As Quakes Go, Hector Was Just ‘Awesome’

Where’s Gin Chow when we need him?

Had he been around last weekend, he would have warned Angela Sutter against camping in the middle of the desert.

No bones about it, he would have told the Ventura chiropractor about the imminence of the century’s third-most-powerful Southern California earthquake. He certainly would have steered her away from pitching a tent at Joshua Tree National Park, a few paltry miles from the quake’s epicenter.

If Gin Chow was as accurate as legend has it, Sutter certainly wouldn’t have arranged to be inside a campground Porta Potti on Saturday at 2:46 a.m., the moment that a force equivalent to a few hundred million tons of TNT was unleashed just down the pike.

“It was all I could do to brace myself against each side,” she said. “I was like the clapper inside a bell.”

I’m convinced that this is how the apocalypse will occur, if it ever does: Much of humanity will be outside to gaze upon wrathful angels with flaming swords, but the rest of us will be, well, thumbing through a magazine.

The wild rocking went on quite a while, and so did the immense noise. Sutter thought it was the work of campground pranksters.

“I was yelling: ‘This is NOT FUNNY!’ ” she said. “I thought it would topple over.”

At temblor’s end, Sutter tottered from the outhouse to find her friend Michelle Kemic waiting for her.

“I said, ‘Michelle, that really wasn’t funny,’ ” Sutter said.

“She said, ‘It was probably L.A., falling into the ocean.’ ”

Someone in a tent yelled out: “Dude, that was awesome!”

The voice wasn’t that of the long-dead Gin Chow--or was it?

A Chinese immigrant who became a successful farmer, Gin announced in 1920 that the city of Santa Barbara would be flattened by an earthquake on June 29, 1925.

And--incredibly--it was!

Gin has been revered ever since for his stunning prediction, which was traced back to a book, “Gin Chow’s First Annual Almanac,” that he wrote in 1932.

That’s the remarkable thing about earthquakes; they strike without warning and can be predicted years afterward.

Soon Southern California’s boatload of seers--the ant-gazers, the cricket-listeners, the migraine-chroniclers--will weigh in on the Hector Mine quake. Personally, I’m a believer; I have no doubt that someone among them will forecast it with uncanny accuracy, maybe right down to the minute.

But will it be recognized for the strange new phenomenon it was?

Hector was no ordinary earthquake. Hector was a theme-park earthquake. Like the earthquake--or is that Earthquake!--ride at Universal Studios, Hector frightened but did no damage. Hector was immensely powerful, but user-friendly. Hector wasn’t a testosterone-crazed, hyper-aggressive jerk, like so many of the other earthquakes.

It was as if an immense seismic wave had passed through a grove of St. John’s wort to become: mello-quake.

Hector took out his hostility in the far reaches of the Mojave, where a huge rift in the earth only improves the landscape. Meanwhile, he rolled through our homes smoothly, a polite overnight guest careful not to smash windows or rupture gas lines.

After my house stopped shaking, I checked under the bed for emergency supplies: Crowbar, work gloves, sturdy boots, flashlight, first-aid kit, small bulldozer. I found change, socks and old magazines.

I switched on the TV, and it was lovely. Newscasters with hair sticking out in tufts were rubbing the dreamy-dust from their eyes. They looked a little like me, looking at them, and, in the stilted jargon of news, they were saying much the same things that were being said outside an outhouse at Joshua Tree and inside bedrooms everywhere:

“Dude, that was awesome.”

But in the end, not much really happened, and for that we all owe Hector, the state’s first mello-quake, a great big hug. It was just one of those nice events that brings neighbors together: You feel that last night? You hear it’s a 7.1? Awesome. . . .

My friend Jack called from his vacation in New York and asked whether his house was OK.

“You know that crack by the kitchen door?” I asked.

Um, yeah. . . .

“Well, it’s all mended now. You can’t even see it. Hector patched it up. I think he might have left chocolates on your pillow.”

Sure. . . .

Jack was skeptical, but when it comes to massive earthquakes, Gin Chow said it best: “You just have to be there.”

Steve Chawkins can be reached at 653-7561 or by e-mail at steve.chawkins@latimes.com.