Here in Southern California there is an earthquake industry; for instance a company specialises in a safety earthquake valve which automatically turns off the gas in your home in cases of earthquakes; we have the earthquake kit, carried in the car and at home we have the Moses box, tucked away in our wardrobe and other storage places with canned food and other supply essentials in case of an earthquake.
We see many television programmes telling us what to do in an earthquake and what to put in your emergency kit; up to about twelve months ago we were told that the best place to go in a quake would be to stand in a door frame but that has changed. The best place we are now told is under a table.
That may seem a bit silly to people who have never been in a quake and have only seen them on the movies, but it’s the most practical. In an earthquake you are more likely to get hurt or even killed by a can of beans flying across the room or your television crashing into you than falling down a crack in the road.
So our communal heart attack came yesterday in the form of an earthquake; the epicentre was a few hundred miles away in Baja but we certainly felt it here.
It was 7.2 on the Richter scale which is much bigger than the 7.0 quake in Haiti – a lot bigger as it get exponentially bigger the higher you go on the scale which is a logarithmic scale, meaning that the numbers on the scale measure factors of 10. So, for example, an earthquake that measures 4.0 on the Richter scale is 10 times larger than one that measures 3.0 and so on.
I think I read that the Chile quake at 8.8 was something like 5,000 times bigger than the Haiti quake.
An earthquake is a huge adrenalin rush; you don’t know how long it’s going to last, how serious it’s going to be or even if this is your last moment on earth.
I was adding a bass line to a song I was recording a couple of years ago when one came. I was doing this at home as I do all my recordings here; I have a limited musical talent but I can play a few instruments up to a mediocre standard and in any case I can’t afford to hire musicians so I play all the instruments myself. By the way it’s great fun.
As I was recording in the morning I hadn’t bothered to get dressed before starting work – in fact most of the time I write wearing my dressing gown – and when the quake started I was just wearing shorts with nothing on my feet.
When the quake stopped I had visions of being rescued in my underpants if it had been bigger so from then on, for a little while anyway, I was up and dressed before starting work.
Yesterday’s quake was different; I was at the market. Once a month I take a day off from being an actor, or a writer or even organising my show in Edinburgh and sell at Fairfax High School Outdoor Flea Market; it goes a long way towards our rent but it’s a great atmosphere and great fun.
I was sitting behind my stall when I felt the first shake – yes the earth moving – and of course you are never sure if it is, in fact, moving or if you’re dizzy or even imagining things but the shake got bigger and bigger till I was sure. I looked around and heard the word ‘quake’ from the girl in the stall next to me and then the guy from the stall the other side of me said ‘did you feel that?’ and the girl said ‘it’s still happening.’ Which, indeed, it was!
I looked around and all the people that had been walking and talking a moment earlier were standing still; not a word was spoken and the market place was completely silent. The shaking was still shaking, the adrenalin was going higher, the silence was quieter and suddenly it stopped. It seemed like half an hour but in truth was a matter of minutes and then everybody started to move again and talk.
At that precise moment we didn’t know whether the rest of Southern California had been completely obliterated from the face of the earth or what had happened. A few figures were banded about – 7.2, 6.5 – from some of the experts there and then we called our loved ones to see if they were all right.
I called my wife who had gone to Starbucks for a frappuccino at the Hollywood/Highland Centre where the eyes of the world were focused a few weeks ago on the Academy Awards; she said she wasn’t sure she felt the shaking – she wondered what it was – but she was ok. As a rule you don’t feel much if you are walking or driving.
It kind of reminded me of something that happened to me many years ago when I was in the army cadets.
I wrote of my experience in the SAS a few weeks ago and the reason I was quite good at being a soldier when I joined was that I was in the army cadets for four years beforehand. I was good at marching, playing the drum, shooting, map reading and all the rest of the stuff and at the age of sixteen I was teaching map reading, battlefield tactics, weapon training and even the military drum.
After a couple of years I passed all the exams and tests and I was promoted to sergeant.
I taught the little fellas the first thing about a Bren gun that the tiniest part had the longest name – the Body Locking Nut Retainer Plunger – and how to take the thing apart in less than half a minute and in map reading I would tell them what a map is; a piece of land drawn to scale on a piece of paper or parchment.
We would go to the range and fire the .303 Lee Enfield rifle; it weighed ten pounds and when you fired it the rifle would give you an almighty kick in the shoulder if you didn’t hold it properly; I’ve seen many a bruised shoulder and sometimes a black eye when it wasn’t held properly.
At the range we would be split into two groups; those that did the firing and those that did the scoring.
When you fired the rifle it made a hug noise and the firing line always created the most god awful din that you could imagine. The one thing you were not allowed to wear on the range was ear plugs and it was a wonder we didn’t all go deaf. The reason for this is that we needed to hear orders.
The real scary part was the scoring; the scorers had to go to a place called the butts. This was a place dug into the ground beneath the targets. There was a bench to sit on and there were two targets at each post; when one target was up you pulled the other one down on a pulley system.
When a bullet hit the target the scorer would mark where on the target the bullet had hit. We would do this with a marker on a long stick with a board attached to the top. If a firer hit the bull we would show the white side and touch the target in the top left hand corner and then touch the bull. There were four rings on the target; bull, inner, outer and magpie. We touched another corner for the inner showing the dark side of the marker and so on.
The reason why it was so scary is that we could see the bullets landing behind the targets in the sandy hill and it was like being fired at; with that and the sound of ricochets and banging from the firing line it was like being at war; we had to yell at each other to be heard and when the firing stopped we had to paste up the holes in the target. The bull’s eye was two tones – black and white – and the idea was to aim at the corner of the bull to make a good group.
After we pasted over where the bullets had hit the target off it would go again.
One day the heart attack or the earthquake for that day happened; the kid next to me, John Bethal, suddenly shouted out “Fuck me – I’ve been shot!”
I turned around and he had his hand over his forehead with blood pouring down his arms and onto the floor.
I don’t know who did it but someone called the firing line and told the officer in charge - a Lt Leonard - who covered the 100 yards from the line to the butts in one second flat – or that’s what it seemed like.
What had happened was a bullet had hit the bank behind the targets, ricocheted back and scraped across John’s hairline – figuratively parting his hair!!
When the Lieutenant arrived he sorted everything out and they carried John away for treatment; he eventually turned out to be okay and there was a lot of talk as to whether it was an actual bullet or a piece of grit but it was generally considered a bullet as the sand was quite soft – but you never know.
Another cadet, who was very posh, sat in John’s seat and said “Lightening never strikes in the same place twice.”
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