Another Day, Another Earthquake in Sunny California

The first account of an earthquake in Los Angeles noted that the shaking of the ground lasted "as long as half an Ave Maria". Fra Juan Crespi's earthquake measuring scale, which he coined as chronicler of the 1769 Portolá expedition, might have come in useful last week.

But I didn't notice anyone praying as the shockwaves of the 4.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Yucaipa, 79 miles east of Los Angeles, rippled through the city.

"Don't worry about it. Sit down. This is California." The elderly gentleman in the hospital waiting room seemed to find my panic amusing.

Moments before, the marble counter I had been lean ing on at reception had seemed to go soft. That was followed by a slight swaying of the room and silence, as people looked up from what they were doing. The movement lasted several seconds, long enough for me to realise that it was happening and that I was doing nothing about it.

Should my family and I stand beneath a door frame, as all the literature advises? Should we simply run for it, taking care to use the stairs and not take the lift down from the fifth floor? But standing in the doorway would seem impolite. People were determinedly going about their business, and blocking the entrance to a busy hospital waiting room merely to indulge my own paranoia would be an affront to the sense of security essential to the wellbeing of southern California.

As the LA Times noted in 1934: "No place on earth offers greater security to life and greater freedom from natural disasters than south ern California." That the paper should have had to make such a pronouncement induces a sense of unease.

Angelenos seem to have a blasé relationship with the approaching Armageddon. Gil the surfer, star of the novel Lucifer's Hammer, rides the ultimate, tsunami-fuelled wave: "If death was inevitable, what was left? Style, only style ... The wave's frothing peak was far above him". The 1974 novel Earthquake, on which the Charlton Heston disaster film was based, emphasises the sense of thrill: "With incredible speed, the city of Los Angeles virtually disintegrates."

Five earthquakes hit California last week. The strongest, some 90 miles off the coast near the California-Oregon border, prompted a tsunami warning along the entire western seaboard. Unfortunately, if you weren't tuned into the Weather Channel you wouldn't have known. Most people only learned of the warning after it had been lifted.

The subsequent quakes may or may not have been aftershocks. Seismologists are divided. But then seismology is starting to sound increasingly like underground astrology.

"We can present a theory that cannot be disproved until long after we are dead," US geological survey seismologist Lucy Jones told the LA Times.

One thing they agree on is that earthquakes tend to come in clusters: a busy period of seismic activity often follows a quiet period.

The day after the Yucaipa shock last week, a handy flyer dropped into my letterbox. Looking like one of the glossy real-estate entreaties that arrive each day, this one was from the California Earthquake Authority and bore its sunny slogan: "Every day is earthquake season in California."

Perhaps that's the future of this place, a disaster theme park, complete with landslides, earthquakes, drought, tsunamis, and epic gridlock.