A Ten-Second Wake-Up Call

By Ed Magnuson

The initial jolt lasted only ten seconds, but that was enough time for the scary question to race through the minds of millions of Californians last week: Is this the big one, the monster quake along the San Andreas Fault that geologists consider inevitable? As it turned out, the earthquake was centered between Whittier and Pasadena, 30 miles from the San Andreas Fault, and it destroyed more nerves than it did buildings. Nonetheless, the shock reminded area residents just how quickly the big quake could come. Warned a California disaster-planning official: "This was a little wake-up call."

The quake measured 6.1 on the Richter scale, a small shock compared with the 8.1 horror that hit Mexico City in 1985 and the 1906 San Francisco catastrophe that carried a Richter punch later estimated at 8.3. Still, last week's temblor was the most potent in Southern California since 1971, when the San Fernando Valley rumbled under a 6.6 assault and 64 people died. Last week's quake left more than 100 injured and six dead, including an electrical repairman buried in an underground tunnel, a college student struck by falling concrete in a campus garage, and three people who died of heart attacks brought on by the shock.

The quake struck at 7:42 a.m., shattering windows, snapping power lines, breaking gas mains and igniting fires. Worst hit was Whittier (pop. 72,000), twelve miles from downtown Los Angeles and the community closest to the epicenter. Eight blocks in Whittier's business district were closed after bricks cascaded on cars, and at least eight buildings were too damaged to be saved.

Modest though it was, the quake strained civil-defense systems and showed that Southern California is far from ready to cope with the dreaded big one. ! However, the jolt seemed likely to create a new eagerness to prepare. "You can have drills and drills, but it's not reality to people,"observed one emergency official. Last week the quake realities became frighteningly clear to millions in the Los Angeles basin.