The great San Francisco earthquake — 100 years ago next Tuesday — and Hurricane Katrina just last summer, sound a loud wake-up call: big disasters really do happen. And they can happen here.
Are we listening? Are we ready?
Local government and relief agencies have taken the wake-up call to heart. They are working hard to prepare for the many kinds of disaster that may be lying in wait — from earthquake and wildfire, to terrorism, storms, floods and avian flu.
But they can’t do everything. When the disaster comes — and it will — they will be busy, and most of us will be on our own. We’ll have to take care of ourselves at home, at work, at school. And after a big earthquake, help may not arrive for days.
“If you are prepared for an earthquake, you are prepared for anything — that’s our message,” says Lt. John Quinlan, director of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office of Emergency Services and Homeland Security.
“For years we said, prepare to be on your own for 72 hours. After witnessing Katrina, we’re saying a week,” Lt. Quinlan continues. “Have provisions for a week. Keep three gallons of water a day per person to drink.”
South San Mateo County is fortunate to have superb resources to respond to disasters.
The Woodside Fire District sponsors the county’s largest neighborhood preparedness program, called CERPP (Citizens Emergency Response and Preparedness Program.) Twenty-five neighborhoods have organized with volunteer leaders trained to be self-sufficient in an emergency.
Twenty percent of the residents of the district participate in CERPP, including at least two training exercises a year, says Gaylynne Mann, who coordinates CERPP from an office at Fire Station 7 in Woodside. “It builds a sense of community, a sense that people are there for each other and take care of each other,” she says. “In a big event, we will be isolated. Most resources will go elsewhere.”
The Menlo Park Fire District leads one of eight federally funded Urban Search and Rescue teams in California. With 235 members plus equipment, Task Force 3 has been responding to disasters since 1992. Its members have recovered people and bodies from Oklahoma City, the World Trade Center, the Northridge earthquake, the space shuttle Columbia, local floods, and several hurricanes. It also trains emergency responders from all over the world at its Bayfront site near the Dumbarton Bridge
“All disasters are local; you need to think of food, supplies, people,” says Deputy Chief Harold Schapelhouman, who heads the team. “There’s a pattern of what goes wrong in disasters. Normal civil order goes by the wayside.
“It always comes back to what kind of training people have.”
Nevertheless, disaster scenarios abound, and our safety agencies are trying to prepare for all of them. “I call California an act-of-God theme park,” says Lt. Quinlan.
Apart from mega-disasters like earthquakes and avian flu, the big threats in this area are wildfires and storms. The 1998 El Nino storms caused $70 million in damages, while the Loma Prieta earthquake caused $20 million, says Lt. Quinlan. More people in the county have died from storms than from earthquakes.
The most frightening scenario right now is in East Palo Alto. With the rains pounding day after day, local agencies are watching the crumbling levee that protects hundreds of homes in East Palo Alto from being flooded by San Francisquito Creek, possibly amplified by Bay tides.
The levee is holding up all right so far in the rains, Lt. Quinlan says. He hopes that state money to fix it will be approved soon. “I’m not so worried about rain; I worry about the earthquake,” he warns. “A little shake can really do something.”
Lt. Quinlan adds: “I feel confident in local government’s response and preparedness level. But personal preparedness needs to be vastly improved.”
Peter Carpenter of Atherton, a member of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District Board governing board, is less hopeful about our overall readiness. “We’re not set up to deal with a big disaster,” he says. “We need a much broader-based plan. We need to involve the business community, the schools the neighborhoods.”
As an example, Mr. Carpenter poses this question to a school: “If the earthquake hits Wednesday at 12 noon, and you have 1,000 students that can’t go home, what are you going to do?
“I don’t think they have dealt with that,” Mr. Carpenter says. “I hope I am proven wrong.”
Earthquake
If it’s the Big One, what will we feel? Especially if we’re near the fault?
“You’ll feel a sharp jolt like a truck hit the building,” replies seismologist Mary Lou Zoback of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park. “Then it will shake violently back and forth. Anything not bolted to the wall will fling across the room. Refrigerators are going to tilt over.”
Dr. Zoback says the next earthquake may not be as big as 1906, when the west side of the fault jerked approximately 10 feet past the east side through Woodside and Portola Valley.
The geologists can’t tell us exactly when, where, or how big the next one is going to be. But they can tell us with certainty there will be one. The Pacific plate of the earth’s crust is moving northwest about 1.6 inches a year past the North American plate, while the surface is still locked along the faults. It’s going to rupture, Dr. Zoback says. “You can’t remain 10 months pregnant forever.”
There is a 62 percent probability of one or more earthquakes of magnitude 6.7 or greater in the Bay Area by 2030, the USGS estimates. The break is somewhat more likely to occur along the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults (27 percent) in the East Bay, than the San Andreas (21 percent).
