Time Topples Even the Best Quake Plans

What is more pathetic than a failed survivalist?

The Northridge earthquake wasn’t The Big One, but it was big enough; as soon as my house stopped wobbling and my heart stopped palpitating, I vowed to prepare for The Next One.

I was as grimly bent on survival as any camouflage-clad, squinty-eyed citizen with his pockets full of Krugerrands, his backpack full of ammo and a dozen gas cans strapped to his dirt-caked Land Cruiser.

I posted the Red Cross checklist of earthquake safety tips on the refrigerator. I stationed flashlights under the beds, in the cars, in dresser drawers. I called a contractor about bolting our house to the foundation, a practice that must have struck builders in 1925 as an appalling waste of bolts.

I made lists of emergency procedures:

1. Get up.

2. Gather family, urge calm.

3. Stay clear of swinging doors, bursting windows, flying microwave ovens.

4. Review emergency plans.

5. Run screaming into street, naked.

Now, five years to the day after the Northridge quake catapulted us out of bed, I have relaxed. I no longer call my home “the compound.” And I am almost completely unprepared for The Next One.

How quickly our best-laid plans topple!

Where are the survival rations of yesteryear? For five years, I have been meaning to pick up a case or two of military Meals Ready to Eat or freeze-dried camping food, maybe Chicken Parmigiana O’Brien or Fettuccine Alfredo O’Brien, and stash them in the garage.

But a small, still voice has held me back. It said: “You’ll never eat a Meal Ready to Eat. You weren’t in the Army; you’ll never even figure out how to open a Meal Ready to Eat. And you remember what freeze-dried Scrambled Eggs O’Brien did to you on your brave little backpacking trip in the mountains?”

Of course, it wouldn’t take great insight or monumental effort to stock up for Armageddon with a few extra cans of ravioli. But if flaming swords were to swing through the heavens tonight, we would be watching them with ancient Ritz crackers, not Chef Boy-ar-dee.

We did take a few measures. We had a carpenter fasten a bookcase to the wall. The woman who did the work--we felt so virtuous, hiring a handyperson--kept joking about finding the real studs in this house. Ha ha.

I bought a crowbar and put it under the bed, taking the advice of a friend who knew I might need it to pry loved ones from the debris. Unfortunately, it’s not under the bed any more, much to my wife’s weary chagrin: “He can’t keep track of his keys, he loses his wallet, he can’t even find his crowbar. How can you lose a crowbar?”

We gathered old jeans and sneakers and sweatshirts and stuffed them into backpacks that we kept in our cars. After all, the house might vaporize, but the cars would endure, and, whatever might happen next, we would need clothes. They are still on hand in the same moldering backpacks. However, they no longer fit, apparently due to the mysterious shrinkage that certain textiles undergo after prolonged storage in a hatchback.

Time has trumped our good intentions.

We still have the complicated system of straps and anchors I bought to hold down our computer. It’s still in the package and it’s now worth more than the computer, which plunged into quaint obsolescence back around the time Bill Gates made his millionth million.

When I was a more concerned person, I made numerous inquiries about water, realizing that our water heater and a few leaky plastic containers from Vons wouldn’t sustain us for the long haul. (Yes, I know the emergency people say it’s just fine to drink from your toilet tank. We’ll have to have them over some time.)

On many a trip to the hardware mega-giants, I asked about 55-gallon drums. I figured two or three of those filled with water and dotted around my estate would give us enough not just for mere survival, but also for leisurely baths and water balloon fights.

I haven’t bought the barrels. Nor have I learned just how much bleach it would take to keep the water pure for six months--a drop or a jug? I haven’t kept any bottled water around for very long, or even bottled Scotch.

I haven’t had the house bolted down. I haven’t checked the flashlight batteries in at least a year. I have spent the cash we so diligently stored in our so-called “earthquake kit” as a hedge against the ATMs shutting down. I forget whether turning the outside valve 90 degrees to the right shuts off gas to the house or causes spontaneous combustion throughout all of midtown Ventura.

Sure, I need to go back and take it seriously--to buy the emergency rations and store the emergency water and batten down everything that can be battened. That is only common sense.

But right now, I don’t have the time.

I’m too busy preparing for Y2K.

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Steve Chawkins is a Times staff writer. His e-mail address is steve.chawkins@latimes.com