Are you ready for the big one?

Big One What?

That, Is what I hear from many residents here in the park....Many residents that live here in the Pines and across the Inland Empire, have always heard about them, but since they have just moved here from out of state, or they are to young to remember the last Big Ones we experienced, they dont really understand the question....Are you ready for the Big One.

Of course, none of us have really experienced a Big One....Oh North Ridge shook us a lot and caused a lot of damage in that area, or the Landers, Big Bear double quakes, caused a lot of structure home damage up on the Northern Desert but still they were not the Big One....What is the big one? Or perhaps the question should be, How big is the big one is supposed to be?

According to the latest edition of Earthquake Country, a really big book now since it is kept updated every time there is a major quake, the True big One will be an event not seen since the Fort Tejon Quake of 1857, which killed two people, one when his sod house fell on him....But that quake according to the evidence was least an 7.9 quake....Hundreds of times stronger than any thing anyone has experienced over the last 150 years....Almost every building in Fort Tejon was destroyed.....Buildings in LA swayed and cracked......The land movement was up to 30 feet along the rupture, with an 16 inch uplift on the Carrizo Plain.....And there in lies the rub....That section of the San Andreas Fault zone, roughly on a line south of Bakersfield south to the suburbs of San Bernardino, has not moved in over 150 years, and it is long over due.

I'm sure that many of you known who Lucy Jones is...She is one of the premier Earth Scientists at Cal Tech in Pasadena, and as she puts it, if we are prepared, for the big one, we are all NOT going to die....A lot of people will, and a lot of damage will be done, but if the people of southern California take some basic safety steps they will weather the quake.

So what could happen if the expected 7.8 earthquake on the San Andreas, say like out to the north of Palm Springs area....How well would our bridges, buildings and homes stand up to a quake of that magnitude?....What can we expect in the first few hours right after the quake hits?

How bad could it be....Among the consequences:....Thousands could die, depending on what time of day the quake hits.....Hundreds or thousands of older buildings might collapse......Skyscrapers in downtown Los Angeles could be badly damaged and some may fall......The 15 Freeway through the Cajon Pass will be severed, stranding tens of thousands of High Desert commuters......The 10 Freeway between Banning and Desert Hot Springs will be cut, possibly in several locations......The 14 Freeway north of Palmdale will be cut........Some communities could go months without water..........Small businesses may fail if water and other utilities aren't quickly restored..........Pipelines will be severed, triggering fires and interrupting supplies....The American and Colorado River Canal systems might fail, with hundreds of thousands of gallons of water spilling out into the deserts......Older hospitals may suffer damage, causing remaining hospitals to be swamped with casualties.

How well would San Antonio, Arrowhead Regional, and Kaiser do.....Its possible those three hospitals would be the only 3 hospitals in the entire Inland Empire still able to operate, because for the most part, they are the most modern buildings in the IE.

What has surprised scientists is the level of destruction the earthquake would cause in Los Angeles, even though the fault break would be at least 60 miles away.........Though Earthquake Scientists are refining the computer models, the shock waves could turn west at the Cajon Pass and blast into Los Angeles.

That's about the same distance San Francisco was from the epicenter of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. That magnitude 6.9 quake knocked down a freeway, severely damaged the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and killed 63 people.

A 7.8 quake would shake nearly 10 times harder.........And it would shake for minutes............The magnitude 6.7 1994 Northridge quake lasted only seven seconds but killed 60 people.........The calculations of motion on a San Andreas earthquake has surprised most earthquake scientists.

Even though the shaking in Los Angeles wouldn't be as intense because of the distance, the city sits on a deep basin of sediment that will shake like a bowl of gelatin and prolong the event...........There will be large low-frequency waves.........The ground will shift 10 or 20 feet, just like the ground did in the 1906 San Francisco quake...High-rise buildings will shake back and forth and crash into each other as the ground beneath them shakes the opposite way.

What concerns scientists is that the southern section of the San Andreas has not broke or had a major quake in over 600 years....And outside the Fort Tejon quake of 150 years ago the San Francisco Quake of 1906 fault ripped apart the city killing an estimated 3,000 people.

It wont matter how well-trained the state's firefighters and other emergency responders may be, Southern Californians who survive the "Big One" will need to make sure they have food, water and other supplies to stay alive without the aid of government agencies or relief organizations during the quake's immediate aftermath....That means planning now with a good survival pack, with plenty of water and canned goods stored in a safe place....As we have been told here at the park, the city of Rancho Cucamonga might not be able to provide basic services for up to two weeks....I assume the rest of the IE is equally unprepared and that is what is worrying officials, state and federal as well as the locals.

Police would have other problems than just responding to local emergencies....Besides assisting evacuations, controlling crowds and keeping an eye out for looters, deputies would also be responsible for keeping the county's jail population alive and behind bars.....And for at least the first three days or so after a 7.8-magnitude quake along the southern San Andreas, sheriff's deputies would spend much of their time surveying disaster zones and figuring out how and where to deploy....Us John and Mary does had best be prepared to live on our own for a while....Are you Ready for the Big One?

And of course, what do you do if you are stranded on a freeway with no way to move or get off....Would you be ready to spend up to a week in your car....I dont think so....So the questions begs again....Are you Ready for the Big One?

Gary Hall, the ghostpainter