EARTHQUAKES ARE WONDERFUL!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 70, 25 October 1940, Page 10

EARTHQUAKES ARE WONDERFUL!

OR =~ Labels Only Stick Sometimes

Written For "The Listener" By

SYDNEY

BROOKES

HEY tell me that I am sadistic. This sounds mighty bad to me, because of its political associations. All this psychology stuff I do not like at all. You don’t say a word these days but they clap a label on to you and it sticks like chewing gum in the hair. Maybe I am occasionally sadistic. Maybe you are too. Maybe I am occasionally an introvert or a lot of other long words. Maybe I am as often an extrovert. I can be gregarious and misanthropic as often in five minutes as you can be selfish and unselfish. I don’t believe in labels, and in any case, when I told her last March that I expected this year would bring a good earthquake on to us I was just being practical-minded. It was about time we had a good one, and I said so. Of course they laughed a bit, but I could see the suggestion had hit the spot. So I laughed too, and I said it’s about time anyway that some of those big buildings were shaken down. I said it’s about time too that half the people in this country suffered the process of natural selection. Of course we all take our chances in an earthquake, but they’d just been saying I was an egotist (we'd been discussing Fate and I had reckoned there was no such thing) so I stood on my reputation in the matter of earthquakes and I reckoned I could get out of the way if anything came at me. I said those that couldn’t, wouldn’t, and

bad luck to them anyway. If they will put labels on a man they can expect results, as far as I’m concerned. So I said that about natural selection, which made them say I was sadistic. ROBABLY it was afl this that made me say idly to her while we were walking one night under the viaduct that there would be hell to pay in this part of the country if anything big in the way of earthquakes ever hit it. She said, " Yes, there would," so I explained how the rock formation was very inferior. Not that I know much about geology, but you only have to look at the rock outcrops there to see that the formation is all a matter of loose flat sections, superimposed like a pile of children’s slates. I said that if they once started slipping they would sure slip a long way. She said " Yes" to that, too, and I. said it was a wonder that floods did not bring down more of it, because the water could get into the cracks pretty easily. She said, " Yes" to that, too, and I explained further that it was fortunate that this city did not get more severe frosts because, with the water getting in like that it would break up the rock more quickly if the frost came to set the ice swelling out and pushing. She looked up at the lights of the houses several hundred feet above us and she did not seem to like the conversation very much. "Darling," she said, "who was that I saw you walking with on the Quay in the lunch hour yesterday? After that I did not get much chance to talk about earthquakes that night, although the subject stuck in the back of my head. It is a hard job to explain who you were out walking with in the lunch hour when she has the right sort of carriage and wears her stockings with the seam straight up the back of the leg,

WAS able, however, to raise the subject later. Occasionally, when we would be walking along those benched roads above the city, or along those black canyons where the buildings reach up from the narrow streets on the flat, I would mention, quite casually, that it would be bad if anything started shaking this stuff down. Perhaps it began to get under her skin a bit, because I noticed that she became allergic to earthquakes. Personally, I like a good earthquake. I have an idea that people are apt to think they are onions in the stew until they see a rough sea or get out on a hilltop in a gale. Whether I am sadistic or not, I very much enjoy the sight of someone blown over by wind when that person has not been blown over before. It does them geod. I have a saying: "It is Good for Your Soul." I trot this out whenever anything disagreeable or uncomfortable happens to these people who live all their lives around gas stoves and electric radiators. When she won’t come out walking on a cold night I tell her she’d better come because it will do her soul good, and come she does, although I do not often notice any improvement in her soul, Of all natural calamities, an earthquake is surely the most effective in this respect. Have you ever been in a good one? Right on the fault line I mean. You hear the rumble first and you say, " That’s a mighty big lorry coming along the street." Then it gets close and comes up all round you. Whichever way the shake goes there is a mighty lot of power behind it. If you take a bag of flour (or a barrel of beer, or anything else weighing about 60lbs,) and try and shake it in little short movements fairly quickly, you will see what I mean: an earthquake is something that takes millions of tons of earth

-rock, clay, soil, all that’s built on it and all that grows on it, animals and plants, and people; all weighing quite a bit in our conception of things-and it shakes them as you would shake a poppy head to get the seed. With the rumble as it comes crowding into your ears come the first quivers. You know pretty soon whether it is one of those sideways ones or an up-and-downer. But you haven’t much chance to take an academic interest in it. It is the world shaking, and heaven knows it is all we have between us and infinity. Other things are intangible. But -the earth is solid. Until an earthquake comes. Then the foundation of all things shakes as the buildings shake and the people totter unbalanced and unfamiliar with the new movement. S I say, only a sadist or an egotist would take an academic interest in these things while they are happening. There was that one that happened in October. It was only four on the RossFerrani scale, but it was quite a good sample. When the needle on the seismograph flicks up to ten there are not often any scientists looking on to see what happens. If they are wise they are out in the open watching for the cracks to come splitting the ground. ; That one happened at 1.30 p.m. It so happened that this day I was out to lunch with her, having given the slip to that other. We were in a street of old buildings set narrowly one against the other. There was sufficient movement to set up a rumble. Walls would be creaking and all the counters in the shops meving a little this way and back a little that way. Joists and beams and rafters would be straining after sitting silent for a long time in one place. All these sounds added together made a rumble, although the earth itself was quiet this time to the human ear, (Continued on next page)

