Earthquakes: Perspective of a Non-Californian

You might dispute the title of this post. I've had more than 1 person tell me that I need to start calling myself a Californian. I've fought tooth and nail, though. I don't surf, I don't drive 90 miles an hour down the freeway in my shiny, recently-waxed, never dirty SUV - hey, I still say I live in LA, even though any local will look at me like crazy and correct my misunderstanding: "La Habra isn't LA county - it's Orange County." But what makes someone who's lived here in the "Greater Los Angeles" area for coming up on 6 years truly Californian? It's how they experience an earthquake.

Take yesterday's 4.7, for example. You know, I'm not so ignorant as you might think. I know what you're supposed to do when the very ground you're walking on begins to move and sway as if you've just stepped onto a boat in the middle of a stormy ocean. You dive under your chair, put your hands over your head, and hug yourself like mad till its all over and the entire building around you has collapsed and you're the only one left alive. If you're not near a chair, I suppose your best bet is to stand in the doorway, although I've always wondered whether that's really the best advice. I mean, how embarassing would it be to walk into the hospital with a head injury after a 5.0 earthquake and have to explain that your injury was caused by the swinging of the door into your face?! Suffice it to say, I've got enough instructions to go off of should a real earth-shaker greet me at my doorstep in the future. So when yesterday's earthquake hit - 4.7, that's a decent Shaker, all things considered - well, all those instructions just flew out the window. Because I'm in California. And Californians handle their earthquakes just a little bit different.

We were sitting in church, listening to the stirring message of our Pastor, when all of a sudden the chairs beneath us begin to shift. First it was so small, we probably all thought we imagined it, but a few seconds later, our chairs had tossed us about in our seats enough for us all to start looking and smiling at one another and whispering, "We just had an earthquake." Meanwhile our pastor goes on, without blinking an eye, and we all begin to realize either he's really good at not getting distracted, or he's just entirely oblivious! Not a minute later, he realizes his entire audience is elbowing one another and smiling and he stops mid-sentence to ask us why. Someone speaks the inevitable - "We just had an earthquake".

"What?" He is bewildered. He didn't feel it at all! So we laugh about the entire incident for about 5 minutes, befuddled at the fact that about half of us felt it and the other half didn't, including our pastor, and then we move on with the sermon as if it'd never happened.

Now I know about a quarter of my audience isn't local, and probably has never experienced an earthquake, so they have no idea how "big" a 4.7 really is. So I should probably be honest and put things into perspective for you. The real movers and shakers range up there beyond a 6. The kind that causes damage has got to be at least a 6.0. A 4.7 is only big enough to feel it. So it's possible that describing the reaction of Californians to a 4.7 earthquake isn't proof enough to say that they handle them much differently than an out-of-stater would.

But let me tell you, if that had happened anywhere else that I've ever lived - Arizona, Maine, New Hampshire - people would have reacted very differently, even to a 4.7! People would have been hiding under their chairs, and there's no way they would have been able to jump back into the sermon as if it hadn't happened. Parents would have been jamming the doors trying to check on their kids in the nursery, families would be immediately escorted out of the church by their protective fathers, and everyone would head home to make sure there wasn't any damage. And it would be the talk of the month! "Oh thank goodness, neighbor, you survived!" It'd be on the news every night of the week, stories of how someone rescued their cat from being struck by the lamp that was about to fall on top of it.

But Californians? Well, you just go on with life. You might make mention of it in a conversation, but then again, you might not. It's not that big of a deal anyway, and we'll probably have some after-shocks tomorrow.

Now where do I fall in these telling descriptions? Well...I suppose I didn't hide under my chair...I suppose I probably wouldn't have even mentioned it to my out-of-state parents except for the fact that we had one of those after-shocks this morning that woke me up out of bed...and yeh, I guess I pretty much joined in with my mostly-Californian congregation in laughing about it for a few minutes and then moving on...but does that really have to make me Californian? I mean, at least I still don't know how to surf...yet....