If you listened to All Outdoors Radio on KCBQ at 4:00 PM this past Sunday, April 4th ,you heard, at the top of the program, a report about what had gone on in the studio some 15 minutes before the show, namely, a shaking skyscraper (of which KCBQ is on the 5th floor) and people taken by such surprise, they weren’t sure whether or not to scramble under their desks. Fortunately, no one in the studio was hurt. The same can be said for all of San Diego which experienced this jolt from an epicenter in Baja.

However, had you been listening to KCBQ’s previous radio program, the one that was actually going on during the earthquake, you would have personally experienced a moving of tectonic plates about 45 minutes or so into The Bob Siegel Show. And yet, Bob remained calm, continuing to answer the theological questions of his caller.  Indeed, he seemed unaware that anything other than theology was going on at all.  How can this be? Is Bob Siegel a man of fearless wit who laughs and broadcasts even in the face of death?

Well…Ah…Um…Actually, I wasn’t in the studio at all. That was a repeat broadcast.  Yes, I did feel the earthquake like everybody else, but I was sitting at La Jolla Shores Beach at the time, soaking in sunshine and enjoying the Easter holiday. For what it’s worth, I was relatively calm and not really freaking out at all. But this can be ascribed to the fact that in the middle of a beach, there just aren’t any buildings threatening to fall down upon you. True, for a second or two I thought about the occasional relationship between earthquakes and tsunami waves, but I really didn’t see one in the horizon, so no, even that did not worry me. If anything concerned me, it was the fear that my house might not be standing when I returned home. (It was, thankfully.) I guess I could have been on the road or in some other dangerous situation. Thank you God, for putting me on the beach. Thank you that I chose not to do a live program that day, for I probably would not have enjoyed stopping what I was talking about to report on an earthquake. That’s more suited for Geraldo Rivera. I would rather have continued with the theology question but would instead have been distracted and unable to ignore the earthquake. Oh yes, God, thank you also that most people were not in church when it happened. Had such been the case, we would have had to hear about earthquakes being a sign of the Second Coming, even though earthquakes are as old as the Earth itself. The beach worked out perfectly, God.

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