The Big One: The Earthquake

A place of worship in Southern California that defies religious labels. I'm not aware of any other church. In the country that has all three Abrahamic faiths worshipping under one roof, we take you inside. Listen on Imperfect Paradise, a weekly news magazine from LA East. Voting can be complicated. LA East is here to help. Check out LA's voter game plan, the fact-based voter guide that will give you the tools you need to navigate your ballot. Visit [email protected]/vote. [MUSIC] Imagine you work in downtown LA, the heart of Los Angeles. Every morning you wake up at your house in the suburbs, you walk to the train and you make your way in. You're headed to Union Station. You and a hundred thousand other people pass through here every day. Maybe you work in finance or in fashion. Downtown's dense, there's a lot of traffic. There's skyscrapers nearly as tall as the Empire State Building. [MUSIC] Eventually you arrive at your stop. You get off your train, you walk through the main lobby, and you stop at a kiosk for some coffee. You say, "Hey, to the barista you've known for the past three years." You're reaching to your pocket for your wallet. You move to the side, you wait. [MUSIC] You have no idea that there's a monster beneath your feet laying in weight. That today, everything changes. Sizeologist Lucy Jones knows this monster. She studies it for a living. A minute before the earthquake, it's no different than any other time. Out in the middle of the desert, 160 miles away from where you're standing. There are two enormous tectonic plates that have been trying to slide past each other for millions of years. But they're stuck. Today, they slip. And when they do, there's a tremendous burst of energy that travels through the earth. LA won't know anything for another 45 seconds before the very first P-wave arrives. It's like the Earth's early warning system. So the first P-wave is a sound wave. It's probably not enough to move a glass. But you might end up feeling slightly seasick, because it'll be below your hearing range. All the way at the fault, the earthquake is already throwing people to the ground. But the rupture's been continuing to move up fall through that 45 seconds, releasing more energy at every point along the fault. And that the parts of the fault are getting closer and closer to us. The shaking starts at Union Station. The first S-wave comes in about 75 seconds after the beginning of the earthquake. That's the second wave. And you feel the ground shake harder and harder. You can't outrun it. You dive under a table and hold on. [Music] You've got about 50 seconds of very strong wrap shaking. So if people try to run out of Union Station, they are likely to be thrown to the ground and break their legs, sprain their ankles. Or they make it to the outside of the building as objects on the outside collapse onto them. Definitely there will be the perception that the ground is literally waving in front of you. After nearly a minute, the shaking finally stops at Union Station. You crawl out from underneath the table and stand up. You don't get any reception inside of the building, so you run out the glass doors of the front. You try to call your wife. You try again. And again, panic to text. Are you home? Are you okay? Get nothing back. You can't get a hold of your mom or your dad or sister or anyone you love. The shaking starts again. There will be aftershocks beginning before the main shock has even over. It doesn't feel like it ever stops. You will feel continuous motion for minutes. There's a huge quake on the San Andreas fault in Southern California every 100 years or so. We haven't had one for about 160. The last time one struck, there was no Union Station. No Hollywood, no freeways to destroy, or skyscrapers to crumble. No fifth largest economy in the world to cripple. We don't know when the big one's going to hit. It could be in a year, it could be a week, or literally any minute now. But we do know that when it does, you'll have an overwhelming feeling that Mother Nature doesn't care. They are small. The question is, how are we going to survive? We are myopic. We say this event will not happen to me. I can't worry about it. Do you think about it? About what? About earthquake? You realize that you are very small on this earth. Yeah, all the time. I think about really how not prepared I am. [Music] I'm Jacob Mark O'Less. This is the big one, your survival guide. Episode one, the earthquake. I'm Brienne Lee, Senior Producer for Community Engagement at LAS. It's our goal to take complicated issues and make them easier for you to understand. Which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LAS Voter Game Plan is back. We are here to help you navigate your ballot with informed, accurate reporting on the candidates and issues. Participation and elections makes for our stronger