But anywhere the earthquake happens, the whole Bay Area will shake, possibly violently. People will be hurt; people will die.
Chief Schapelhouman is familiar with large-scale disasters; he’s been to Northridge and Katrina. “The Bay Area has seven million people. If 10 percent are affected, you’re talking about 700,000 people,” he says. “Where will they go? Who will feed them?
“Most people can’t get their arms around what the loss of thousands of lives looks like.”
The county has plans for a major disaster, Lt. Quinlan says. “We can deal with a large amount of people.”
After a big earthquake, people may have to be sheltered in tents, because aftershocks can make them scared to be indoors, he explains.
The El Nino storms of 1998 gave the county an exercise in taking care of people who had been displaced, Lt.. Quinlan says. The county took over Half Moon Bay and Pescadero high schools for refugees. The Office of Emergency Services provided the shelter, the Red Cross staffed it, and the Salvation Army supplied it. “It worked in 1998,” he says.
The Red Cross is the main disaster agency in the country, Lt. Quinlan notes. “If you want to help, send money to the Red Cross. They will be at every disaster.”
Water
How would San Mateo County survive without water from Yosemite for weeks or months?
That is a key question worrying disaster planners. San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy water system that brings water to 2.4 million people in four Bay Area counties is old and vulnerable. The main pipes could break in an earthquake — or other disaster — leaving people and businesses and hospitals and fire fighters to depend on local water supplies.
Yet, San Francisco’s big project to strengthen and update the water system is not due to be finished for at least 10 years.
“If there’s a major quake before the system is rebuilt, people will not be able to store enough water to get by,” says Art Jensen, general manager of the Bay Area Water Supply Agency, which represents the 29 water agencies that depend on San Francisco for most of their water. “We’re not as prepared as we should be.
“We need water not only for drinking, but for sanitation, bathing, hospital care, and fighting fires.”
Local water and government agencies, and disaster planners, have plans to conserve the water we already have locally and build more storage for the future.
“After a major earthquake, people should turn off their irrigation systems if possible,” says Darren Duncan, district manager for the Bear Gulch District of the California Water Service Co.
“If we get cut off from San Francisco water, we have limited storage; we’d hate to use it fill pools and water lawns,” Mr. Duncan says. “A lot of our demand is for irrigation.”
Meanwhile, Cal Water is working to strengthen its water storage tanks, and pipes and pumps to withstand earthquakes. With 30 water tanks and one on the drawing board, the water company has 12 million gallons of stored drinking water and 215 million gallons in its lakes.
“We try to keep a reserve supply, but we have to have water to fight fires,” Mr. Duncan says.
While Cal Water is replacing old pipes throughout its service area, it is also targeting pipes that physically cross the San Andreas Fault, which might shift 12 feet, Mr. Duncan says. In May, it will test a pilot project at Portola Valley Ranch that will allow it to replace pipes that cross the fault with heavy hose that will run between two hydrants.
“If the system goes down, we’re on our own from 30 to 60 days,” Mr. Ducan says.
Menlo Park’s water department is well-prepared and does a lot of training, says Public Works Director Kent Steffens. The city has 5.5 million gallons of storage and is planning another underground storage tank in the eastern part of the city.
In an emergency, Mr. Steffens says, the city’s first action will be to prohibit irrigation. “We want to preserve out water for critical drinking, bathing, hospitals and fighting fires.”
What if we still run out? Lt. Quinlan says the county has a plan to bring in water on barges.
“Sanitation is a huge issue,” Lt. Quinlan warns. He advises people to stock up on plastic garbage bags and bleach to take care of waste. Put a garbage bag in a toilet or bucket, treat it with a few drops of bleach, and later tie it up before throwing it out.
Avian flu
“Each day we’re more ready than the day before,” says Brian Zamora, San Mateo County’s Director of Public Health.
His department is training for all kinds of disasters that affect health. It is working with cities, school districts, the Red Cross and volunteer agencies.
“We train our staff in basic disaster response to earthquake, flood, bio-terrorism and flu,” he says. “We have to support them for a long period.”
But avian flu is the most important worry, Mr. Zamora says. A proposal for a “Pandemic Flu Preparation and Response Plan” will be presented to the Board of Supervisors May 2, to be followed by a “Pandemic Flu Summit” May 18 and 19.
A pandemic is different from other disaster-response issues. Because it is contagious, people may have to change their behavior on a massive scale for a long time. “It’s unlike anything we’ve experienced before,” Mr. Zamora warns. “A flu wave could last three months to a year.
“When the flu is here, we may see the work force down 35 percent,” Mr. Zamora says. “We have to ask people not to congregate. Kids can’t go to school. People can’t go to work.”
These limits would pose severe problems for the agencies that serve these people. When people can’t go to the grocery store, “we have to find a different way to roll food out,” says Mr. Zamora. “We could have months of isolation.”
