<p>More than 5,000 aftershocks later, Los Angeles is having a hard
time settling down
</p>
<p>By Jordan Bonfante/Los Angeles--With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles
</p>
<p> In L.A. Story, his prophetic film satire, Steve Martin portrays
a weatherman who at one point is trying to enjoy Sunday brunch
in a garden restaurant with friends. Suddenly the sunlit get-together
is interrupted by an earthquake. As a neighboring table rattles
past them across the floor, its traveling occupants keep chatting
without even looking up from their arugula. "How strong is it?"
a guest at Martin's table inquires blithely. "Oh," Martin says
with a shrug, "I give it a 4."
</p>
<p> If only the rattled citizens of the real Los Angeles could be
quite so blase. If only they could take their umpteenth aftershock
so much in stride. Instead they are suffering sharp and lingering
emotional tremors from the 6.8-magnitude Northridge earthquake
on Jan. 17 that killed 57 people and caused $15 billion in damage--and they don't mind showing it. The original hyperactivity--and some panic--has been followed by delayed shock and
a period of numbness, and now, more than a month later, by an
abiding anxiety. Few doubt that Los Angeles has been taking
it harder than San Francisco's Bay Area did after the Loma Prieta
quake of 1989, which was even greater in intensity--7.1--and caused 61 deaths.
</p>
<p> Sherry McClure, 26, a mortgage-bank clerk in Northridge, sleeps
on the kitchen floor, ready to roll under the table when necessary.
Phoebe Sharaf, a middle-aged Santa Monica social worker, refuses
to go to the movies because she fears dark enclosures. Some
Angelenos keep hard hats--or even heavy-duty salad bowls to
be used as helmets--at the ready on their night tables. Others
keep a packed bag in their car, parked outside the garage.
</p>
<p> For many residents the new California dream is to flee the place.
In a poll taken during the last week of January by the Field
Institute in San Francisco, 26% of Southern Californians surveyed
said they had considered moving away because of the quake, more
than three times the proportion of Northern Californians harboring
such thoughts after the 1989 quake."This is usually our slow
period," said a Bekins Moving & Storage Co. executive. "But
we're seeing a significant increase in business from people
wanting to leave the area."
</p>
<p> With each of the aftershocks, which have totaled more than 5,000
of varying intensity, the fears have assumed a pervasive, even
obsessive dimension. One store reported a sudden boom in $2,000
steel-canopy beds capable of withstanding "an entire collapsing
roof." Conversations are dominated by the quake. True tales
of the fateful moment at 4:31 a.m. are told and retold: how
in one Sherman Oaks home a water bed went wild, flipped its
occupant against the ceiling and then heaved him against the
wall as though to suffocate him.
</p>
<p> Among the symptoms of L.A.'s post-traumatic stress disorder
are uncontrollable flashbacks, nightmares, hypervigilance and
anger about the lack of control over one's life, according to
Mory Framer, clinical director of the Barrington Psychiatric
Center, which treated more than 1,000 victims. The Northridge
quake left two special psychological scars because it came in
the early hours when people were at home and in bed, thus transforming
those two refuges into places of lethal danger. "Here we are,
supposed to go back to our homes and back to our beds, but now
it is frightening there," says Framer. Many people, his team
discovered, have been waking up at exactly 4:30.
</p>
<p> Most Angelenos went back to their jobs soon after the quake,
possibly finding some of that refuge there, but employers discovered
a phenomenon they call "on-the-job absenteeism." Workers take
interminable breaks, have difficulty concentrating and generally
show low productivity. "The reality is that many people are
going to be operating at only 40% to 70% of normal speed," says
Lilli Friedland, a member of the L.A. County Psychological Association
disaster-response team.
</p>
<p> Families too have suffered. Unstable relationships can be pushed
across the line into outright dysfunction. In some cases the
Barrington team observed, one spouse became hypersexual and
the other hyposexual, with obviously destabilizing consequences.
Adults frequently misdirect their anger toward spouses and children.
In one pitiful case, a young mother started abusing her four-year-old
daughter, swatting the clutching child with shrieks of "Get
away from me!" The woman had lost two other children in a quake
in her native Guatemala.
</p>
<p> Why is the fallout in Los Angeles so severe and prolonged compared
with San Francisco's experience in 1989? Experts give several
reasons. Despite its higher intensity and death toll, the Loma
Prieta quake inflicted only 10 aftershocks of 3.5 or greater
magnitude, compared with more than 150 in L.A. But the main
cause is probably L.A.'s "layered" collective trauma. "Previous
traumatic experiences have not yet worked themselves out," says
psychologist Michael Gellert. "This makes three catastrophes
in a year and a half: the riots and their atmosphere of tension
perpetuated by the trials, then the fire storms just a couple
of months ago, and now the quake. It's layer upon layer. And
what this does is magnify people's reactions."
</p>
<p> Women appear to take it harder than men. The overwhelming majority
of the participants in postquake counseling sessions--sometimes
all of the participants--are women. One hypothesis is that
the female nesting instinct is especially offended by a quake's
threat to home and hearth. More manifestly, women are more demonstrative
and vocal about their anxieties. Men, who may be just as nervous,
are culturally conditioned to hide it. "Fearfulness knows no
gender," says Gellert. Experts disagree about the probable duration
of the stress. Gellert points to a classic formulation in mass
psychology known as the "six-week model of crisis resolution,"
and he predicts that, depending on how long the aftershocks
continue--there were five more of up to 3.4 magnitude last
week--many people are due to return to normal this month.
Daniel Weiss, professor of medical psychology at the University
of California, San Francisco's School of Medicine, warns, on
the other hand, that "it's going to take people between four
and six months to feel like themselves again."
</p>
<p> Out-of-state real estate agents continue to receive inquiries
from Angelenos who want to pull up stakes because of what Clearwater,
Florida, agent Richard Cope calls L.A.'s "last-straw" phenomenon.
"They all want charts of the fault lines in our area," explains
Karen Lind, deputy director of Colorado's business-development
office in Denver. "We decided to get out right after the earthquake,"
says Dubi Friedman, 47, owner of a clothing-design firm in the
northern L.A. suburb of Valencia, who is moving to Las Vegas
with his wife Irit and two children. "The damage is nothing.
It's the scare. You go to bed downstairs with your shoes on.
You don't sleep. You just sit there waiting for it every night.