community. Learn more. Visit LAS.com/vote. [Music] Hi, I'm Niri. The Moreno catch the LAS report three times a day during the week. The Top SoCal Stories in less than five minutes. With your morning brew before eight. Good morning, I'm Austin Cross. With me on the afternoon edition at one. You're listening to the LAS report and wrap up at six. Welcome back to the LAS report on Julia Pascon. Subscribe to the LAS report wherever you get podcasts. [Music] There's not a single personal life today that lived through the last big one in Southern California. That's because the last big one was in 1857. The closest thing we can compare it to is the Northridge Quake, which was on January 17th, 1994. It was early in the morning on a Monday and at the time I was five and I was asleep in my bed. And everything changed about four o'clock in the morning. That's my dad, Mark. Literally startled a wake by a freight train driving right through our bedroom. And we both literally jumped out of it. It was like it was so loud. I'd never heard anything like it. And my mom, Melissa. The blinds that were supposed to be hanging vertical were like out horizontal. The house lifting up like 10 feet and being slammed down back onto the ground. It was everything in your house crashing onto the floor. The refrigerator opened up and everything fell out. So your house smells like soy sauce and whey sins off and wine and anything is in there. And the first thing is to save your children. And so if he was screaming, she was screaming. After it happened, we had a whole bunch of windows and doors that wouldn't open our clothes. We had all these walls that were cracked. And it was like someone had placed their whole life in a vise and just twisted. Basically, we were left here with me and Melissa, two kids in a house that was pretty badly damaged, cold and really no way to heat the place. I remember driving down one of the main streets and there were broken gas lines as well as broken water lines. There were also flames coming out of the water. It was very surreal, you know. So burning water. I mean, how often do you see that? Our house was really messed up, so we had to leave. We stayed with relatives and I remember living in a trailer in our backyard for months. Compared to some, we had it pretty easy. We are getting reports, freeways closed, Los Angeles International Airport. We are told has been closed. The Structural Nature, other than the portion of the collapsed freeway, which you said you told about your favorite struck Southern California. at 4.35 this morning has caused a number of injuries. A number of buildings have. 57 people died. 87,000 buildings and homes damaged. 100,000 people suddenly without homes. There's something you can't control. And this is in mother nature doing its thing. After a few years our lives went back to normal. But this feeling of uneasiness remained. 25 years after Northridge and it's still here. So think about this. For all the problems it caused, Northridge was not a big one. Northridge was an event that disrupted the lives of people in the San Fernando Valley, extensively disrupted our community for a year or two. The big San Andreas earthquake is going to disrupt the lives of everybody in Southern California. And it could take us decades to recover what we lose. Whether you like it or not, the big one is coming. And it's going to come from the San Andreas fault, which runs all the way through California. It's the meeting place of the Pacific and North American plates. Sheering against one another, trying to move in opposite directions, but they're stuck, building massive amounts of pressure. And when they slip that pressure gets released, that energy blasts its way through the earth. That's an earthquake. So the magnitude too. When a bow drags across strings, there's also a burst of energy. It travels through the instrument, bounces around the hollow body, exits, and disturbs the air around your ear. A magnitude form. The tectonic plates dragging across each other are like bows against strings. The energy that's released travels through the earth and there's all these peaks and valleys and highs and lows. A magnitude 6. And then a magnitude 7.8. So instead of a half a million people receiving the very intense shaking and damage, it'll be 10 million people who get it. We may not know when the big one's going to hit. As ready as we think we are, it isn't enough. And what that means for California and really the rest of the country is terrifying. I'm Frank Stoltz, the civics and democracy reporter here at LA. It's my job to make it easier for you to understand how to participate in the political process, like voting, which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LAS voter game plan is back. We're here to help you navigate your ballot with informed, accurate reporting on the candidates and the issues. Participation