Although I’ve not yet felt the earth move under my feet, apparently there are quakes of varied magnitudes all the time happening close to home. A peek at the recent earthquakes for California and Nevada will show all the activity in the last week, including location, seismic strength, and date/time. I’ve been told that constant minor quake activity is desireable, allowing us to avoid (or prolong the arrival of) The Big One. On Thursday there was a microquake (less than 2.0 on the Richter scale) in Morgan Hill, where my company is located. Yet no one seems overly concerned, and since I slept through two quakes last fall (that even hardened residents noticed), I’ve not paid much heed.
Then I read a fascinating article in San Francisco magazine about how direly unprepared we are for the next big quake. It explored the histories of the disastrous quakes of 1906 and 1989, highlighting the lessons to be taken from these events. He also creates a scenario of what the next Big One might do, and where; I’ve excerpted what caught my attention:
In Santa Clara County, nearly 100,000 people live in more than 30,000 soft-story units; in San Jose, a million residents, visitors, and commuters lie in the temblor’s path. Landslides and toppling trees bury sections of serpentine Highway 17, between San Jose and Santa Cruz. At its tail end, tearing through Morgan Hill and Monterey, the quake shakes sprawling suburbs and oceanfront homes that weren’t there a century ago.
…As the 100th anniversary of the worst disaster in U.S. history approaches—a disaster that affected the spot where you are sitting, your mate is shopping, your favorite restaurant is serving, your children are, hopefully, learning—it is high time to start putting the right questions to the right people: ourselves. In 1906, the quake was triggered by the opposing plates of the San Andreas Fault slipping past each other an average of 13.5 feet. According to measurements taken by United States Geological Survey global-positioning instruments in the High Sierra and the Farallon Islands, the fault’s North American and Pacific Plates have moved 7.5 feet closer in the last 99 years, increasing the pressure on the fault line. That does not mean an earthquake is due tomorrow, but it should grab our attention.
Sobering, indeed. Not one to leave the reader in despair, the author provided a handy list of what to do to prepare, and I read it over. So today my husband and I purchased three cases of water in gallon jugs, a total of 18 gallons, which is supposed to provide us (and the cats) enough water for four-to-six days in the event of service interruption. Here I present the list of advice from the article:
What You Must Do
- Go to www.72hours.org, a website developed by the San Francisco Office of Emergency Services, and implement every piece of advice. Lay in a week’s supply of water and canned food, plus a manual can opener, medicine, pet food, flashlights, cash, a transistor radio, and extra batteries. Buy a good fire extinguisher. And don’t sell that old bicycle.
- Bolt your home to its foundation, and make sure your water heater is strapped to the wall. If the structure needs diagonal bracing to strengthen it, compare the cost of getting it done with all the costs of not getting it done.
- Buy a $3 crescent wrench and learn how to shut off your gas. An earthquake will rupture gas mains, and if the electricity doesn’t go out, a spark could quickly ignite a fire. That’s the main fire danger in the Bay Area today.
- Plan a kid pickup. If you commute, you may have difficulty getting home, let alone picking up your children. Make plans now with someone near their school who will get your kids and take care of them until you can make it home.
- Stick a transistor radio in your car or briefcase. Telephone lines will be jammed or down, and cell phones may be unusable as well. Transistor radios will be our best means of getting information. Make sure you have extra batteries.
- Find a temporary home now. Figure out where you and your family will stay if your home is damaged or unreachable. A friend’s home is better than a shelter.
- Don’t be foolish. After reading this, bypass knee-jerk reaction #1: “I am going to sell my house and move.” Ditto for knee-jerk reaction #2: snoozing. Opt for a little-used smart reaction: preparing for the earthquake that will come.
The 72hours.org site has more detailed instructions of what to put into one’s disaster kit and how to create a “go-bag” in the event of an evacuation. It may seem pessimistic and a bit “Chicken Little” to focus on this, but the potential for such an occurrence is high enough to warrant preparation. Once supplies are laid in, I’ll go on with life feeling a bit more secure.
And in line with #6, figure out what you’re going to do with your pets in case you need to evacuate your house. Shelters don’t typically accept them.
Some additional thoughts:
Rotate your supplies at least yearly (very important)- that includes the unopened packages of various batteries (for radios, flashlights, etc).
Keep a pair of shoes under the bed and a pair of comfortable shoes in the car (in case you are away from home, wearing those heels we women are prone to wearing and find roads blocked). For that same possibility, a car kit that includes a lightweight backpack with the things you might need to get to a shelter or to your family is nice to have.
Keep a flashlight next to the beds and check periodically to make sure the batteries are still good (in the Northridge quake I was the only one in this home whose ‘next to the bed flashlight’ was still working and easily located).
Establish an outside the state contact to relay information- that everyone knows and can call is useful. Sometimes connections by phone to locations within the state won’t go through but telephoning outside the state will be possible (I don’t know why, but by experience I know it is sometimes true). From within a shelter there will be emergency phones that can also be used to contact your relay person to pass messages to meet up with loved ones who have become separated.
It isn’t a “chicken little” sort of thing to make preparations. I believe it is what the responsible person does. We have the basic preparations in place, and without obsessing about it, check at least annually to make sure they are in order. When the Northridge quake happened, though our preparations were not extensive (and in some cases have changed/grown since then), they were sufficient to get us through several days at home without power and with an uncertain water supply.
Thank you both for the good advice. I shall apply it!