Loma Prieta Anniversary

Shepard Smith, FNC newscaster, always signs off with a ‘this day in history’ factoid. This past Friday was the 19th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake. I wasn’t up here for that one, but even at 370 miles away in Pico Rivera, what I did feel caused me to abruptly end a call with a co-worker with an exclamation of “oh s—t earthquake” as I dashed under a desk. The Whittier Narrows earthquake two years prior was still a fresh memory.

Whittier can trace its roots back even further than Martinez and eventually became part of a community of Quakers. Much of its original masonry is depicted in films like Back to the Future (I went to the same High School as Marty) and Masters of the Universe just to name two.

I was working for Northrop’s B-2 division at the time of the earthquake; ours was a converted GM plant. The mess that greeted me when I arrived that afternoon was unnerving (I worked in facilities so I had to be there). Huge steel frames designed to hold the wings of the aircraft danced across the floor a few inches leaving clean squares in the cement where they once rested; two story walls separated at the corners creating visible gaps at their base.

As devastating as the effects were in Pico Rivera, where my mom lived in uptown Whittier, was far worse. Houses were shaken off their foundations and stone masonry on the buildings uptown became dangerous projectiles. And that quake only measured 5.9 on the Richter scale.

“Stupid is as stupid does”, something about last week’s Man About Town’s column reminded me of Forest Gump’s come back line – I just watched it again not too long ago while on a mini vaca in Santa Cruz. Standing vigil on the Marina Vista Bridge I have heard words like; disgraceful, sham, outrageous and nonsense. Some were from folks with structural engineering degrees. Most are of the opinion that this emergency was contrived.

Yet I am sure if I were to poll these same folks about our downtown un-reinforced masonry buildings they would most likely concur that these pose the greater threat to life and property. Nineteen years have passed since the Loma Prieta earthquake, a quake that measured 6.9 on the Richter scale.

If someone wanted to, could one intentionally blight a town? Well two examples of blight are discussed in real estate terms: functional obsolescence; when buildings have outlived their usefulness or are allowed to fall into a state of disrepair or have significant design flaws that loss of life and property is sure to result during ‘an act of God’; and economic obsolescence; when empty store fronts begin to out pace those that are occupied resulting in a net loss to the tax base.

I suppose if one wanted to intentionally blight a town or a portion of a town they could chose not to act on safeguarding or upgrading their property and/or wait until leases are set to expire, raise the rents to levels on par with oh Walnut Creek (I think I recall Parker musing that downtown rents should be able to fetch the same $5 per square ft. that retail space goes for there) lengthen the terms to ten years, then see who bites.

On the surface City Hall seems to have folded like a lawn chair because of a feigned threat. Yet downtown truly is a ticking time bomb whose sound our city fathers seem to hear as the soft, gentle rhythm of a metronome tapping out a four beat measure. To borrow from a now infamous utterance by one member of the beaver subcommittee “lives will be lost” doesn’t seem to be all that worrisome unless it can be pinned on a beaver and public funds are made available.

Oh and I have to correct the record on the burrowing problem that our Director of Public Works so eloquently pointed to, again, during the last city council meeting. Ask any miner how long they could survive underground without an air source. Beavers are mammals, they breathe air, they aren’t tunneling under buildings or foundations of buildings or walls from beneath the water’s edge – they’d suffocate.

Yes, stupid is as stupid does, and last time I checked most mammals aren’t stupid.