The earth moved and the walls shook and afterward most everything was still standing. But if Sunday was not the Big One, for Californians it brought the prospect uncomfortably close.
Southern California counted its blessings as it braced Sunday for new temblors after two powerful earthquakes, one of them the area`s biggest earthquake in 40 years, rumbled through the region.
The earthquakes caused relatively little damage in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. At least one person, a child, was killed and more than 300 people were injured in small, remote Mojave Desert communities east of Los Angeles where the shocks were centered.
The quakes, measuring 7.4 and 6.5 on the Richter scale, were followed by hundreds of aftershocks. The seismic activity buckled highways, snapped power lines, set off a cacophony of car alarms and sent thousands to stock up on water, food and supplies for the next time around.
The earthquakes jarred homes, jangled nerves and set waves in motion through backyard swimming pools as far away as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Boise and Denver.
The state`s Office of Emergency Services announced that ”a major earthquake sequence” had begun in Southern California and warned that more seismic activity was almost inevitable.
A nervous calm prevailed after Sunday`s quakes angrily shook but largely spared Los Angeles and its heavily populated environs, sparking a handful of isolated fires and leaving hundreds of thousands temporarily without electricity.
The first earthquake rocked the region shortly before 5 a.m., awakening millions with an ominous lurching, then a slow but powerful roll that seemed endless but actually lasted only about a minute.
That earthquake, centered near the desert communities of Joshua Tree, Landers and Yucca Valley, 90 miles east of Los Angeles, ruptured a water reservoir, collapsed a bowling alley, sparked several home fires and set off hundreds of aftershocks.
Authorities said a 3 1/2-year-old boy was killed when a chimney collapsed at a home in Yucca Valley.
Like millions of other residents, James Chin, 25, owner of a Chinese fast-food restaurant in downtown Los Angeles, was sleeping when the first one hit.
”It was kind of rattling and it didn`t stop,” Chin said. ”I`ve been through earthquakes before and usually it lasts for a short time. This time I really panicked. We were close to the feeling that it might have been the Big One.”
In case anyone slept through the first earthquake, the second major temblor came three hours later. Its epicenter was located around Big Bear Lake, a popular resort area about 20 miles from the first and just 10 miles from the San Andreas Fault.
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Extensive property damage was reported in Big Bear Lake but dozens of children in summer camps in the area were reported safe. There was no immediate estimate of damage costs from both quakes, though they were expected to run into the tens of millions of dollars.
But authorities expressed amazement that the damage and injuries were not more widespread.
Unlike the San Francisco earthquake of October 1989, which left more than 60 dead and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage, Sunday`s quakes struck less populated areas.
Also, while San Francisco`s devastation was greatest in older areas built on landfill, most of the structures near Sunday`s epicenters were newer and built in conformity with California`s strict earthquake building codes.
Normally jammed L.A. freeways were virtually deserted throughout the day, and beaches and other popular weekend gathering places were decidedly less popular.
Hundreds of tourists were evacuated from one tower of the Disneyland Hotel in Anaheim in Orange County, and the ceilings of some oceanfront high-rise buildings collapsed in Long Beach. Hundreds of guests also were evacuated from a luxury hotel in San Diego.
Federal, state and private seismologists scurried to analyze the unusual double-quake pattern. Scientists said the two quakes were along separate fault lines but it was unclear to what extent they were unrelated, as experts insisted most of the day.
The first quake registered an 18-foot movement of the earth, the largest recorded shift since geologists have monitored earthquakes in California, officials said.
Late in the afternoon experts reclassified the second earthquake as an
”off-fault aftershock” of the first temblor, and expressed hope the worst had passed.
Still, the quakes were particularly worrisome because they were the latest in a series of tremors that have terrorized the high desert area east of Los Angeles. Yucca Valley residents experienced a major quake in April, now classified as a ”foreshock” to Sunday`s event.
Some scientists voiced fears that the shocks increased the pressure on the San Andreas Fault just outside Los Angeles and thus may have hastened the onset of the feared so-called Big One, a cataclysmic earthquake that experts long have predicted would someday devastate the city.
”The San Andreas Fault is a place to watch carefully in the next year,” said Lucy Jones, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. ”The stress will increase. We do know there`s an 8 (on the Richter Scale) waiting to happen sometime.”
Jones and Paul Flores, deputy director of California`s Office of Emergency Services, said there was more than a 50 percent chance of a new earthquake registering 6 or above on the Richter scale within the week, and that aftershocks are expected for months to come.
Sunday`s earthquake was the strongest to shake Southern California since the Tehachapi quake of July 21, 1952, according to the U.S. Geological Survey office. That quake, 100 miles north of Los Angeles, measured 7.7 and killed 12 people and injured 18.
Despite the startling quakes and official warnings that more and perhaps greater shocks would be on their way, some Southern California residents simply shrugged and they went about their business.
The Dodgers went ahead with their afternoon baseball game against the Houston Astros and thousands lined streets in West Hollywood for the city`s annual Gay Pride parade.
”I`ve lived here all my life and this is the biggest earthquake I`ve experienced,” said Chris Crays, 33. ”I`ve had an earthquake preparedness manual that`s been sitting in my car. I haven`t read it, but I probably will now.”
Residents worried about staying inside flocked around the pool in one apartment complex in coastal Marina del Rey, keeping their hand-held radios within easy reach as they casually bronzed their skins.
In Pasadena, two elderly women entered the trendy Crocodile Cafe and nonchalantly strolled to a table Sunday afternoon, taking their seats after quickly checking overhead to make sure they were not under ceiling track lighting that could come loose.
Regretting that the quakes would give Southern California another black eye after the recent Los Angeles riots, Martha Frechette, 39, said there was little one could do but grin and bear it.
”If people are afraid, they`re just going to have to pack up and leave,” she said.
The earthquakes moved the earth under politicians during this election year as well.
California Gov. Pete Wilson flew to the most affected areas to inspect the damage and promise state help, just as he did in South-Central Los Angeles after the riots.
In Washington, President Bush, fearful he should be caught on a golf course during the potential crisis, canceled a planned outing and returned to the White House.
Wilson signed a state of emergency declaration.
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”What kind of year has it been?” he said to a reporter`s question. ”I hope it is unique in the history of California.”