"I would feel safe with God's protection," he says simply.
His 39 years have been filled with trauma and tragedy. A former meth addict, he's been struck by cars four times; his body is marked by stab wounds and bullet scars, and he has a metal plate in his back.
ILLUSTRATION BY PATRICK FARICY
PHOTO BY STEVE APPLEFORD
Brett and Renee Asolas, disaster volunteers in Norwalk
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The clients at the rehab center include 24 adult men and nine adult women. Because their bungalows are small and light, the buildings badly swayed but didn't fall. Some will fall in the first aftershock.
He can't stay put, so Perez runs out and tells everyone, "Stay calm."
Thanks to Perez's smart precautions, patients at Victory Outreach don't hang things on walls, and all the furniture is bolted down. But now it's time to evacuate. The longer it takes, the less likely their lives will be spared.
"All right guys, let's load up into the van," Perez orders.
Not far away, wooden crosses holding up telephone and power lines have plummeted into the sagebrush, crackling loudly.
"Smoke!" yells a young patient as the smell reaches them.
Then they hear a massive, deep whoomp. Perez's heart rate climbs. Cajon Pass is a notorious tinderbox. With 15 to 20 mph winds sweeping north through the canyon daily, a fire can reach them in minutes.
7:18 p.m., 18 minutes after the quake:
A mile away, a giant globe of fire illuminates the night sky, setting shrubs aflame and carving an otherworldly crater into a hillside. The blazing orb is created by one of hundreds of bizarre chain reactions set off by the Big One.
As envisioned by earthquake engineer Porter, a landslide in the San Gabriel Valley Mountain foothills has toppled an 80-foot transmission tower and also snapped a gas line. Because the gas line is copper — a fantastic conductor — an electric arc forms, fed by the energy from the fallen lines. Despite an emergency shutoff valve, enough gas escaped to create an explosion that blasts away part of the hill.
Perez's rehab patients hurriedly begin to pile into the center's big van, youngest and oldest first. "If not everyone could fit into the van," Perez says, "then we might have to make two trips."
But with fire visible over the hill, there's no coming back. There are only seats for 12, but all 33 patients squeeze on top of and next to each other, creating a tense, uncomfortable crush.
The dirt road to Victory Outreach was a slow-go before, but now the slip in the fault has moved the road 10 feet. Perez drives off the shoulder and over bushes, and when he reaches the 15 freeway he finds traffic at a standstill and fire heading their way. The earthquake has shattered the freeway's surface.
Similar ruptures will strike rural areas of the 5, 10 and 14 freeways, according to the ShakeOut report.
No one can leave the undulated destruction, but more importantly, many cannot get through by ground to help.
Nothing in this hypothetical tale will occur exactly this way. But big, old buildings will be destroyed in downtown Los Angeles; conflagrations will ignite in older, densely built suburbs; tens of thousands will be stranded or hurt on broken roadways; and power, water and phones will be cut off.
Kate Long, the governor's specialist, asks, "What can we do to try to get over people's denial of disaster?"
California is one of the most prepared places in the world. Almost 9 million people participated in the Oct. 20 Great California ShakeOut, the largest in history.
But the chilling fact remains that only 40 percent of residents bother to keep even the recommended three gallons of water on hand — a cheap, simple and profoundly important thing.
Long offers this statistic: More than 90 percent of rescues during U.S. natural disasters are undertaken by ordinary civilians. "The expectation that people are going to be made whole by rescuers," she says, "it's just not true."
Reach the writer at rsdeto@gmail.com.
