I was lying in bed in my little condo in Normal Heights here in San Diego watching the wrenching “Suffer the Little Children” episode of the great HBO western series Deadwood in my normal style: with a little portable DVD player on my stomach and earphone on my ears…and then I felt it. My bed was shaking. My first thought was that it was my nephew Gregg, who lives here, looking for something under my bed and shaking it.
Then I saw my cat, 15 year old Clawdette, with a weird look on her face as she sat on the edge of my bed. And Gregg said: “Earthquake.” Then I looked up at the ceiling fan chandelier: it was swaying.
Early reports on TV indicate we experienced a 5.9 centered in El Campo — not too far from San Diego.
But — amazing to say — I shrugged on this one. Because this was my fifth earthquake experience. The most traumatic was an 8.2 or 8.4 aftershock in Mexico City in 1985, after yours truly and several other San Diego Union reporters were put on planes from San Diego to Mexico’s capitol ASAP to cover the Mexico City earthquake. I got to see and report first hand on the mind-boggling death and destruction and was inside a church interviewing earthquake victims when a big aftershock hit — and everyone ran out the door to huddle in an outside quad, as buildings around us creaked ominously, dogs howled, and power lines looked as if they were going to fall. And then I was in several smaller ones in Southern California as well.
Many of us in California simply accept this is something we have to live with.
And maybe one day, die from.
But look at it this way: tonight I had roll, without the rock..
UPDATE: According to the website Daily Pitch, the earthquake interrupted the Padres-Blue Jay game:
The Toronto Blue Jays stood on the field. Nobody moved. They heard about these things, but most had never experienced anything like it.
Yes, it was an earthquake.
The San Diego Padres-Blue Jays game stopped for about 45 seconds in the eighth inning when an earthquake rocked Petco Park. The crowd of 16,542 cheered when they realized what it was.
It was measured at 5. 9 on the richter scale.
Blue Jays reliever Scott Downs, who had just retired David Eckstein, stood on the mound as stadium began shaking. Chase Headley, the next batter, stayed out of the batter’s box for a few seconds. The public address announced asked that everyone remain calm.
Here’s the AP account of the earthquake being felt at the game.
The AP has this more general report on the quake, which it says “was felt as a gentle rolling motion in Los Angeles, Long Beach and Orange County. San Diego’s Petco Park swayed during an earthquake, and the public address announced asked that everyone remain calm. The crowd cheered.”
Somehow this song comes to mind:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.