Another Reminder That "The Big One" Is Coming... Are You Ready?

Uh-oh. Is your earthquake kit up-to-date? Stories like this can be panic-inducing, but in this case, that's not such a bad thing. We're overdue for the Big One here -- the earthquake that will make the Northridge quake look like a few minor shakes. The last major San Andreas quake was long before Southern California's population explosion, so who knows the ultimate impact when it hits. But stories like this will at least serve to remind us all: Get ready. From the L.A. Times:

The San Andreas fault is one of California’s most dangerous, and is the state’s longest fault. Yet for Southern California, the last big earthquake to strike the southern San Andreas was in 1857, when a magnitude 7.9 earthquake ruptured an astonishing 185 miles between Monterey County and the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles. It has been quiet since then — too quiet, said Thomas Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center. “The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in the opening keynote talk. Other sections of the San Andreas fault also are far overdue for a big quake. Further southeast of the Cajon Pass, such as in San Bernardino County, the fault has not moved substantially since an earthquake in 1812, and further southeast toward the Salton Sea, it has been relatively quiet since about 1680 to 1690.

Here's a simulation of how the Big One might hit Southern California, from a 2014 ShakeOut scenario:

Kent Shocknek Retires: Here's What He Should Do Next

Local TV news won't be the same. Especially coverage of the next earthquake and car chase. KCBS/KCAL announced Monday that Kent Shocknek, who now anchors KCAL's primetime news, is retiring:

Longtime KCBS (Channel 2) and KCAL-TV (Channel 9) news anchor Kent Shocknek today announced his plans to retire at the end of September 2014.

A veteran of more than 36 years in television news, Shocknek has been a fixture in Los Angeles for 31 years and is believed to have anchored more hours of news on local television than anyone else in the history of the market.

The first and longest-serving morning TV news anchor in Los Angeles, Shocknek was the original anchor of “Today in L.A.,” which debuted in 1986. He joined CBS 2 in 2001 and anchored morning and evening newscasts for the station until November 2013, when he became co-anchor of sister station KCAL 9’s top-rated 8 and 10 p.m. newscasts.

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council honored Shocknek for his decades of service by proclaiming January 10 “Kent Shocknek Day.”

“For years at CBS 2 and KCAL 9, I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of working with the best producers in morning TV; and more recently, the best prime-time anchor team anywhere,” Shocknek said. “Now it’s time to catch up with the people I love, and check out some places I’ve always wanted to go.”

“From Leslie Moonves on down, I thank everyone at CBS for their friendship and support. Southern Californians are the best neighbors in the world, and I will be forever grateful to them for inviting me into their homes for so long.”

“Kent Shocknek is a Los Angeles TV news institution,” said Steve Mauldin, President and General Manager, CBS 2 and KCAL 9. “He’s a consummate professional who has distinguished himself as an outstanding breaking news anchor with an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Southern California.”

As I mentioned to CBS' Kelly Kahl yesterday, I do hope someone now hires Kent to anchor the Car Chase Channel, an idea I think we all agree is too obvious not to happen.

Now... classic Kent, the infamous time he jumped under his anchor desk, as immortalized by David Letterman:

Los Angeles Fire and Rescue Team Flies to Japan (VIDEO)

Via the website Airboyd comes this video below of relief aid and Los Angeles Fire and Rescue Team members shipping off for Japan.

According to Airboyd, the video (shot by 4th Combat Camera Squadron/SMSgt. David Smith) shows a C-17A arriving at March Air Reserve Base (formerly Air Force Base) near Riverside to upload 11 pallets of equipment and 3 personnel from Los Angeles Fire and Rescue Team. Aircraft departs and flies direct to Misawa Air Base in Japan to support the relief efforts:



And here's the other end. Video from the American Forces Network (AFN) at Misawa Air Base (200 miles north of Sendai) of the Los Angeles Fire and Rescue (as well as a fire/rescue team from Fairfax, Va.) landing.

What's interesting here is how quickly all of this went down: One of the L.A. fire/rescue members asks where they are.. while the military personnel seen on camera tells the volunteers that they may know more than he does, as the electricity at Misawa had just been restored:



Speaking of Misawa, here's video from the base's AFN bureau immediately after the quake. I love the beginning shot with the kids, describing the quake, when the giant voice of the base command starts talking:

Earthquake's Tweet Deck Aftershocks

The most amusing part of a spooky 5.9 earthquake: The Twitter explosion that quickly follows. Here's what my Tweetdeck looked like as the quake was still shaking up here on the 30th floor of the Variety building.

It's the Great Easter Earthquake, Charlie Brown

I was sitting on our bed, typing away on the laptop when I thought someone had sat on other end.

