Earthquake!

5/17/09: Engrossed in a mystery novel, "She Smiled Sweetly" by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith, hear a loud thump from apartment next door, followed quickly by another bang behind me, outside my front door, then more noise. My instinct is to dive off the couch onto the floor. "The guys are really having a big one tonight," I think, "maybe one of them has a gun."

"What the hey is he doing?" My mind is picturing a ranting, lunatic, not just staying inside, but hell-bent on destroying outside property, endangering and scaring neighbors as well. This all happens so quickly and it takes a moment to wrap my mind around this sudden noise and...

...the couch is shaking violently. Oh, and earthquake! I am frozen in place. Noticing the lamp shaking, I rouse myself to action, reach over to move it to the floor.

My body tenses whenever I hear the thumps and bangs coming through the wall of neighbors apartment. The arguing sometimes leads to physical violence. So it was when the quake started, anticipating another round. "I am not prepared for an earthquake," I think later. I simply sat on the couch unable to move. Brain seemed to stop functioning when the first noise distracted me from my reading.

What if that had been the big one? The building crumbling? Crushed to death? Falling through a newly opened hole in the floor, stuck down there in the dirt with the ants crawling all over me? Yikes!

Long Beach sits on three fault lines. The risk of a major earthquake is always present. Never bothered me ~ what will be will be. There have been many quakes since I relocated to California, in addition to small tremors never reported in the news. Yet this is only the third quake I felt. "Did you feel the earthquake?" is a common question. "I was on the 710 Freeway overpass when it hit," I might say, "and guess I could not feel it in the car." For years, I felt left out, the only person in Southern California who never experienced an earthquake, it seemed.

After the last quake I felt less than a year ago, I read about Earthquake Preparedness. Did I have a flashlight with working batteries? A suitcase packed with several days clothing? Bottled water? Candles? Did I know how to shut off the gas valve or even where it is located? An escape plan? Advice about family meet ups did not apply to me. I sort of prepared an earthquake emergency kit. Even so this earthquake taught me that I am not mentally prepared for the event of a large earthquake. What good is a kit if one can not move?

If those battling neighbors had not been so constantly disturbing my peace, I wonder if my reaction would have been different. I am hoping the quake jolted the guys into reconsidering their volatile relationship. Death and disaster can come upon us as quickly and unexpectedly as that earthquake. Might they remember that the next time a spat over something trivial leads them to uncontrolled anger and violence.

Article update: The 4.7 earthquake centered four miles east of the Los Angeles airport, did not shake up the guys next door. When a knock on the back door did not get a response, it sounded like the knocker was going to break down the door, while screaming "Open the door." Insert cuss words.

The next day there was a small earthquake closer to home, centered about four miles west of Long Beach. May or may not have felt the tremor. Yet another quake hit Los Angeles two days later. Did I feel it? I heard a thump coming from the apartment next door and very little evidence of movement. Another neighbor thought it an aftershock when his couch started shaking. The thump, then was the second quake, not my noisy neighbors.