Earthquake, Clinton and ‘Book War Zone’ : Television: Network news reporters couldn’t be everywhere, and a small satellite station in Oxnard fills in some gaps.

Attention, readers!

Emergency poop here. Despite the devastation and what you may have heard, this column is still open for business, still here to serve you. Yes, the conditions are trying. But we selflessly carry on because there is some information that you need to know. For example:

They predicted that the Big One would arrive. On Wednesday he did.

“He came, he saw, he was amazed,” said KCAL-TV Channel 9’s Jerry Dunphy about President Clinton’s aid-dispensing, good will-spreading quickie to disaster-ravaged Los Angeles.

No amateur when it comes to deploying symbols in front of a camera, Clinton showed he cared. He showed it by listening. Someone complained to Clinton at his town hall-style meeting at the Burbank airport that the “media” were so preoccupied with earthquake destruction in the San Fernando Valley that they had ignored the plight of battered Santa Monica.

The blanket indictment was undeserved.

In addition to newspaper stories, Santa Monica by that time had gotten a big chunk of coverage from at least one station, KNBC-TV Channel 4.

As the epicenter of the quake, however, Northridge has indeed been the epicenter of the coverage. At times hampered by quake devastation themselves, even Los Angeles media haven’t the resources to be everywhere.

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Which is why many residents of the Conejo Valley (which straddles Los Angeles and Ventura counties) learned about devastating damage at the Thousand Oaks library from either a local newspaper, the News Chronicle (“Library Loss Staggering”), or VCCN-TV, a small satellite station located in Oxnard.

A gleaming community library in shambles--the ceiling of the futuristic building coming down in a heap, with books thrown everywhere and drenched by sprinklers--may seem a tiny blip compared to lost lives, displaced citizens, power and water stoppages and ruptured freeways. And it surely was too insignificant to matter to the multitude of network magazine shows and other news programs that have originated from Los Angeles this week.

But not insignificant to those who love and depend on it.

So, thank goodness, VCCN on Wednesday sent reporter Shannon Fitzpatrick and a cameraperson to what remained of the library, and they reported from the rubble. “I’m right in the middle of a book war zone,” said Fitzpatrick, who happened to be there when Wednesday’s double whammy aftershock of 5.1 hit.

Officials say the library will be closed for months.

Even though he pledged Wednesday to put Ventura County on his money list, President Clinton surely has never heard of the Conejo Valley’s “book war zone,” so you can’t really say that this was a day that narrowed the gap separating Big Bubba and small television. Yet symbolically, at least, there was a connection between his visit here and the library’s mayhem. And local media, very local, emphatically made the point.

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Bobbitt Temblors: Some would just call it bad luck. In any case, one of the things that earthquake coverage knocked off the air earlier this week was CNN’s live telecasting of the compellingly bizarre Lorena Bobbitt trial.

Still resonating after Friday’s testimony in a Manassas, Va., courtroom was Bobbitt’s depiction of herself as someone so terrorized by repeated rape and pummeling by her husband that she sliced off his penis in a fit of temporary madness.

John Wayne Bobbitt has denied hitting or sexually abusing his wife. Yet Lorena Bobbitt was very persuasive on the stand. Brought to tears by the prosecution’s forceful cross-examination, she ended the week a seemingly sympathetic character, creating an indelible TV image of a helpless, pathetic woman who was totally at the mercy of her violent lug of a husband. She was someone you indeed could envision being driven to temporary insanity by his alleged abuse.

Thus, many viewers surely will be shocked if she is convicted.

That’s because, except for a sound bite here and there and coverage on relatively obscure Court TV, they missed this week’s testimony from Lorena Bobbitt detractors. They included her husband (a repeat appearance) and a female acquaintance who testified about being told by Lorena that if Lorena ever learned that John had been unfaithful she would cut off his penis because “that would hurt him more than just killing him.”

If that account is true, or if it’s believed by the jury regardless, Bobbitt’s seeming premeditation would appear to undercut her temporary insanity defense.

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Numbers Game: Everyone is keeping tabs on the casualty and damage tolls. That happens in disasters of every stripe.

The numbers fixation peculiar to earthquakes, though, is the Richter scale: Did you feel that? At least a 3.5. Maybe even a 4. A 4.5? Nah, it’s a 4.

All of us play this guessing game, but none more so than TV anchors and reporters, perhaps because their industry is shaped and guided by technology and their own careers are closely calibrated according to numbers, albeit ratings numbers.

So along with infinite aftershocks comes immediate speculation about their magnitudes, with reporters badgering Caltech seismologists for precise figures as these Richter stats appear to assume a life of their own beyond the jolt that you may feel.

On the other hand, getting swept up in the frenzy can be therapeutic. You feel a bit foolish jumping out of your skin in response to a mere 4. But a couple of 5.1 aftershocks? Now you’re talking. Hearing from TV people that the aftershocks were relative biggies validates your fear and somehow makes you feel a bit better.

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High Minded: “You set your sights so high, you keep your dream alive. . . . “

That lyric is part of an emotional, romantic song accompanying a news promo that Channel 4 is now running, one touting its news coverage of the earthquake and aftermath. In the spot, scenes of the devastation are juxtaposed with pictures of seemingly heroic anchors and reporters.

The aftershocks haven’t ceased and the dust hasn’t settled. Typically not missing a beat, though, Channel 4 wasted no time in setting its sights on self-promotion.