"The Earth Was Going to Open Up"

A surprise quake wrecks a town and puzzles seismologists

Except for a brief moment of notoriety in 1978, when a plague of crickets carpeted its main street, nothing much ever happens in Coalinga, Calif, (pop. 7,271). Located in the fertile San Joaquin Valley, it is a sleepy little community whose most notable claim to fame is its unusual name, a garbled version of its early designation as a railroad's "Coaling Station A." Last week Coalinga (pronounced Clinga) was jolted out of its torpor, adding a puzzling footnote to California's seismic history.

At 4:42 on a clear, sunny Monday afternoon, the ground abruptly began to rumble and shake. In shops, fixtures rattled, goods flew off shelves and windows shattered. In a motel swimming pool, water splashed 30 feet into the air. Walls fell, chimneys crumbled and roofs collapsed. "I was slammed against one wall and then the other," said Eva Rhodes, 75, who had just started to make dinner. Added Cleona McCormack: "The way the floor was rolling, I thought the earth was going to open up and swallow me."

While the 20 seconds of intensive shaking, which registered 6.5 on the Richter scale, was far short of the blockbuster so long predicted for California, the temblor turned peaceful Coalinga into a smoldering ruin. Said John Bunker, 70, owner of a downtown stationery store: "It was like a bomb dropped." At least 47 people were injured, 300 buildings were demolished, and property damage exceeded $30 million. Yet miraculously, there were no immediate deaths.

The quake's epicenter was about seven miles northeast of Coalinga, some 20 miles from California's San Andreas Fault. Said State Geologist James F. Davis: "We don't believe that the stress regime is related to the San Andreas." Loose translation: the Coalinga quake did nothing to relieve the slow buildup of forces along the fault that virtually all scientists believe will eventually result in a major quake (8 or higher on the Richter scale).

Even so, the temblor was a vivid reminder of the terrible forces locked inside the earth. Much of the destruction came from fires, ignited by short-circuited wires and fueled by broken gas mains. Electric power was cut, the water supply was contaminated. For hours, Coalinga's people were largely isolated from the world because of severed telephone lines.

Residents rallied to one another's support. Jim Brooks opened his restaurant in the middle of the night to make free sandwiches. But many lifelong dreams were shattered. Stationer Bunker's wife Florence announced, "We are going to give up. We don't need a low-interest Government loan." Surveying the remains of a turn-of-the-century mansion he had carefully restored, Jack McCormack, 52, sighed: "I got $90,000 sitting on the ground." But Mayor Keith Scrivner refused to count Coalinga out. Said he: "We will rebuild." . This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.