I’m sitting here in the bright sunshine in Pompeii. At any minute, the Earth could shake, and my city would look no better, and possibly worse, than New York. It might happen this week, this year, this decade or long after I’m gone. You just can’t know. But this much we do know: If and when it occurs, California will need the help of people from the rest of this country to dig out.

Just as New York and New Jersey do now.

Just as Midwesterners would, and have, in the face of tornados and blizzards and ice storms.