THE EARTHQUAKE IN ORANGE COUNTY : Quake T-Shirts : Unshakable Eye for Profit Fast on Draw

Jim Clements knows that he who hesitates loses money. So four hours after his Anaheim T-shirt shop stopped shaking from Thursday morning’s earthquake, he was at the drawing board.

And at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, just under 12 hours from the time the temblor hit, the first “I SURVIVED THE EARTHQUAKE” shirts left Clements’ retail store, Anaheim T-Shirts, carried away by timid tourists.

By Friday night, Clements had sold more than 300 shirts, most wholesale to other vendors, but many to consumers who had seen design and just had to have one.

Dealing in disaster is not new to Clements, 39. He printed his first quake shirts in 1980, after living through a rash of rumbling in Mammoth when the mountain city felt four quakes measuring 5.7 to 6.1 on the Richter scale in one day. And soon after Southland freeways became a firing range earlier this summer, he printed a batch of “DON’T SHOOT I’LL MOVE OVER” shirts.

“But we are not ones who want to capitalize on anyone’s pain,” said Clements, who offers his quake shirts to anyone with $8.95. “I had a contract to do space shuttle shirts, and I stopped when the Challenger crashed. . . . That’s really hurt us.”