ROBERT GARDNER -- The Verdict

I seem to be preoccupied with natural disasters. I have written about the

chubasco that roared out of the Gulf of California without warning and

wiped out piers and sunk boats in all of Southern California. I have also

written of the big Santa Ana River flood that drowned quite a few people

here in Orange County.

Somehow, I seem to have ignored the Long Beach earthquake of March 10,

1933.

It was a pretty good earthquake as earthquakes go, measuring 6.3 on the

scale, killing 115 people and injuring many more.

I was going to USC at the time, and when the bricks stopped falling I

drove to Balboa to see how my sister and brother-in-law were doing.

In those days -- before freeways -- you drove through such metropolitan

centers as Artesia and Clearwater to get to the beach. Needless to say

that since those areas were basically agricultural, there wasn’t much in

the way of earthquake damage, and the cows didn’t seem much perturbed by

it either.

The first sign that something out of the ordinary had happened was when I

drove through what is now Costa Mesa -- more farmland -- and came down

Newport Boulevard to the bluff now occupied by Hoag Hospital.

On that bluff were what seemed like hundreds of campfires -- people who

had left the Balboa Peninsula to avoid the big tidal wave that was

expected as a result of the earthquake. All those campfires resembled a

picture of Grant’s army camped outside Vicksburg. I prowled through the

campfires looking for my sister and brother-in-law, but couldn’t find

them and drove on down to the peninsula.

It was deserted. I didn’t see a soul until I came upon Officer George

Callihan, who was driving a police car. I asked him what he was doing and

he said he was on the lookout for looters. I asked him what he was going

to do when the tidal wave hit.

He said, “Darned if I know. I can’t swim.” Then and there I decided Cal

was an honest-to-God hero.

When I got to the house occupied by my sister and brother-in-law, they

were gone so I went to bed. It turned out that they and the Finsters had

gone to Santa Ana to stay with some old friends.

Of course, there was no tidal wave and if the people had only listened to

Lancey Sherman, they would not have run for the hills.

Lancey was a retired civil engineer and could have told them that if

there was going to be a tidal wave, it would have hit almost

simultaneously with the earthquake. At least that was what Lancey told

anyone who would listen.

Of course, all of us who live in Southern California know that some day

the Big One is going to happen -- when the San Andreas Fault slips and

everything west of the fault drops into the ocean and Barstow will be

selling waterfront lots.

I don’t believe that, but I’m thinking of making a down payment on a lot

in Barstow, just in case.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.