California Earthquake
December 24, 2003
While driving the motorhome across the Arizona desert, I began to feel dizzy and exhibited an inability to catch my breath. I breathed deeply and often as I fought to stay conscious. When I explained what was happening to Pat, a deep frown crossed her brow. Pulling over to the shoulder of I-10, I could not fully regain my breath, even after breathing very deeply. But after a short rest, I began to feel better and resumed driving – still a little out of breath. So what in the world was wrong with me? Would high blood pressure cause such symptoms? Was it some sort of panic attack? Was it safe for me to continue driving? Then it struck me – maybe I was dehydrated. We had spent several days in southwestern deserts and more and more, I must make a conscious effort to drink water because the sensation of thirst is less pronounced as I age. So just in case, I had found the correct answer, I stopped and drank some water. Slowly, as we drove west on I-10, I began to feel better and better. For the next few days, I drank lots of water and the symptoms did not reappear, so I concluded that dehydration was the likely cause of my symptoms.
A couple of weeks later, while sitting in front of the computer in Palo Alto, I began to feel dizzy again. My head was swimming. The world seems to be rolling. Some of the symptoms of dehydration were there, but this was different. “Is this what it feels like when you have a stroke?” I wondered. Then I noticed that my body was actually rocking right and left in the chair. I looked outside and the orange tree in my son Brian’s backyard was swaying back and forth – but there was no wind. Walking unsteadily out into the living room, I suggested to Pat that maybe we were having an earthquake. She said that an earthquake would explain the creaking in the walls that she heard and would explain why the hanging lampshade was swaying noticeably. When we approached Brian’s mother-in-law, Grace, with our observations, she said that she had just finished chatting with Brian’s wife, Frances, on the phone, and she had heard on the radio that an earthquake had just struck somewhere in California. We should leave the house and move to an open location if it gets any worse.
Small earthquakes are no big deal to native Californians. But, to us flat land Texans, the earthquakes we have seen on TV actually kill folks, knock down buildings and destroy bridges.
Tuning into the local radio station, we heard that the quake struck at 11:15 A.M. on December 22, 2003, and measured 6.5 on the Richter scale. Not an exceptionally large earthquake, but one that might have caused a billion dollars in damage if it had hit in downtown Los Angeles or San Francisco. This was the biggest earthquake in California in the last four years. The epicenter was near the Hearst Castle on the coast between Los Angeles and San Francisco – a sparsely populated area. An earthquake expert explained that an earthquake such as this one can make solid rock behave like Jell-O. “Every grain of sand in the whole earth felt this quake,” he explained. It produced a “gentle” rolling motion and was followed by several aftershocks. There is about a 10% chance that it will be followed by a larger quake.
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| San Andreas Fault in Califoria |
A short time later, the announcer reported that a building in Paso Robles had been destroyed by the quake, killing two ladies in the building. The town clock tower was demolished. Large areas of the city were without electricity, and so the gas pumps would not work, so folks could not get gasoline for their cars. About 30 to 40 people were injured by the earthquake, but as compared to the large earthquakes that have hit California in the past, this one was rather trivial. It mainly just knocked over a few Christmas trees and caused books to fall from shelves. Arnold Schwarzenegger showed up the next day and pronounced the town a disaster area so that the town could qualify for federal aid. The quake caused an estimated loss of several million dollars in property value. Eighty-two buildings in Paso Robles have been “red tagged” as structurally damaged. Citizens were rallying to generate a fund to rebuild the town clock tower.
In a phone call to my friend, Jerry Kaml – who lives in San Luis Obispo, CA near the earthquake epicenter – to see if he was OK, nobody answered the phone. An email from another friend, Tosh Williams, indicated that he also tried to phone the Kamls without success. Could it be that the earth had split and swallowed San Luis Obispo and the Kamls? But the next day, I again phoned Jerry who explained that some of the phones had been knocked out, but otherwise, his community reported very little damage.
In our RV park near Brian’s home in Palo Alto, we are only a few miles from the famous San Andreas Fault. I have often thought about the measures we should take if an earthquake should hit. If we were in the motorhome when it struck, there should be little problem, because the motorhome is designed to handle the shocks of potholes in the road and could surely survive an earthquake – unless the earth split directly under the vehicle and swallowed it or, if we happened to be driving on or under a bridge when it fell.
Although the Paso Robles earthquake was deadly, it turned out to be little more than an interesting diversion in the national news. But after this earth-shaking event, I certainly hope not to be here when the big one comes. Give us a good old-fashioned Texas F5 tornado or a major hurricane any time.
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