A Few Reflections In The Midst Of The Mid Moderate 5.4 Los Angeles Earthquake

 By SK 

1.    My dog needs to get a job

 

My dog clearly is not one of those hyper, panic, and paranoid over reactive, super-barking, warning dogs. She pretty much just snoozed right through the first few seconds of the quake, until I called her name and summoned her (in my most Dog Whisperer pack leader voice of course) to the safe zone.  Once she decided we were just fine, yep, back to sleep.  She will be sending out resumes this week, this is ridiculous.

 

2.    Doorway schmoorway

 

In the heat of the shake, I realized I'm not so much buying into the fact that the doorway is really the safest place to be when an earthquake happens. I came up with about three other safer spots while standing on the doorway today. IS the doorway really the safest place? Do we have any experts reading that might be able to confirm this?

 

Reminder to self: look into the best spot in my house for the next one.

 

3. "Reporting" from the front lines…

 

Well, in case I was wondering, I am a thinker in a moment of crisis. I actually grabbed my video camera; thankfully, it was cued up and ready to shoot live footage in the event of this being the "big one." Yes, I have all news sources covered, I figure local and national news outlets totally need me as their beat reporter in the Santa Monica, Venice and Mar Vista Westside areas and I'm sure not going to disappoint them!  Will the producer in me ever go away? Not as long as we have crisis potential, no. My sister calls this being opportunistic, as if I'm planning on sending it in for big bucks. I call it being a news whore.

 

4. Technology still has some room for improvement

 

Cell phones were running their own show yesterday, from constant ringing outbursts, to messages stating "temporarily disconnected" and the predictable busy signals--this situation is not under control as much as we'd like to think it is.  And by the way, what is our major back up plan B for when all towers are down anyway? Does anyone have a rotary phone in his or her back closet? I may need to do a little eBay log on and at least get that covered.

 

Also, I scanned all news sites just to see who would be the fastest in reporting… it took close to 15 minutes to even see anything online why does that seem long to me? That is concerning, because 15 minutes is not that bad. MSNBC was one of the first up-- short, simple and to the point A Magnitude-5.4 Earthquake Struck Los Angeles And Other Parts Of Southern California Tuesday Afternoon. And then I watched the non-news all day long online that area of technology has definitely improved.

 

 

5. I am not really the poster girl for Earthquake preparedness.

 

At all.

 

With my extensive supply list, I am covered maybe for the next two days. I barely have a gallon of clean water, not very much dog food, fruit, veggies, some filet mignon, rice, lettuce and a lot of cold beer from last weekends BBQ. So, in a nutshell, in the event of this being the big one, I'm up the creek, but, hey, at least the dog and me are eating filet mignon, living the dream for a day.

 

Another note to self: Log on http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/earthquakes/archive/ready.dtl#water

and create my own Earthquake Preparedness Kit just like this one, courtesy of The Red Cross, which includes a whole bunch of extra stuff I most likely will never, ever buy…. But, I really , really want to.

PS- I called BFF first before anyone else. She was under her desk.