frank rizzo

Rip It Up, Issue 199, 1 March 1994, Page 26

frank rizzo

Initially this column was something to do with people shooting into the air all night on New Year's Eve, but asthingstranspired, I've just had an earthquake damn near trash my apartment, so I figured that might be a touch more interesting to most folks. In fact, even now as I write some 44 hours after the event I'm interrupted by the still strong and regular aftershocks which are made just that much more dramatic by thefact we live on the second storey of our building. The whole deal has been a great urban nightmare but in a strange manner. The actual damagecaused isbad enough but it was intensified by the fact that all the services we take for granted had vanished. Here's the deal: what feels like a lifetime of noise and wild motion then it's dark, it's hard to move because all your belongings have been bounced onto the floor, there's no power, water or phone and just to keep things lively we're being rocked pretty heavily by aftershocks that were clocking in at 5+ on the Richter scale. No fun believe me. After checking that the building was OK we elected to stay inside as it was damn cold and the neighbouring buildings were still shedding chunks of plaster pretty regularly. After a few nerve-wracking hours ofwaitingfortheshocksand listening to the solid wail of sirens punctuated by transformers exploding (one blew on a pole about 20 feet from the window which was pretty eerie; a loud bang then the room lit up for a second like one blip from a strobe), dawn broke and finally we could see. I'm convinced gravity gets screwed with during an earthquake as results were pretty odd. Shelves that could tip over had done so whilethe rest had pretty much emptied themselves, with some things literally flying across the room while others stayed put. There's not a whole lot you can do at this point, it's dangerous to go anywhere as traffic signals are out and there's still emergency vehicles making up 90 per cent of the traffic (we later

found out that the section of freeway near our closest on-ramp had collapsed so no-one was going too far). It was impossible to call and check on friends so the on ly recourse was forays out to find if any stores were open and where the water supplies were. Feeling the need to get some contact with reality, I drove to my office to check not only it but the state of the area. It was a scary sight. A nice sunny day butthestreets were pretty much deserted and East Hollywood looked likea warzone in places. Walls had come down on many buildings and shop windows had literally exploded onto the street. Naturally asthis was LA, home to the world's worst drivers, I was nearly killed by rich morons who figure an expensive car means you don't have to obey the law, while I damn near killed a bunch of cyclists who had taken the time to get dressed in their stupid outfits but couldn't take the time to stop at red lights (a warning to all you folks on bikes: a fruity helmet doesn’t mean you can try to play chicken with a Cadillac. Detroit iron always wins). By this time I had gleaned the size and locale of the quake from suprisingly patchy radio news and thus felt more secure as at least I knew what was going on. The feeling of security didn't last long though as it was quickly evening and we were returned to sitting in the dark (torch batteries were selling for around $3 a piece by now) waiting for aftershocks to undo what tidying we'd managed. Finally late that night our power was restored and the phones were back working so we were at last in touch with the world, which is a very reassuring feeling. Although we still have trouble with drinkable water ('if it ain't bottled boil it 20 minutes' is the rule of thumb), the cat won't comeoutfrom underthefridgeand it's not easy to sleep more than an hour without a tremor wakening you, I suppose I won't be doing much complaining about life being dull in LA.

FRANK RIZZO