Early this morning, NASA launched a new Mars rover in the space of the Cape Canaveral of Florida. The car, called “Perseverance,” was designed and assembled at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), just outside Los Angeles, and 20 minutes before the elevator, when reports interviewed engineer MiMi Aung, an earthquake.
“They panned over to JPL, and she said, ‘Sorry, we just had an earthquake here,’ and she sounded pretty nervous, ‘” he says. Celeste Labedz, a doctoral student in geophysics at the California Institute of Technology who watched NASA’s livestream while visiting family in Nebraska. “My first instinct was: Time for Twitter.”
In Los Angeles, Twitter is the first – and the best – place to confirm that the shaking you felt was actually an earthquake. (Perhaps it’s the fear that comes with living in earthquake land, but it’s surprisingly easy to confuse the clutter of a truck as the branch of construction equipment with the sudden slip of an error miles below the earth’s surface). Like a badge of pride, everyone who felt it, despite the hour, will shout on Twitter: EARTHQUAKE !!! They will describe how the shaking felt in their weeks. They will try to make you laugh with quips about how unprepared they were like DJ Kahled memes. Journalists and scientists like Labedz will sign up to report the epicenter and the extent, and they will all ask “Do you feel it?” They will also politely correct you if you have spread an earthquake myth.
“I love Earthquake Twitter,” he says Mika McKinnon, in disaster researcher studying scientific communication. “It means that slowly but surely, LA is building up community assets.”
Twitter is abuzz when there is a natural disaster, but earthquake Twitter is completely unique to California, McKinnon says. Unlike other states and countries – including Japan and Argentina, which are hit less frequently but with more ferocity – California receives thousands of low-magnitude earthquakes every year. Lucy Jones, queen of earthquake Twitter, referred to yesterday’s earthquake as the type of “garden difference”. Yet the experience is scary every time. But because these little shakes do not cause any harm, we can sneak up and cross over – and yesterday we were able to show up.
“There was an earthquake during a launch of the interplanetary rockets, so the whole East Coast looked down and we all had to be dramatic about it,” McKinnon said. “And we’m on this beat, where we find that the news pattern is getting worse, and then it’s getting worse, and it’s getting worse … The earthquake sounded bad, but in reality it was a magnitude of four.”
For a quick moment, the whole city experienced the same exact thing at the same exact time. Earthquakes are one of the most common experiences you can have in Los Angeles. Yesterday, the northern San Fernando Valley – about 22 miles from downtown Los Angeles – was hit, but the shaking felt all the way out into the desert. At a time when we feel particularly isolated from each other, Earthquake Twitter is strangely comforting.
After my bedroom in West Hollywood stopped rocking, and the trinkets bouncing on the bedside table, and our nervous Pit Bull returning to her bed, I removed the pillow I had placed over my head and grabbed my phone – not to check on my parents, sorry, but to participate in what has now become a post-earthquake ritual. For the next 30 minutes, my Twitter feed was quickly flooded with one tweet of earthquake after another, and I couldn’t get enough.
There was the very affirmative tweet: “Earthquake in LA!” The tweet with bravado: “IT’S NOT EVEN A 5.0 … CALM TF DOWN, People.” This-is-how-it-felt-where-I-live-tweet: ‘That was quite an early morning shock. Short but jealous in Hollywood. For a second, I felt like an elephant was running across my roof. The dramatic tweet: “To date: Earthquake in SoCal, POTUS pushes election delay, Herman Cain dies. Not yet 8 p.m. The very-LA tweet: “Just dedicated to moving to the Valley. Was that earthquake the welcome wagon? ‘And of course the celebrity tweet: “twitter is at its best right after an earthquake.”
After months of being alone, I feel less alone. And after months of missing all the summer experiences that connect me to Los Angeles – the Top Deck at Dodger Stadium, movies at Cinespia, and packed beaches – in a dark, baffling way, I suddenly felt connected to the city again . And then I fell asleep again.
