Earthquake at 1:30 (UPDATED with a New Conspiracy Theory!)

An extended roller.  More details to come.

2 miles ENE of Yorba Linda.  OK, maybe more newsworthy here than elsewhere.

4.1, 5 miles down.  Must have been a Fullerton City Council meeting somewhere recently.

That red dot that isn’t in the Caribbean? You are there.

UPDATES, 6 P.M.-ish:

The LA Times provides us with some good information about the quake:

The jolted area included southeastern Los Angeles County, Orange County and the Inland Empire. The quake occurred in about the same location of an earthquake doublet, two 4.5 quakes that occurred on Aug. 7 at 11:23 p.m. and Aug. 8 at 9:33 a.m. The area was also hit by a 4.0 quake on June 14.

Wednesday’s quake, which hit at 1:31 p.m., was located near the center point of the magnitude-5.5 Chino Hills earthquake that reverberated through the Los Angeles Basin in the summer of 2008, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Lucy Jones told The Times.

Wednesday’s quake appeared to be located in the “Yorba Linda trend,” a seismic area identified by Caltech geophysicist Egill Hauksson in 1990, that might be a buried fault.

Now that’s all well and good if you want to be all “sciency” about it, but in honor of the Vice-Presidential Night of the Republican convention (which was quite an event four years ago), I want to present a different theory:

If you’ll recall, Yorba Linda had, up until late April of this year, a 40-year relationship with the Police Department of my hometown city of Brea for provision of its police services.  Then, somewhat out of the blue, the City Council in a midnight meeting canceled that contract and went instead with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which I understand is a good group of people, but still — it was a sudden, jolting change.

That vote took place on April 25.  Fifty days later to the day — boom, the first of the above earthquakes.

Now I’m not saying that supernatural forces are punishing Yorba Linda for its decision.  That would be irresponsible.  But since we know for a quasi-scientific fact from various Republican figures that God sent Hurricane Katrina to New Orleans seven years ago to punish gays there, and I could dig up examples of other similar claims if I was so disposed, is it so far-fetched to imagine that Yorba Linda may be in the process of being punished for its … I hesitate to use the word, but I can’t see how to avoid it … “civic sin”?

Fifty days until the first quake.  Another 50 days (plus some rounding error) until the pair of second quakes.  Now, only three weeks elapsed before today’s punishment — um, I mean, geological event.

Now I don’t want to alarm anyone just to drive up readership, you understand.  And far be it from me to note that the first of those 4.5 temblors happened during a Fullerton City Council meeting and the second the day afterwards — and that today is also the day after a Fullerton City Council meeting.  That could be a coincidence.  Yeah, sure.

All I’m saying is this: when people blamed gays for attracting Hurricane Katrina into New Orleans with their special gay disaster-attraction powers, most of the people affected were not gay.  So, on the theory of divine retribution, you don’t actually have to be the target of divine retribution yourself to be forced to pay for it.

So here I am, just north of the Brea-Fullerton border.  I know that a big earthquake that hits Yorba Linda is going to hit us too — even though we’re not the ones who made what may very well have been an infernal decision in the first place!  WE SUFFER TOO!

And then I look southwest at Fullerton — and I see that they may be about to do the same thing.  Do they heed the divine signs of warning?  NO THEY DO NOT!

Don’t you think that we residents of Brea, with earthquakes on one side of us and who knows what — pestilence?  giant fire-breathing reptiles?  libertarian Peter Sellers impersonators? — potentially next inflicted upon us, the innocent, ought to have some say in what our neighbors do to inflame the powers of the infernal against us?  DON’T YOU?

I think that those of you from Brea — and Placentia, La Habra, and Anaheim too — see where I’m going with this.  I don’t have to say any more right now, do I?

(We’ll be meeting in the Brea Senior Center.  Mum’s the word.  Scientists are not welcome.)

About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)