I turned around. No one. "That was weird," I thought to myself.

But the bed kept lightly shaking. I hit the USGS earthquake page and discovered that a quake had just hit Baja California. I then went to Twitter -- and confimed that I wasn't alone.

"EARTHQUAKE!" I yelled to everyone in the house -- we had much of Maria's family over for Easter.

No one else had felt it.

It really was a mild shaker by the time it got to L.A... but a 7.2 magnitude quake is no laughing matter. As always, it's a good reminder to be prepared. Check out the American Red Cross' Earthquake Tip Sheet here.



Of course, the quake is currently several trending topics on Twitter in Los Angeles. Gotta love that USGS seismologist Lucy Jones is among the top ones.

-- Written by Mike

Retro Friday: Earthquake! Edition

Here's an interesting, dated film about the 1971 Sylmar earthquake in the San Fernando Valley. My favorite part: When the narrator describes the quake's shaking as "like an angry parent shakes a screaming child."

Angrily shaking a child: Cool in 1971.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On in California

Last year, more than 5 million people took part in the "Great Southern California Shakeout" earthquake drill. This year, the entire state plans to simulate the Big One.

On Thursday, Oct. 15 at 10:15 a.m., people statewide will be asked to drop, cover and hold on -- the recommended procedure to protect oneself from falling objects in an earthquake.

The Great California Shakeout is sponsored by the Earthquake Country Alliance (www.earthquakecountry.org), which is made up of the California Emergency Management Agency; the Southern California Earthquake Center; the United States Geological Survey; the California Earthquake Authority; the American Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency; the California Department of Education; State Farm and others.

Here are a few local venues taking part in Thursday's drill:

California Science Center, 10:15 a.m., 700 Exposition Park Drive, Los Angeles; drill, school children, State Superintendent Jack O’Connell; Dr. Lucy Jones, USGS; LA County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas

Para Los Niños Elementary School, 10:15 a.m., 1617 East 7th Street (east of Alameda Street), Los Angeles

LA County Fire Department, 1320 Eastern Ave., Los Angeles, 10 a.m., interviews at facility; drop, cover, hold-on drill at 10:15, evacuation of facility (headquarters), transfer of command

LA County Fire Department, Del Valle Regional Training Facility; 1 p.m. until 8 p.m.; Search and Rescue drill; 28101 Chiquito Canyon Rd., Castaic

USC Health Science Campus, 10:15 a.m., preparations begin at 9 a.m., mass casualty incident drill

Seems like a good time to finally stop procrastinating and start putting together that earthquake kit. And yes, that includes us.

Southern California's First Twitter-Age Earthquake

It was the 4.7 earthquake heard 'round the Twitter.

I'm in New York for the broadcast networks' annual upfront presentations, and Sunday night was hanging out with several other Angelenos in town to take part in the announcements. (This is the week when network execs unveil their fall schedules to advertisers.)

Suddenly, one of them got a call from home: There'd been an earthquake. We all quickly grabbed our phones to check on loved ones; I dialed Franklin Avenue HQ, which was far enough away from the epicenter that they barely felt a thing.

I then clicked on Twitter via my Blackberry and combed through various 140-character accounts. There was already plenty of reactions from people close to the epicenter. And when the aftershocks hit, I read about it in real time. It was also interesting to watch as "earthquake" moved up the list of Twitter's trending topics.

It was like I was back in L.A., just a little less shaken.

The Myth of "Earthquake Weather"

Wednesday night's strangely warm weather led to some here in L.A. spouting that tired cliche, "It feels like earthquake weather." Of course, there is no such thing, as the Southern California Earthquake Center notes:

Many people believe that earthquakes are more common in certain kinds of weather. In fact, no correlation with weather has been found. Earthquakes begin many kilometers (miles) below the region affected by surface weather. People tend to notice earthquakes that fit the pattern and forget the ones that don't. Also, every region of the world has a story about earthquake weather, but the type of weather is whatever they had for their most memorable earthquake.

Now, to be fair, this is the kind of weather that fuels another kind of natural disaster -- wildfires, as evidenced by what's going on in Santa Barbara at the moment.

Retro Friday: Northridge, 15 Years Later

Here's the "NBC Nightly News" report from Jan. 17, 1994 -- the day L.A. was hit by the deadly and destructive Northridge quake. Puts last night's tiny 4.5 quake in perspective.

Below, KTLA's live coverage from that morning's "Morning News" broadcast.

San Bernardino Shaker: Did You Feel It?