Earthquakes Are Wonderful (Continued from previous page) She realised what was happening, and looked at me a little fearfully. I explained it was only’a small one, I guessed it would be about two or three by the Ross-Ferrani measurement, and this reassured her. Anything you can measure is very reassuring. It gives you a basis for comparison. Perhaps you remember, when you were young and susceptible to corporal punishment, how reassuring it was to realise that the whacking you got last night was only half as bad as the one you had last week. It is that way with earthquakes, and Messrs. Ross and Ferrani are to be thanked for giving us this method of computing the extent of our fear and trembling. If you are only scared two points out of a possible ten then you get over it quickly. On the other hand, if you are scared ten out of the possible you’re scared near to death and you don’t want it to happen again. Unless, of course, you're sadistic, like me, and take a morbid interest in calamity. Huh! ‘K FTER that one in October I naturally felt pretty confident about my prophecy, and I went around with renewed vigour telling my friends that this year we were due to get a good one. I even pointed out to some of them which way I thought the different hillsides would slip, and I discussed with them the probable fate of reclaimed land. We talked of the geological fault, or whatever it is, that happens across Cook Strait, and causes all that trouble for small boats when the tide rip hits it; off Cape Terawhiti I think that happens. It struck me as an amusing idea that the North Island should loosen its grip on the surface of the world at this spot, leaving the South to represent New Zealand on the map, as it should anyway, in spite of E. Earle Vaile. I don’t know about my friends, but I have a healthy imagination, and I can imagine that cliff in the bed of the ocean, I can see the darkness down there, and the deep green of the things that grow and trail in the water. I can imagine the tide hastening through the Straits and hitting this cliff, and I can see with my own eyes what happens when this uprush of moving water comes to the surface. The waves do not flow. They dance up and down, so that if you are in a small boat your movement is not rolling, but a series of very disconcerting heaves and slaps. I can imagine also how horrible it would be for one of us to be living down there in the half light and to feel the water agitated by some foreign movement in the world underneath, and to see this cliff slipping off like butter when you scrape a knife against the edge of a plate. That would be pretty horrible, although I do not say that some of us would not be the better for seeing a few things like that occasionally. We are not, after all, sufficiently sensitive to horror. Ordinary human beings, if my book and Bible learnings are true, would faint in horror at many everyday things that go on in the cities where they live. Perhaps the book learning is not true after all and human beings are not so nice in fact,

NATURALLY, with all this talk, she became a bit worked up about eatthquakes, and I don’t deny that I was imagining a bit too vividly myself. However, to come to the end of the story. One day after some bad weather when the sky had cleared and the sun was out again, everyone in the office felt pretty good. We fooled a good bit and the typists danced when they ran, and ran when they -walked in the way they have in springtime. I felt so good I rang her up at her work and we chatted a bit and she said, " Come up to-night." I said I didn’t think I would, seeing I'd been up the night before. So she said what was I doing? I said nothing, which was true, and which I hoped to keep being true. But she said, " Come for a hike." I said, " Yes, I would come for a walk." So we fixed it up. I decided we'd walk round one particular road so as to cross the viaduct I’ve mentioned before. This we did, and when we came near the viaduct I looked down at the road with the tramlines on it pretty far below and I remembered what I had thought that afternoon. It was this: if we should be walking round this spot and an earthquake came it would be a good place to get out of. It would be wise, I considered, to run back. If we went forward we should get where the valley is narrow and its sides steep. If anything slipped that would be where it would slip. If we tan back we would quickly get to a place where the hillside sloped less steeply and here there would be less chance of a slip. WAS remembering these things, and it was just as well, for while I remembered sure enough it came. The tumble this time was a real one. There was no mistaking it. It was the rumble of the rocks heaving and the earth moving, and over it came the rumble of houses rocking and shaking down and concrete work moving and cracking and buckling out. " This way," I said, and J had her by the hand. She was silent, and I felt pretty cool, having got myself ready for this situation. It was awkward running with only one hand to swing, but I held on believing that she would gain confidence from me. I ran pretty fast, and she dragged a little behind. I said, " You’re not running very fast, darling." She let go my hand and swung into it. I let her catch up and get an inch or two in front so I could see her better and keep pace. We were getting clear of the big concrete facing to the cutting, and I was thinking that it would be all right in a moment when we were clear of that place where the two-storey houses come high over the road, when it came on us from behind. It was difficult running, for the movement was very irregular. All I remember now is that one convulsion caught me on a forward balance and set me scuttling to catch up on my weight. It must have caught her on her back foot, because when I caught up on myself and turned round to look through the dust she was not there. Neither was the concrete facing, nor the houses above it, and I hurried on to the place where the road widened and aman could grab a tree and have something to hold on to.