Earthquake! Stay Put or Run For Your Life?

Yesterday's quake that hit the Los Angeles area gave us the longest fifteen to twenty seconds of shock since 1994. I live near the epicenter of the Northridge quake of 1994 and the one yesterday was mild in comparison. Actually the geologist termed yesterday's quake moderate. However, moderate or gigantic, to many people new to Southern California it scared the wits out of them. My experience with earthquakes and hurricanes do not make me an expert, but I have formed strong opinions about both. Ask me and I'll share them with you.

2008 Hurricane Watch

Of the four early storms this season Dolly is the most memorable and long lasting. As the Hurricane Center reported this morning, the Atlantic Basin is relatively quite. However, the remnants of Dolly are still being felt in Kansas and Missouri and the unstable air system moving Dolly is causing thunderstorms and rain in most of the South East. Some of those areas needed rain so I guess Dolly wasn't all bad -- although I doubt the folks of South West Texas would agree with that sentiment. Now let's look in the rearview mirror and go back to 1945.

Before Squadron 114 was formed at Masters Field, Miami the personnel being asked to develop a hurricane warning system had a few questions. World War II was winding down and Squadron VB-4 OUT-2, based in Jacksonville, Florida was retraining former carrier based aircrews to fly heavy patrol bombers. Scuttlebutt had it that a half dozen PB4Y-2 Privateers and crews would deploy to Miami and form Squadron 114. Here's a typical conversation, at the time, regarding the new squadron.
"Your mission will be to fly around the Caribbean to places like Nassau, San Juan, Barbados, Jamaica and Cuba."
"Sounds like good duty to me, but what's the catch?"
"You fly over – you don't stop over."
"Give me a break. You mean we can't even fake engine trouble and stop by Havana for a bottle of rum and a case of gin?"
"Nope."
"Then what the hell are we doing? Dropping goodwill leaflets."
"No, you'll be chasing hurricanes."
"Hurricanes! Why, that's the dumbest idea I ever heard."

When you read my book The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle you'll find that the idea wasn't so dumb after all.

Writers Corner:

In this expanded version of the Writers Corner. I'm going to share a writing experience that worked for me, one that will work for anyone with a decent memory. Here are the nuts and bolts of the experiment that I picked up from Shakespeare, Twain and Hemingway. It had to do with dredging up memories from my childhood. I had often thought about doing it. I would think about a scene from out of the past; which would last for only a fleeting moment and then disappear. Then I got the idea that if I could control those moments and make them more consistent, I might have something. So I decided to work on my memory project for ten or fifteen minutes in the morning, five or six days a week and hopefully set a consistent recall pattern. I had no idea what would happen that first morning, but I was determined to give it a try. And to my surprise it worked. In a period of about three months I came up with thirty short stories. Here's an example of the experiment.

The Gin House Fire

I yawned and opened my eyes from a deep sleep. The room was as bright as day, and I could see Uncle Marvin tapping on the window. The cause of the bright light was somewhere in the distance. I opened the window and Uncle Marvin said, “The gin house is on fire” I woke my brother George and we quickly jumped into our clothes and joined a group of neighbors that had gathered in our back yard. We all stood silently watching as the flames, fueled by the old wooden building, reached toward the sky. And in less than half an hour the structure weakened and fell, along with the flames as the fire finally burned itself out. The next day when we took a closer look, ashes were all that remained of the old cotton gin, another part of our little towns' heritage, ashes and our memories of the men, mules and cotton wagons from out of the past.

Tom Barnes -- Actor, Writer and Hurricane Hunter. Check out my website for books, blogs, western legends, a literary icon, reviews and interviews. Also my novels The Goring Collection and Doc Holliday's Road to Tombstone along with a non fiction remembrance of The Hurricane Hunters and Lost in the Bermuda Triangle.
www.tombarnes39.com
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