Quake City

With many thousands sadly perishing in major earthquakes in places like India and Central America, it is no surprise to me that foreigners and Americans from other states want to know about the potential seismic dangers in the famous earthquake-prone state of California. Los Angeles is, of course, the city that captured the award for Largest American City Starring in a Major Earthquake with the Northridge Quake of 1994.

I should start off by saying we just had a few nice jolts, that is, earthquakes, in mid-January. Nothing was knocked off any shelves, nothing broke, and certainly no one was injured. The tremor itself felt like an aftershock from the Northridge quake. Aftershocks can go on for years after the original quake and are defined as tremors smaller than the original earthquake, but originating in the same epicenter.

There are earthquakes every day and you don’t feel them, so fearing them is pointless. Still not convinced? Check out the map of Los Angeles of quakes that didn’t make the news… If you’ve ever stood within 20 feet of a locomotive as it pulled through your town, you’ve felt what the average earthquake feels like, that is, in Los Angeles.

Now, if you’re planning a visit here, and you want to have a bit of fun, Universal Studios does an excellent job of creating a Hollywood version (meaning totally over-the-top, and purely fictional) of a Los Angeles earthquake. It’s part of the tour where they cart you around the “backlot” in a tram-ish sort of thing.

Any of my fellow Romper Stompers who have ventured abroad may have noted the distinct lack of building codes, or at least where they do exist, lack of enforcement of building codes in the Third World. The loss of life in earthquakes in these areas is almost entirely attributable to people dying inside buildings that collapsed, or as a result of injuries or disease from rescue services being run ineffectively. The Universal Studios Tour mimics the dramatic damage that you would see in India, but portrays it with Los Angeles infrastructure.

The overwhelming majority of houses here are framed with wood, which flexes in the shaking. Tall office buildings are likely to sway even in high winds, (which we also have and are known as “the Santa Anna’s”) but are certainly not going to come a-tumbling down with 30 seconds of ground shaking. In high winds and for major (over 5.5) earthquakes, sometimes a few mirrored glass panels will pop out of a building, but nothing more serious than that. And do not fear being below a falling window panel, we’re not as chock-a-block with skyscrapers as New York City.

For a fun view of downtown try to catch that nifty U2 video where they shot the live performance of “Where the Streets Have No Name” atop one of the old hotels in downtown. They didn’t get a permit and LAPD couldn’t get up to the roof. They were able to run through the song four times by the time the plug was pulled. Some of the shots brought new meaning to The Edge!

So, I hope this assuages your fears about seismic activity here in the Los Angeles basin, and if it doesn’t well, click over to one of those sites where you can book a cruise.

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