big one ?
 

I am due to visit LA next week. Here, the story makes the headlines.
As It is easy for me to delay my trip, I am wondering what to do...
I am not asking if someone can tell me if it will or will not happen. Just some news on how it is going on, if advice has been passed around in case of, how locals feel about it.
I am asking because I was recently in Tokyo and There was an earthquake. Mind You, it is stressful

Delaying/postponing/canceling . . . won't make any difference.

Earthquakes can't be 'forecasted' like the weather. They can tell us when there is stress on one fault or another . . . but there is ALWAYS stress on one fault or another. The entire Pacific is an earthquake zone.

How locals feel about it? We don't, we just live with the possibility. It may happen today, it may happen tomorrow, it may happen 10 or 20 years from now. If you postpone your trip to the following week, it's just as likely to happen when you're here as it it to have happened the previous week.

The chances of an earthquake will not change if you choose to delay the trip. Whenever you go, there is a chance of an earthquake. Those of us who live in the earthquake zone (I'm in Seattle) pay little attention to such stories. As Janis says, it's not like anyone can accurately predict a quake!

Lived in SoCal all my life, don't worry about it, nothing you can do anyway, but then I almost slept through the Northridge quake.

>>Here, the story makes the headlines.<<

And if you read the full story you'll see they talk in terms of 'imminent' as being years, hundreds of years, and millennia . . . so maybe delay your trip until the year 2792

>> if advice has been passed around in case of, how locals feel about it.<<

locals don't feel about it.

My ex in-laws were terrified that their son was living in CA with 'those earthquakes' . . . while living in an area of Indiana that had been flattened by tornados hundreds of times.

What story is making headlines? The only one I've seen has to do with a new "earthquake warning system" that will give people 4 seconds warning that an earthquake is rumbling.

>>What story is making headlines? The only one I've seen has to do with a new "earthquake warning system" that will give people 4 seconds warning that an earthquake is rumbling.<<


There have been several articles in the last couple of days about a study of cluster tremors around the Salton Sea

I first saw the warnings when I was checking my husband on to his flight to San Diego.

Only thing I did differently was to make sure he had the addresses for my sister and my niece, and reminded him that he can get from Coronado to San Diego by land, in case the Coronado Bridge was affected.

Other than that, told him to have a good time!

It is my uneducated opinion that the big one is coming to California. Maybe today, maybe in 1 week, maybe 10 years. The way to avoid it is to never go to California. Your stress level and need to be there will determine that. (and my husband is headed to San Diego next weekend. He is more worried that Hurricane Michael will delay his flights).

I detest the weather in the northeast US where I live - but at least there are rarely natural events like earthquakes and tornados that can kill you.

Seriously, you are more likely to win the Powerball than to be hurt in an earthquake next week.

Is this another troll post?

No Dukey -- it isn't.

No, some people focus on things like this (I don't know if this is a very real fear of the actual event or just the locus of a more generalized anxiety).

I used to travel a lot for work - at least one trip a week, sometimes 2 - but about 90% to Cincy and back. My mother was terrified of flying, didn't understand how planes could stay up, and was petrified the whole time I was on a trip. (I avoided telling her a much as possible but sometimes there was no graceful way out.)

She was a VERY anxious person overall and for her it focused on these plane trips. I got home at 11 pm once (weather flight delay, my usual time wa about 8pm) to find the phone ringing. She was hysterical, saying she had been calling every 5 minutes, was sure I was dead why didn't I call her, etc. And a few minutes later the police were ringing my door bell - she had called them saying I was missing. Because there was a plane crash in Manila and she was sure I was on it and had died. I have never been to Manila, and certainly would not do a lengthy trip like that without telling my parents. She just couldn't control her anxiety at all - t drove my father nuts that he coudln't calm her - and nothing could convince her this was not a real significant threat every time I flew NYC to Cincy (less than1.5 hours).

I felt so sorry for her, but it was not within my control. And she refused to see a therapist since to her the risks were real (and the locus of all of her other anxieties).

Now if she came here with her fears a lot of people would say she was a troll, but to her this was all real. When I switched jobs and had local clients (not to stop flying, but for a promotion and better salary) although driving to the client was more of a PIA than flying she was so happy. But then focused her anxiety on my younger B for a while.

Some people can't accept that there are risks in life no matter where you go or what you do unless you live in a bomb shelter in your backyard.

Good point, nytraveler. I think for people who have never lived where there are quakes, they find the idea of the earth moving to be terrifying. Having lived with minor quakes all my life, they aren't anything I worry about. I remember as a child, we could tell when we were having a small quake by the sound of the dishes rattling in the cupboard.

I grew up in southern California and now live in Seattle. Locals in earthquake regions really don't dwell on when the next one may happen. But I'm guessing it isn't next week.

An English friend recently responded with horror when I reported a small earthquake I'd felt this summer, saying she'd be "terrified". This shortly after the Brexit vote which may result in her having to sell up in France and return to England for her health insurance. An earthquake seems significantly less life-altering to me.

I used to live in LA for about 15 years and lived through a couple of them (although no "big one"), and a lot of people didn't think that was so great, either, and did get anxious about it. I know a few who left the state but that was just one of the reasons.

