Images From Kobe Shake Smug Assumptions

It was the morning after at Art’s Deli--the morning after the media event, that is--and things seemed back to normal. From my table I could eavesdrop on three others. At one, the talk was of a wedding. At another, it was how Georgia Frontiere was taking St. Louis to the cleaners. At a third, there was snickering over the way a director shot a closing scene. The motherly waitress poured a fresh cup. “I just got a two-picture deal,” she cracked.

A banner hung over a corner booth. “Mayor Riordan’s Renewal Breakfast,” it said. “You can shake L.A., but you can’t break it!” On the first anniversary of the Northridge earthquake, the mayor had gathered here with other officials to tout Los Angeles on “Good Morning, America.”

From there, Riordan went on to Cal State Northridge for President Clinton’s visit and then to a radio show. He was scheduled to appear on “The Tonight Show” and do a little quake shtick with Jay Leno. Maybe the mayor would play the straight man, asking Leno’s Mr. Brain to explain the Richter scale. Mr. Brain might explain that a 3.0 quake is strong enough to shake the toupee off Capt. Kirk’s head, and a 4.0 could actually move a line in a DMV office.

Then came the news from Kobe, Japan, and both the mayor’s office and “Tonight Show” staff decided it was best to cancel Riordan’s appearance.

In comedy, timing is everything.

*

A wedding. The Rams. The Biz. My guess is that everybody had already talked about the grim news from Kobe--the horrifying images, the numbing statistics. Now more than 3,000 dead, more than 16,000 injured, more than 240,000 homeless. We talk about it and move on, hopeful that what happened there won’t happen here . . . but acknowledging that it might.

Of all the earthquakes we have known, both personally and at a distance, Kobe resonates with a shudder of recognition. It isn’t the deadliest earthquake in recent years--not nearly. The World Almanac notes that on Sept. 29, 1993, a 6.4 temblor killed 9,748 in Maharashira, India; on June 21, 1990, a 7.7 quake in northwest Iran claimed more than 40,000 lives; on Dec. 7, 1988, more than 55,000 were believed killed in a 6.8 quake in Armenia, and an 8.2 quake on July 28, 1976, in Tangshan, China, killed about 242,000.

In 1978, the National Lampoon parodied the myopic way most American media report such news with its spoof Ohio newspaper, the Dacron Republican-Democrat. “Two Dacron Women Feared Missing in Volcanic Disaster,” a headline declared. Beneath it, a subhead added: “Japan Destroyed.”

Catastrophes that reach biblical proportions, as a measure of contrast, help explain California’s confidence in coping with earthquakes. Sylmar in ’71 measured 6.6 and claimed 66 lives. Loma Prieta in ’89 measured 6.9 and killed 62. And last year’s 6.7 quake centered near the intersection of Roscoe and Reseda killed 57.

So we feel a tad smug in our mastery of nature. When an 8.1 quake devastated much of Mexico City in 1985, “pancaking” several towers, American engineers assured us that Mexican construction standards were greatly at fault. L.A.’s steel-reinforced towers, they said, might bend but they wouldn’t break. Besides, Mexico City was built on a dry lake bed that amplified the quake vibrations.

But the images from Kobe--an elevated freeway lying on its side, an apartment building that seemed to topple over into the street--are more unsettling. Kobe seems too familiar--a big city in a rich, advanced nation that is thought to be more quake-savvy than California. Could such catastrophe happen here? Can it be repeated often enough that it nearly did?

The Northridge quake, like Kobe’s, struck before dawn, holding down casualties. People at Caltech remind us that several faults that run under Los Angeles are capable of energy that would exceed both Kobe and Northridge.

A few days before the news from Kobe, a colleague and I engaged in grim speculation of how many would have died if the Northridge quake had struck a few hours later. My guess was a few hundred. His was a few thousand. Kobe makes me think that maybe he was right. Is our engineering and construction really that superior--or is our luck due to run out?

*

Shirley Warner, the waitress, says every time she hears about a disaster, it doesn’t matter if it is far from home. “I cry every time,” she said, pouring another cup. “You can feel it. You feel for those people.”

She’s a 61-year-old Los Angeles native. “My mother was pregnant with me in ’33 for the Long Beach one,” she notes with a certain pride. That quake was gauged at 6.2 and claimed 115 lives.

It was my fault, but she was now thinking about Kobe instead of two-picture deals.

“That sign is wrong,” she declared, gesturing toward the mayoral banner. “You can shake L.A. And you can break it.”

But that doesn’t mean, Shirley added, that she wants to live anywhere else.