The following pretty well sums up the situation here in the Mojave desert, North of Los Angeles, this 3rd of September, 2004.
Friday 3 September, 2004 19:16
By Jill Serjeant (Source: Rohan News Agency)
LOS ANGELES – The clock is running out on a highly publicized prediction that a major earthquake will rip through Southern California by Sunday.
A UCLA team startled Californians and the wider scientific world in January by predicting there was 50-50 chance of a 6.4 magnitude or larger quake hitting a 12,000 square mile mostly desert area east of Los Angeles by Sept. 5.
They used an algorithm, or mathematical pattern recognition formula, developed by team member Professor Vladimir Keilis-Borok which had already successfully forecast a 6.5 temblor in central California in December 2003 and the 8.1 magnitude quake that struck the Japanese island of Hokkaido in September last year.
Seismologists noted however that one of their biggest challenges was predicting which of the 35,000 earthquakes that occur every year in California would cause vast damage.
“We would all be happier if there was some harmless earthquake that filled this prediction, but the earth tells us how it behaves. We don’t tell it.”
Typical scientists. Worried more about the accuracy of the prediction than they are about all the devastation that will result in people’s lives here when The Big One hits.
What we look forward to is houses shifted from their foundations. Bridges and overpasses collapsing. Lives lost. People who will spend a few days or weeks without power, water, food and/or shelter.
But the people will rebuild, and go on living like it never happened. We tend to do that, don’t we? Whether you live where there is the real possibility of fire, tornado, hurricane, Winter storms and freezes, if you survive these, you will continue to live your life as you wish, even if you have to stop for a short time and pick up the pieces of it and go on.
Labor Day weekend is not the best time to have one of these. I don’t know why we just don’t outlaw earthquakes entirely and be done with them. After all, this is California. Our governor should tell these things to leave us alone, right?
Better, yet, let’s get these earthquakes to move to Texas. There is lots of land there that nobody is using. Besides, in the Big State, they’d hardly notice if one hit.
Most of the 35,000 earthquakes we have out here each year are not noticed. A few are. They mostly make you feel like your on a very gentle rollercoaster for a few seconds. Some of these just sort of run down and are gone. A few have a nice little jerk at the end.
Then again, I’ve never been at the epicenter of one of these. Lots of open space out here in California too. Odds are that it will happen to your neighbor and not you. Actually, the odds of having a real earthquake where you are standing, is about the same as you winning the Lottery, regardless of where you live.
But, as they say, somebody has to win, right? Ask me about all this after Sunday.
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