and elections makes for a stronger community. Learn more, visit LAS.com/vote. [Music] You make your way outside of Union Station. The air is thick with dust. [Music] Stoplights are out. Traffic is jammed and it's loud. [Music] The people who ran when the earthquake hit are laying on the ground injured and they're holding their broken legs and twisted ankles. An aftershock hits. [Music] The shaking stops. You're dizzy. Are you still swaying? You want to get away from here. See, walk towards the street. Water and sewage has started to seep up through cracks in the roads. You see a woman in a suit walk over to a guy wearing an eye-level A sweatshirt. He was selling souvenirs just a few minutes ago and now his carts spilled over and the trinkets are all over the road. There are dozen shattered snow globes and you see a miniature Hollywood sign broken free from its tiny glass world. They move the cart out of the road. Sociologists have a word for this. It's called milling. That's what it's called when a bunch of strangers walk up to one another after some major disaster and ask, "Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?" You walk a few blocks towards the financial district. The dust is getting thicker. You pull your shirt up over your face so you don't choke on it but you can barely see in front of you. You hear people screaming. You look up. A building has collapsed. The skyline on that souvenir guy's sweatshirt is suddenly out of date. You can hardly see through the haze but you see outlines of twisted steel beams and piles of concrete. Oh my god, this poor people. You walk towards the danger. People join you and suddenly there's a whole group around you dozens of people all trying to help. I've been living in New Zealand for gosh, nearly 14 years. It'll be 14 years in September. So I arrived in New Zealand on September 17th, 2004. Our win champion, Nick, is a senior producer on this show. She talked with someone who was trapped after an earthquake. Anne Brower is an environmental scientist and she works in Christchurch. She actually used to live in California and was here when the Northridge quake happened. But at this point, February 2011, she's working in New Zealand. It's a Sunday and she has to go in for a meeting. But she does not want to deal with the parking at the university. So she's like, all right, I'll take the bus in. The bus, it was red. It's owned by a company called red bus. It was the number three bus. It went straight from Sumner, the beach village where I lived at the time, straight to the University of Canterbury. But it went through city center. So Anne had been avoiding city center for about five months. Why? Well, there had been an earthquake a few months before that was pretty far outside the city. But in the months after, there had been all these little aftershocks just happening all the time. And city center is full of all these old buildings. So Anne was just trying to be careful. She was just being cautious. But it's a Sunday. She has to get into work. So she's like, well, what's, I mean, how likely is it that anything bad happens? So she decides to get on the bus. And she sits down on the front half of the bus. Everyone else is in the back of the bus except for the driver. She pulls out a magazine and she starts reading it. What magazine was that? She was reading the economist. So the bus jumped in the air. And my first thought was, oh, cool. Okay, this time I get to see what it's like in city center. So I saw bricks falling on the other side of the street. And I thought, okay, this is definitively no longer cool. Then I heard bricks hit the bus. What do bricks sound like on a bus? Well, it sounds like brick hitting a fairy thin layer of metal. And there's nothing like the sound of falling bricks and breaking glass. It's a terrible terrible sound. When the earthquake hit, the bus stopped in the shadow of this brick building. And the brick started to come off chunks of them just collapsing, cascading down, hitting the roof of the bus, just pile after pile, hitting the roof until it's completely caved in. And Anne is pinned under the roof of the bus. So in almost an instant, it's gone completely dark and can't see anyone. She can't hear anything. And she becomes overwhelmed with pain. So there were there was no sensory perception except for weight. So like I couldn't see anything. I couldn't hear anything. I couldn't smell anything. All I could do was feel the increasing in chunks, you know, brick by brick, ton by ton, on my left hip. And it just kept coming and coming and coming. And I remember thinking this is not okay. This is not my life. This is not okay. I do not agree with this situation. This is not my story. I'm not okay with this. (dramatic music) - And then she passes out. - It's not people running around pulling out their hair or trying to water the dirt or moms don't throw