Scared Shirtless

My Western friends got a good laugh out of the shattered nerves in Washington—and all along the eastern seaboard, as far as I can tell—after last week’s earthquake. Just as my New England/Midwestern friends are amused by Washington’s paralysis when it snows, the Californians of my acquaintance were quick to remind me that temblors are a routine occurrence where they reside, and that 5.8 on the Richter scale is not exactly the stuff of nightmares. 

DAViD CLARK

Having lived in Los Angeles once upon a time, I take their point. Earthquakes of various shapes and sizes are not just recurrent affairs out there but the stuff of everyday life. Californians are perpetually aware of, and commendably vigilant about, the possibility/probability that the Big One will strike one day. Back then my alluring wife worked at Architectural Digest, which was located in a very tall building across Wilshire Boulevard from the La Brea Tar Pits. I used to comfort her with the notion that, when the Big One struck, she and her colleagues would be hurled out the windows into the goo—to be discovered, analyzed, perhaps even publicly displayed centuries hence by paleontologists. 

In defense of Washington, however, I should point out that, having lived through a handful of earthquakes in my time, I deem last Tuesday’s seismic event not trivial. I happened to be eating lunch in a restaurant with a friend, and the violent shaking of the building, accompanied by the usual implosive sounds, was not easily ignored. We were located, moreover, roughly six blocks from the White House. My immediate diagnosis, based on experience, was an earthquake. But the vast majority of Washingtonians (I would guess) have no such experience, and in the midst of the war on terror, a loud booming sound, accompanied by unprecedented rocking and rolling, is a legitimate cause for fear.