translated from Spanish: Los Angeles relives its fear of ‘Big One’ after the seissms and thousands of aftershocks

Cristina Alhamad slept with her “best pajamas” and her baby on the side, ready to run out at the possibility of her shaking again.
He lives in Los Angeles, about 240 km from where strong earthquakes, magnitude 6.4 and 7.1, were recorded Thursday and Friday, which awakened the fear that the “Big One” is nearby.
The “Big One” refers to a catastrophic earthquake that, according to the seismologists, should have already occurred.
Read: What is the dreaded San Andreas Fault (and why you’re so concerned after the sixsms in California)
Friday was 11 times stronger than the previous day, with epicenter in the Navajo Desert near Ridgecrest, a small town of 30,000 inhabitants.
Not only did Alhamad feel it and his neighbors were screaming and running in the hallways of his building. Also in other cities like Las Vegas, and since Thursday thousands of replicas of different intensity have been reported.
And although the earthquakes were recorded in another minor fault, which is not directly connected to the gigantic San Andrés, these earthquakes sent a message to the angels: be ready.
“It was a shock to me because I didn’t know exactly what to do,” alhamad, 29, recalled. “There were people who shouted not to come out and others who did.”
In the end, she took her one-month-old baby and stayed in the hallway of the building. The day before, after the earthquake of 6.4, he had prepared a bag with essential things for the child and his documents, which he placed near the door.
“But yesterday at least I thought was to grab things… I just grabbed my baby and came out,” he told aFP.
Los Angeles bars, restaurants, residential buildings, markets and cinemas were evacuated after the tremor.
Read: Tijuana and Ensenada residents feel the earthquake with epicentre in California 
Good reminder
The authorities have urged to be ready after years of a kind of “seismic drought” with nothing above magnitude 6 since early 2010.
Following Friday’s phenomenon, Caltech seismologist Lucy Jones warned that there was a 10% chance that a new earthquake of magnitude 7 or more would hit next week.
“People in Southern California know they live in a seismic area, but because they hadn’t experienced a strong tremor in many years they let their guard down,” John Bwarie, president of Stratiscope, who works to educate communities on these issues, told AFP.
These tremors are a “good reminder” that you have to prepare for a bigger phenomenon, he added.
City authorities have prioritized seismic preparedness, especially after the 1994 Northridge earthquake killed 54 people.
Photo: AFP
Since 2008 there has been a large annual simulation called “Great ShakeOut” throughout the state and many office buildings make their own.
Andrea Briceño, a television producer, has years of preparation and yet on Friday he panicked.
At home he has an emergency kit with water and canned food.
“As much as a plan, I don’t have. All I know is that if I’m home, I have to be placed under a desk near where the bag is. If he catches me somewhere else, I wouldn’t know what to do,” he said.
A 2008 survey, more than a decade after Northridge, showed that just under half of California’s families had an evacuation plan, and about 20% had inspected their home or purchased insurance in the event of an earthquake.
And while Mayor Eric Garcetti has issued ordinances to renovate about 10,000 buildings and make them safer, experts warn that these resistances have a limit.
In fact, they are mainly designed to avoid human casualties, not to guarantee the viability of the property after the event.
“If you look at the inventory of buildings in Southern California, you’ll notice that most of them aren’t built according to the modern code,” Ken O’Dell, president of the California Association of Structural Engineers, told AFP.
He indicated that each building responds differently to an earthquake, but cautioned that concrete structures erected before regulations introduced in the 1970s could easily “collapse.”
This week’s earthquakes didn’t cause damage, but many people are beginning to wonder if their house would withstand “Big One.”
“They affected the psyche of people more than the buildings themselves,” O’Dell said.
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Original source in Spanish

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