstage, fades out, retires, presumably to get ready for its next tantrum years down the line, it’s not possible to care who wins a playoff, wins a World Cup, wins a pennant, gets a gold medal, or even hires a hitman to see that someone else does. We just wait until its paroxysms of rage subside. We just wait until the earth stops moving. How can you feel sorry for a football team because it has to play in zero temperature when you see children queued up for a glass of water in the cold and discomfort of a public park? And for whom the suffering will not be 60 minutes, but maybe six weeks.

An earthquake humbled a World Series in 1989. It’s no trick at all for it to upstage a playoff. Or any other human endeavor.

It will not go gentle into that good night. It loiters, lingers, plots, unsatiated, unappeased, it’s terrible anger at full pitch (4.4 and 5.1 Wednesday) until its own anger has exhausted it. It is like having an armed madman in your back yard.

But Californians cannot stay despondent long. The surf will be up, the sun will be high and hot, the palm trees will sway even with the rats in them and L.A. will take alternate routes cheerfully. Even the dark and dire prediction of the Caltech mavens (however correct they are) cannot long keep L.A.’s spirits down.

I’ll know it’s over, I won’t need any Caltech seismographs, when I pick up the phone and the voice on the other end will be saying “Do you think Montana can do it?’ And all of a sudden Montana will mean Joe, and not a state we should all move to.