Goodbye California - Alistair [68]
‘The third thing that rather tends to preoccupy people’s minds is that reputable scientists have begun to talk out loud – in print, radio and television – about the prospects that lie ahead of us. Whether they should talk out loud or not is a matter for their own principles and consciences: I prefer not to, but I’m not necessarily correct.
‘A physicist, and a highly regarded one, Peter Franken, expects the next earthquake to be of a giant size, and he has openly predicted death toll figures between twenty thousand and a million. He has also predicted that if it happens in the long-quiescent central section of the San Andreas the severity of the shock waves would rock both Los Angeles and San Francisco – in his own words, “quite possibly wiping them out”: it is perhaps not surprising that, per head of population, California consumes more tranquillizers and sleeping tablets than any place on earth.
‘Or take the San Francisco emergency plan. It is known that no fewer than sixteen hospitals in “kit” form are stored in various places around the city ready to be set up when disaster strikes. A leading scientist commented somewhat gloomily that most of those, should a major earthquake occur, would probably be destroyed anyway, and if the city was inundated or the peninsula cut off the whole lot would be useless. San Franciscans must find this kind of statement vastly heartening.
‘Other scientists settle on a maximum of five years’ existence for both Los Angeles and San Francisco. Some say two. One seismologist gives Los Angeles less than a year to live. A crackpot? A Cassandra? No. The one person they should listen to. A James H. Whitcomb of CalTech, the best earthquake forecaster in the business. He has predicted before with an almost uncanny degree of accuracy. Won’t necessarily be located in the San Andreas Fault, but it’s coming very soon.’
Barrow said: ‘Believe him?’
‘Let me put it this way. If the roof fell in on us while we’re sitting here I wouldn’t raise an eyebrow – provided, that is, I had time to raise an eyebrow. I personally do not doubt that, sooner rather than later, Los Angeles will be razed to the ground.’
‘What were the reactions to this forecast?’
‘Well, he terrified a lot of people. Some scientists just shrugged their shoulders and walked away – earthquake prediction is still in its infancy or, at best, an inexact science. Most significantly, he was immediately threatened with a law suit by a Los Angeles city official on the grounds that such reports undermined property values. This is on record.’ Benson sighed. ‘All part of the “Jaws Syndrome” as it has come to be called. Greed, I’d call it. Recall the film – no one who had commercial interests at stake wanted to believe in this killer shark. Or take a dozen years ago in Japan, a place called Matsushiro. Local scientists predicted an earthquake there, of such and such a magnitude at such and such a time. Local hoteliers were furious, threatened them with God knows what. But, at the predicted place, magnitude and time, along came the earthquake.’
‘What happened?’
‘The hotels fell down. Commercial interests, commercial interests. Say Dr Whitcomb predicted a ‘quake on the Newport-Inglewood Fault. One certain result would be the temporary closing of the Hollywood Park Race Track – it’s almost smack on the fault, and you can’t have tens of thousands of people jammed into a potential death-trap. A week goes by, two weeks, and nothing happens. Loss of profits might run into millions. Can you imagine how much Dr Whitcomb would be sued for?
‘And the Jaws Syndrome is just first cousin to the Ostrich Syndrome. Put your head in the sand, pretend it’s not there and it’ll go away. But fewer and fewer people are indulging in that, with the result that fear, in many areas,