CommentsGELAND’S WORLD--We have to thank mayor Garcetti for taking disaster preparedness seriously. He brought Dr Lucy Jones into city government, where she considered our vulnerabilities in the event of a serious earthquake.
As she pointed out, a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault -- what we colloquially call "the big one" -- would leave us without running water for an extended period of time, because lateral movement would break the water mains.
We would also be without electricity and without an operating sewer system. Without electricity to recharge the cell phone towers, our mobile phone system would only be viable for a few hours. Driving would be difficult, because downed power lines would block city streets.
In short, it would be a system-wide failure in which at least momentarily, wherever you happen to be stuck, you're on your own.
For the past 8 months, the neighborhood council emergency preparedness alliance (NCEPA) has been hearing briefings by representatives of law enforcement and city departments.
For example, we just heard a talk on how the Department of Recreation and Parks has been preparing to deal with a major disaster. In a city which has over 400 parks, nearly half being equipped with some sort of building, the Rec and Parks system is an obvious tool for dealing with thousands of people who have been driven from their homes by structural damage.
It was pointed out that people don't feel comfortable remaining in unstable structures following earthquakes. In moments of such human displacement, people tend to congregate in open spaces such as public parks.
The Department of Recreation and Parks has been thinking about this possibility and has developed plans. It's employees will go to predetermined posts or be assigned emergency jobs. They will cooperate with the American Red Cross in creating shelters.
I must say that we were impressed by the level of awareness and attention to preparation we heard from the Rec & Parks representatives. In previous meetings, we heard from the LAPD and the LAFD, who will work with the emergency operations center to maintain order and provide critical services.
There even seems to be a good deal of mutual organizing going on between the various agencies and law enforcement groups.
So far so good. But one critical element appears to be missing from all the preparations.
That element is you and me. The planners have left us, the public, largely ignorant of what the plans actually are. Consider the four million inhabitants of the city of Los Angeles along with another six million inhabitants of the rest of the county.
Do any of us know where we are supposed to assemble in the event that an earthquake makes our homes dangerous and leaves us without running water or electricity? Nobody has told me where I am supposed to go, and I would imagine it's the same for you.
We had a discussion of these uncomfortable facts at the latest meeting of NCEPA. I should point out that some people raise a counterargument: Making disaster preparedness plans available to the public could play into the hands of potential terrorists. I think this is an understandable point. But it's possible to make a distinction between preparing for an act of terrorism vs. preparing for a major earthquake.
Preparation for a local terrorist attack is something that should obviously be confined to law enforcement and a few top ranking government officials. The rest of us don't need to know what the LAPD plans are, just as we didn't need to have detailed knowledge about how the LA Airport police were trained to react when terrorists attacked one of the terminals. We don't want to tell terrorists in advance that the members of the public will all be heading in a particular direction to a particular place in the event of public violence.
But a major earthquake is a very different situation. To make an obvious point, earthquakes are not the sort of events that terrorists can plan for, and they aren't the sorts of events that anyone can fake. If we have a major earthquake, we will all know it.
So my question to the authorities and to the NCEPA is this: It's ten minutes after the shaking has stopped. What do we do now? What do thousands of displaced people do? Where do they go? Should they shelter in place, meaning that they stay home and live on bottled water, or should they wander towards the local park, hoping that the authorities will be providing food, water, and shelter?
My view is that the public ought to be told the plan in advance. We should all have knowledge of a nearby open-ground assembly point should our own homes be rendered unstable. And, we should all become part of a wide scale training and organizational program so that if and when we are on our own, we will be able to deal with it.
To put it another way, we the public should be part of the planning and training process so that in the event of a natural disaster, we will know what to do and have the supplies and tools available to do it.
Our proposal at NCEPA is that a few hundred community organizations, starting with the 96 neighborhood councils, provide training and organizing to the public so that if the big earthquake happens, our neighborhoods will be capable of reacting on the local level. Everyone will have access to water, shelter, and first aid.
This means that the NCEPA organization needs to provide the connection between the city agencies and the public. At the public end of this pipeline, the neighborhood councils will play an important role, as will other groups such as homeowners associations and religious groups.
From now on, the question we need to be asking ourselves is this: If the big one hit us tomorrow morning, would we be ready? Right now, the answer is obviously No. But the city has been making progress. What is left to be done is to bring the disaster preparedness program to the people.
Addendum: We will be discussing emergency preparedness at the Congress of Neighborhoods, to be held at the Los Angeles City Hall this Saturday, September 24. Join us. If you register in advance, parking is free.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
Is Los Angeles Prepared for Disaster? The Answer is NO!
