The Great Los Angeles Earthquake - Essay Example

of the of the Scientific Critique: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake Los Angele has always been plagued by the most disastrous of earthquakes. A motion picture depiction of the historical earthquake that took the lives of tens of thousands can be found in The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake (Kerns, Laurial and Bartlett). Upon viewing the movie The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake, one cannot help but feel that there is a certain underlying difference between the narration of the series of events that the movie has provided and the actual series of events that occurred on February 9, 1971 (Fertis).

The center of the earthquake was around twenty five (25) miles north of Los Angeles and caused considerable damage to the city in terms of life and property of the citizens of Los Angeles.The movie appears to center greatly upon the fact that city officials chose to ignore the warnings that were given by seismologist Dr. Clark Winslow. The movie chooses to stress greatly upon the fact that city officials gave more importance to the calm of the city than to the very life of the city itself. For instance, one of the few areas where the movie reaches its climax is when the city officials finally realize that Dr.

Clark Winslow’s warnings were legitimate and begin to advise the citizens of Los Angeles to begin taking immediate precautionary measures. However, as the movie shows, the time to take precautionary measures has passed and the earthquake strikes. The movie stands greatly upon this political intervention and ignorance of the city officials and chooses to use this as the main theme and plot. The movie also establishes itself upon the fact that while Dr. Clark Winslow’s warning was based on a fault line that was located around the Los Angeles area, the tremors that set the city officials on alert were those that came from a lesser well known fault line near the city.

However, leaving behind the main plot, the movie focuses on a number of subplots based upon a number of events that happened to the real people who got trapped in the earthquake and struggled to survive. About twenty thousand (20,000) lives were lost because of The Big One. The movie follows the lives of a few of these people and shows them as they try to resist the damage of the earthquake from trapping them and taking their lives.There is although a certain element of exaggeration in the movie.

It appears that the creators of the movie chose to go along with the idea of creating the subplots for the movie out of the people who suffered series of events that could be commercially viable for the movie producers on the screen. Perhaps it is for the same reason that the movie did not manage to make a large ripple in the area of disaster movies. Yet from the point of view of the history that the movie depicts, the movie closely follows the lives of the few people who struggled to survive through the damage that the earthquake caused and shows how it must have been to get stuck in an elevator or never see your child again as it must have been for those who had to go through the agony of the consequences of the earthquake.

Works CitedFertis, Demeter G. Infrastructure systems. Wiley-IEEE, 1997.Movie: The Big One: The Great Los Angeles Earthquake. Dir. Larry Elikann. Perf. Joanna Kerns, et al. 1990.