LA’s Half Ready for a Real Disaster and Likely to Fail Spectacularly

After touring the city's Emergency Operations Center near downtown, I think it's safe to say that there will be well trained people in charge of the government, that they will husband the available resources in the most efficient way possible, and that the system will fail spectacularly at one critical point. 

Here is where that failure will occur: It's us, the public. It's not our fault, it's the fault of the city's officials and elected leadership in failing to mobilize the populace for emergency training. But it will be a failure nevertheless. 

Counting on our fingers, the most likely disasters include earthquakes, floods, fires out in the periphery, some sort of toxic leak, and an extended electric outage. We have less to fear from outbreaks of disease, but the possibility is something greater than zero. 

To the mayor's credit, he has supported doing some advance preparation in anticipation of a substantial earthquake. We tend to think of "the big one," meaning a major rupture along the San Andreas Fault. After all, we are a century overdue for one of those. 

But there are other possible earthquakes that could also do a lot of damage. If we had something like the Northridge earthquake, but maybe five or ten times bigger, we would have a local "big one" that didn't require anything happening along the San Andreas. Or we could have an intermediate level break along the San Andreas, and still have a lot of damage. 

As I discussed in a previous column, seismologist Lucy Jones has been working with the city to define the current weaknesses and to find approaches that would minimize damage, loss of life, and widespread economic chaos. 

I attended a presentation at the city's Emergency Operations Center the other day. The facilities are impressive, the organizational structure and management seem to be sound, and I would suspect that most of us came away from the meeting with confidence in the people who would have to manage the immediate governmental response to a disaster. You can get an idea of the resources they can bring to bear here. 

The problem is that in the event of a major disaster, you can call 911, but you shouldn't expect help. There will be too many calls, not enough responders, and roadways that are either broken or clogged. 

The acronym for this kind of situation is YOYO. You're On Your Own. 

If you are sufficiently prepared in terms of supplies and a little training, you may do fine. But yoyo. 

Let's take a for instance. The immediate shaking is over, you get up off the floor or out of your chair, and take a look around. Across your courtyard, a neighbor is staggering towards you. His arm is slashed almost to the bone, and blood is spurting in a rhythmic way. What should you do? What will you do? 

Let's say that you figure out to limit the bleeding, which prevents immediate loss of life and may even save the arm. Now what? 

It's the "now what" that I am concerned about, because we could have hundreds or thousands of such injuries, all of which could be properly treated if only we all did the right things, but I have no reason to believe that we will all do the right things. In the case of the arterial spurter, the serious head injury, the busted ribs, and all the other tribulations that may fall upon us during a serious earthquake, we could handle the wounded if we had a system one-tenth as effective as the Army or the Navy. 

But they know what to do and how to do it. They have the discipline to go where they are supposed to go and do what they are supposed to do. They also have trained medics distributed throughout their population. 

In short, the military has a preplanned, organized system which includes everyone. Not everyone is a medic or an ambulance driver or a surgeon, but there is a system which includes all of the above, and everyone in the system has some understanding about making it function when it has to.

Let me take a slight detour to provide a counterexample. It's a question I have been asking in public for a dozen years, and I have never yet heard a satisfactory answer. The subject is the L.A. harbor. Specifically, what would we do if some ship started leaking toxic fumes or explosive fuel? Let's imagine that the situation warranted evacuating the people of San Pedro and Wilmington out of the harbor area. 

It's a difficult undertaking under the best of circumstances, but given the proper level of public knowledge and a little advance drilling, it could be done. 

So, for the past dozen years, I've been asking about that evacuation plan. In the first few years, there was no answer whatsoever, other than the non-answer, "That's a good question." 

In more recent years, LAPD officers will admit that there is a plan. They just don't want to tell us what it is. In an area where there are essentially three main roads going north and possibly one road going west, it would make sense for us to know where we are supposed to go in the event of an evacuation. For one thing, announcing in advance that all traffic on north-south streets can only drive northward, and should use both sides of the street -- that would be a useful thing to know if we really had to get out. 

But nobody with authority seems to care to explain. 

Now let's imagine the post-earthquake situation with slashed arms, broken legs, random concussions, and the like. We happen to have a hospital in San Pedro, but how will a mass casualty event manage itself? Forget waiting for an ambulance -- you're on your own unless your neighborhood has some kind of preexisting organization that knows how to handle such problems. 

It's an interesting point that we have organizations that could double as emergency administrators on the local level. We've got neighborhood watch, the neighborhood councils, and ham radio clubs for a start. The only one of these that seem to be organized as emergency first responders are the ham radio clubs. Perhaps it's time for all of us aging amateur radio operators to show up at an organizing meeting at the most immediate local level, and get a litte training in how we can be of help when the neighborhood finds itself left to its own devices. 

The Emergency Operations Center has its own amateur radio room set up, so the city has already factored in this level of communication resource. 

There is another program called CERT. It's a 17 hour training program that deals with all manner of emergencies, including that bleeding arm. I hear it is very good. Once again, the issue is building an integrated network of amateur first responders out of the local neighborhood watch group, the CERT trained volunteers, and each and every one of us who is capable of learning a few things. 

What's been missing is for our city leadership to demand that such institutions be brought into existence, to divide the city into small regions, and to make sure that every one of those regions has the equipment and the trained people to deal with emergencies on its own. 

There even should be depots of emergency supplies that don't require an LAPD or LAFD badge to access. In addition, the city can abolish the requirement for gas shutoff valves in apartment buildings and condos, and replace that requirement with a rule that in new construction, each such structure store a  thousand gallons of water per unit. Since the lack of safe, drinkable water is likely to be our biggest headache in the post-earthquake environment, why not get a reasonable start on pre-positioning supplies? 

We've had some good starts such as an organization called COPE, but I would wager that the vast majority of Los Angeles residents wouldn't have the faintest idea how to function effectively in a yoyo situation. The solution is to do a little organizing. Let's create a structure so that when a real emergency happens, what we will have is neighborhoods that are on their own, but each neighborhood will have the trained people and the supplies to ride out its difficulties.

(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

CityWatch

Vol 12 Issue 64

Pub: Aug 8, 2014