It really isn't true that there is a chance of an earthquake anywhere you go--at least, the chance is very small and even then, they won't be big ones, in some areas, like Ohio, for example. There is certainly not a big chance of an earthquake in NYC, or Paris, for that matter, not to mention the UK. Earthquakes in France are around the coasts and I'm not sure they've ever had one great than 5.0. I don't think the UK has, either.

If it's any consolation, it is true that in California, at least, many people do not usually get killed in an earthquake any more, as they do in some other countries. It is rare to get killed, it's usually property damage. I remember some guy died in the Whittier quake but it was a weird occurrence, he was down in a hole or something. So since you are going next week, think about that. The Northridge quake was 6.7 so fairly big (I think it was the biggest in an urban area in the US), and even then,only about 30 people died as a result of injuries suffered during the quake. By contrast, I think at least 300 died in that quake in Italy this year, and that one was only a 6.2.

>>It really isn't true that there is a chance of an earthquake anywhere you go<<

Who said it was?

Probably why no one said that ;-)

The first time I remember hearing that The Big One was imminent, I was 6 years old. It terrified me. I thought the earth was going to open up and swallow us at any moment. I had to wait for almost 10 years to see the earth open up. No one was swallowed though. That was almost 30 years ago and I haven't experienced an earthquake greater than a 5 since.

Is this another troll post?

First, thank you all for your contributions. I will not defer my travel.

No, it is not a troll post.

FranceInfo is probably the most serious media in France. They reported the fact that probability of a serious earthquake would be increasing for the next 7 days. Now, it is like all media, they need stories to fill the headlines. And this morning, you would have guessed, the attention has turned to Karadashian...

I read the same articles because of the headlines, and discovered that the science isn't certain, but that was buried well below the clickbait warnings.

So it's true that earthquakes remain entirely unpredictable. But surely there's no need to demonstrate one's own sang froid by being so scornful of an innocent question?

I used to live in California, still have property there, and earthquakes are scary. If mainstream media are reporting an increased likelihood, it's not crazy to try to find out what ground truth is.

There will be an earthquake in California whenever you come. There are earthquakes almost every day somewhere in the state, but we can't feel 90% of them.

If your earthquake nightmare looks like Italy, know that few buildings here are more than 100 years old. Los Angeles has the toughest earthquake building regulations in the U.S.

FWIW, Californians believe whatever Dr. Lucy Jones says. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

http://laist.com/2016/10/02/earthqua...lucy_jones.php

I think we all believe that we will be on vacation when the Big One hits!! Seriously, you can't live in CA without being somewhat in denial. Is a big earthquake inevitable, yes, and so is dying. But for denial about our inevitable death, most of us would not get up in the morning to live our lives. Same with the big one, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, so we might as well enjoy our lovely state and prepare as best we can.

The chances of being injured in a car accident are greater.

You know, so what? I am tired of hearing that in response to a healthy concern about anything!

Doing what one can to be prepared for or avoid a disaster is not foolish, nor is asking what, if anything, one can do.

My chances of dying in a car accident are greater than of dying in a hurricane, but that doesn't mean I'm going to the Dominican Republic tomorrow, Hurricane Matthew be damned.

You can find out when a hurricane is coming and its likely path. Not the same with earthquakes, although you can choose to avoid any place in the world where earthquakes are prevalent. That eliminates a lot of interesting places.

Actually there is a minor fault line up the Hudson and some years ago we did feel the effects of an earthquake there. My understanding is that it is quite small and it appears the major quakes only come every 25 to 50 thousand years.

But I awoke one morning about 6 am convinced that someone was shaking my bed by the frame really hard (luckily it was already light or I would have thought there was an intruder). Saw on the news that am that there had been a small quake up the Hudson at that exact time.

It's true we don't get big quakes or any but tiny tornados or mud slides or forest fires (except the brush fires that sometimes close the Jersey Turnpike due to smoke). Hurricanes are usually more a PIA than anything else (except superstorm sandy, which was a major issue) and blizzards again a PIA, but a lot of people are inconvenienced for a couple of days.

But then we get planes flying into buildings.

No matter where you are, there's always something. If you think there's not you just haven't found it yet. Life is not all sunshine - for anyone anywhere.

The "big one" they're talking about is forecast for Southern CA. While I don't wish for it, I do admit that I've been a bit fascinated by them since I was a child in the Bay Area and hope I'm distant enough to escape the worst. I experienced 2 in Asia, in India (the Kashmir quake) and in Burma and it was interest they evoked, not fear. I've seen first hand what they can do but I assume it's having a history with them my entire life that explains my reaction. I'm far more afraid of the dark outside and of heights.

Texting during earthquake can be especially dangerous.

The alert was cancelled yesterday.

... and yet the Big One could occur any day.

nytraveler... I remember that quake... I woke up because the headboard was banging against the wall. I'd been in San Francisco when a 5.5 hit so knew the sound. I just thought..ummm, earthquake, and rolled over and went back to sleep. Actually, I'm told there is a fault that runs under 125th street. Someone wrote a novel about it's erupting a few years ago. Don't think it got much attention.

My first trip to CA was in the '60s and the Big One was predicted any day then.