their babies to the side. Those kind of crazy, panicked rushes that we see depicted in the movies a lot. Those things don't really happen in real life. - Sociologist Joe Trainer is obsessed with disasters. He's at the University of Delaware. - Most of the time under most circumstances that you're gonna see people become the best version, the most altruistic version of themself, especially in those first couple of minutes and moments after the event. - There are exceptions. Like in 2003 when a fire broke out at a nightclub in Rhode Island, people started shoving, everyone was trying to escape. And by the time it was over, 100 people were killed. More than 200 others were injured. But that's the exception, it's not the rule. - On 9/11, as far as we know, not a single person pushed anyone out of the way while everyone was rushing to get out of the buildings. In fact, people stayed to check on their coworkers. - Anne wakes up, trapped in this bus with no idea how much time has passed. - You know, it wasn't like you wake up in the morning and you hear the birds and you see the daylight of the new day. I woke up in the dark place. Like I woke up and it was all black. - She's surrounded by the wall of the bus on one side, the roof of the bus crushing her. And she starts to try and wiggle her toes and her fingers. You know, she wants to see if her spine is injured. And finally, her senses start coming back, just one by one. She realizes she can't see, and then the sun starts beaming in, shining through the window that was somehow still intact. And then she can't hear until she can hear these people rustling around outside. And then she can feel again. And when she does, she is in so much pain, she just hurts to scream. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - This is not my life. No, I'm not okay with this. This is not me. - And then she sees someone. There's this guy in a fluorescent vest standing outside the window and he says to her, "You're going to be okay. We are going to get you out. Will you please stop screaming?" - And I thought that was a fair deal. And if they were gonna get me out, I was willing to stop screaming. And fairly soon after that, I saw light. Well, there was a group of, I don't know, about 20 kind and brave, hard-ed souls who would gather on top of the bus to pull all the rubble off the bus. And they had pulled the roof of the bus off. (soft music) So here you are and dust covered clothes minutes after the single most devastating earthquake in Southern California's history and you're walking towards the chaos. You're outside of a collapsed building surrounded by strangers. But what can you all do? Where do you start? You scream, call out to people trapped inside to let them know that you're there. You don't know if they're alive. When suddenly? It sounds like SOS. You yell to a few people to come over. I'm here. I'm gonna get you out. You're not ready for this, but these people need help. So at this point, dozens of people are gathered around this bus. We've got like mechanics and tourists, just whoever is around, right? And they are all trying to move these piles off the bus to get in out. So they start moving the bricks off the bus. They pull the roof back and they get it open just enough that light starts coming through. But they can't get around. So one of these people who's trying to help this guy rob? This man with bright blue eyes, he decides to get into the bus. He just gets into the bus. Yeah, at this point, the hole they have in the roof isn't big enough to pull her out and she's stuck. So he's like, all right, I'm coming in and squeezes through the metal, sits down next to her and takes her hand and just starts talking. What do you talk about in a situation like that? Well, he was just trying to distract her. So he started talking about what he knows, which is fishing. He starts telling her these stories of the one that got away and the greatest fish he ever caught. But the whole time he's just staring into her eyes, holding her hand and he will not break eye contact. I remember more light came in. So I sensed that they had pulled more of the roof off. And I could see and hear men walking into the bus. And that was the only time that Rob sort of let our gazes move apart. Because he said to the man who got into the bus, he said, "Get her first, mate. He's gone." And that was the first I knew that other people on the bus had not made it. So everyone else who had been on the bus, ate people. They were all dead. Before people who had been on the sidewalk next to the bus when this earthquake hit, they were all dead. And was the only survivor and she was trapped. And these people climb into the rubble and they use this hand saw to cut the seat off of her that is pinning her. And they move her. They are finally getting her out and she just blacks out again from the pain. But she survived. She