The first news I heard of the massive earthquake that hit Syria and Turkey the other day, the word was that there were at least 1,600 dead.
Then it seemed like every time I heard mention of the 7.8 temblor and its toll, the number got larger and larger. By this morning, the word was that more than 25,000 people had been killed.
One phrase comes to mind.
“There but for the grace of God …”
When you live in California for more than 20 years, as I did from 1990-2010, you’re going to feel the earth shaking from time to time.
In fact, my first California earthquake happened nearly seven months before I lived in the Golden State. I was working at the Reno Gazette-Journal in Nevada on October 17, 1989, and we had the television on in our office to keep track of the third game of the World Series. The game was set for Candlestick Park in San Francisco, where I had covered three games of the National League Championship Series earlier that month.
We were about 220 miles away on the other side of a major mountain range, but at 5:04 p.m., we felt a shock and a medium shaking in our office. The World Series pregame show stopped broadcasting. It was a 6.9 earthquake and it was truly scary. A portion of the San Francisco Bay Bridge had collapsed into the bay and the top deck of double-decked I-880 through Oakland pancaked onto the bottom deck.
Only 63 people died, a minor miracle.
Less than five years later, on January 17, 1994, I was awakened from sleep in my home in La Canada Flintridge, California, by what felt like a giant hand shaking the house. This one was only 6.7, but we lived less than 20 miles from the epicenter of what turned out to be the Northridge Earthquake.
This one had a death toll of only 57. You have to say one thing for California. Ever since people saw what happened in San Francisco in 1906, the state has been very well prepared for earthquakes.
Earthquakes in this country are basically a West Coast phenomenon, even though the most powerful quake in American history was an 8.2 that hit New Madrid, Missouri, in 1811. That makes quakes less of a big deal to people living in the East.
Oddly enough, the reverse effect happened after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. seemed to have a greater emotional effect in the east than it did in the west.
And Turkey? Syria? How much would most Americans care about what happens that far away?
Well, I’m reminded of an old joke.
One woman tells another news of a horrific bus crash in Pakistan. She says 75 Pakistanis and a man from Brooklyn were killed.
The other woman’s response?
“Oh, that poor man.”