Yep, we did -- a minor shimmy here in Glendale (the Blogger Preschooler missed it, but Maria and I definitely felt it). It was a magnitude 4.5 earthquake (downgraded from what was initially reported as a 5.0) at 7:49 p.m. located about a mile south of San Bernardino.

Quake Overload

Coverage overkill? Uh, yuh think? Our local TV newscasters have never been known for their restraint -- this is the land of STORMWATCH and car chases, after all.

But it's still a sorry sight to see our local stations struggling to make Tuesday's 5.4 quake into a bigger story. Some of it was pure fear mongering -- "Is this the precursor to something bigger?" was the first question out of everyone's mouth. The truth is, the odds of the big one hitting tomorrow aren't much better or worse than they were yesterday. When the big one's ready to hit, it's gonna hit.

Broken pipes, shampoo bottles on supermarket floors, some bricks from unreinforced buildings sliding to the ground -- interesting visuals and worth mentioning. But worth blowing out the afternoon with wall to wall coverage?

I suppose you could argue that at least this was good practice for when a big quake really does hit. But I was almost embarrassed for Southern California by the end of the day -- given the truly destructive quakes and natural disasters around the globe in recent years, our minor shake was a minor distraction.



Of course, there wasn't video from those other quakes of Judge Judy -- looking alarmed, probably wondering if that light above her was going to come crashing down.

Here's How the Quake Looked Live on TV

Above, here's how KNBC anchors Chris Schauble and Jennifer Bjorklund handled the quake live on their 11 a.m. Cool, calm and collected, the duo were extremely professional.

Quite, ahem, a difference from this:

Did You Feel It?

There are scary earthquakes, and there are not. Thankfully, today's shaker was a fun one. Here at Variety, we felt a little shake -- as if a truck was passing by -- followed by a gentle but firm sway from side to side.

The details, from USGS:

A moderate earthquake occurred at 11:42:15 AM (PDT) on Tuesday, July 29, 2008.The magnitude 5.8 event occurred 3 km (2 miles) SW of Chino Hills, CA. The hypocentral depth is 12 km (8 miles).

Turns out it was actually just a 5.4. A lotta shakin', but that's about it. Still, that's not stopping local news from going hogwild with wall-to-wall coverage.

Your Scare for the Weekend: Deadly Earthquake, Waaaay Overdue

According to a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey and a member of the California Seismic Safety Commission, the Coachella Valley is overdue for a major earthquake that would make the 1994 Northridge tremblor look like a hiccup.

Lucy Jones says Los Angeles wouldn't be spared, either. From the L.A. Times:

Historically, major temblors have struck the Coachella Valley every 150 years, on average, but for reasons no one can explain, it's been quiet for 300 years.

"Whatever it is that makes for a long interval is happening now, and we know that long interval can't last forever," Jones said. "This is an overdue fault."

Stresses are building under the San Andreas and San Jacinto faults, which could cause the ground to move as fast as 10 feet a second during an earthquake. The Northridge quake in 1994 moved about 6 feet a second.

A likely scenario would have a magnitude-7.8 earthquake strike in the Salton Sea, extending north and west toward Palmdale. Jones predicted the shaking could last more than 100 seconds, kill thousands, destroy homes, collapse the I-10 and I-15 freeways, ignite petroleum pipelines and leave untold thousands homeless in potentially searing desert heat. The long-term effects, she said, could be akin to the economic collapse of New Orleans and the Gulf region following Hurricane Katrina.

Sleep well tonight! Are you prepared for the next serious earthquake? Perhaps Thursday morning's 4.6 shaker should serve as a reminder.

Retro Friday: "Under the Desk! Under the Desk!"

I wasn't even living in Los Angeles in 1987, but how can anyone forget the morning that then-KNBC morning anchor Kent Shocknek and weatherman Christopher Nance hid under the anchor desk during an earthquake aftershock. The best part? Kent urges the station's camera operators to do the same. Cut to wide shot of the studio -- the cameramen are still standing there, shooting the empty desk as Kent and Christopher hide.

Thanks to YouTube, we can now relive that great moment in local L.A. TV history. Even better, this is actually taken from an episode of "Late Night with David Letterman." Dave gently mocks Kent and Christopher... but doesn't have to say much, since their actions are pretty damn funny already.

How Were These Homes Ever Built?

Yikes. These Montecito Heights homes appear to be one earthquake away from just tumbling down the side of a hill. Not sure I would ever feel comfortable moving in. Clearly some engineer knew what he/she was doing, right? Guess we'll check back when the big one hits.



Pics were taken by Walking in L.A., who continues to explore the city on foot, while snapping some awesome shots.

(Thanks to LA Voice for the pointer.)