was saved by these strangers. It's been hours since the earthquake hit. Your throat is dry from answering screams with more screams, mix of adrenaline and exhaustion. There are hundreds of people helping now. Your phone vibrates. It's a text from your wife. It says, "I'm safe. Omar's at school. I'm going to get him. Meet us at home." The question is, how do you get home? That's next time on the big one. After the credits, five tips on how to survive when an earthquake hits. In the making of the show, we had a ton of people help out. We had Misha Yusef, who's our lead producer. R1 champion Nix, who's our executive producer. Mary Knoff is our assistant producer. Making Garvey's our editor. We had Andy Klassen do the music. R1 Nix and Valentino Rivera did the sound design. But Valentino also engineered along with Sean Cory Campbell. The artwork on our website is by Stephanie Kraft. This episode was written and reported by R1 Nix, Misha Yusef and me, Jacob Argolyse. We got production reporting help for the big one from David Rodriguez. It was a great intern. Marketing Magic by the one and only Alex Loughlin. And thanks to James Kim for his magic hands. Thanks to Dana Amah here for creating our website and data tools. If you live in Southern California and you want to know if your house is in a fault zone or liquid faction zone, go to kpcc.org/thebigone, check out our map. It's really, really cool. We've got a ton of checklists and info there as well. Special thanks to Jonathan Snipes, Bill Hudson, Kate Chair and Morgan Page. I'm your host, Jacob Argolyse. Give me a C and I next week. See you next week. [Music] I'm Frank Stoltz, the civics and democracy reporter here at LAS. It's my job to make it easier for you to understand how to participate in the political process, like voting. The participation in elections makes for a stronger community. Learn more. Visit LAS.com/vote. [Music] So you just heard that this whole earth earthquake is going to be really scary, but I'm here to help. I'm Misha Yusif. I'm the lead producer of the big one. And I have five practical tips for you that aren't going to cost a lot of money, and that are going to help you survive a bigger earthquake. Tip number one, drop, cover, and hold on. You want to drop, because you don't want the earthquake to throw you to the ground. You want to get to the ground before that happens. Remember, so that the stuff that's flying everywhere doesn't hit you in the head. And hold on, because just because you're under something sturdy doesn't mean you're not going to be flown away from it, so attach yourself to it. Tip number two, text, don't call. When you're in a big crowd like a Beyonce concert, you can't really get a lot of calls through, because the systems are flooded. So you're going to have better luck sending a text message. The same is true the earthquake. It's going to be trying to reach people they love, and you have a better shot if you send a text message because it takes less bandwidth. Number three, if you're trapped in a building, and I'm sorry in advance if you end up in that situation, but if you're trapped in a building, don't just start screaming all over the place, because there might not be any people around. And by the time help actually does show up, you wouldn't be able to use your voice to tell them where you are. You might lose your voice. So what people recommend is that you find some sort of object that's near you, and you make like rhythmic noises, like in threes or fives, and then when help is around, then let them know where you are. So tip number four, if you're one of those people like me who hate getting gas and your tank is always close to e if not on empty, that's really bad for a disaster. You need to go get gas right now and make sure that your tank doesn't fall below half, because let's say the earthquake hits and your gas tank is empty, you're not going to be able to get anywhere. If you have to evacuate or if you need to go to the store in the first couple of days, gas stations might not even be open, and you're going to be stuck. Last tip. In our scenario, the earthquake hit in the middle of the day, but what if it happened in the middle of the night and you're asleep, make it in your bed? Pajamas and shoes, my friends, make sure you wear clothes to bed and keep a pair of shoes because there's going to be glass and things all over the place and you don't want to get hurt. So keep a pair of shoes just right under your bed that you can always get to and sleep naked if you want, but you might have to run out into the street that way. I'm Frank Stoltz, the civics and democracy reporter here at LAest. It's my job to make it easier for you to understand how to participate in the political process, like voting, which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LAest voter game plan is back. Learn more. Visit laest.com/vote.