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Get Ready for the Big One

Be Prepared: Plan Before Disaster Strikes

   

Statistically speaking, we’re just about due for fires, floods and a really big earthquake. With some simple preparation, though, you can get yourself—and your family—through in one piece.

    The city of St. George lies in the hot southwestern corner of Utah, in an arid valley of red dirt. About 120 miles north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15, this town of 70,000 sprawls into the high desert, with gated communities making room for hundreds of retirees coming for the 100-degree summers, clean air and abundant golf courses. Founded in the 1860s by Brigham Young as a cotton-farming town, which has given the area the nickname “Utah’s Dixie,” St. George is now one the fastest-growing cities in the state. Crime is low, there hasn’t been an earthquake since a minor shaker knocked china off the shelf in 1902, and there aren’t any tornadoes, hurricanes or tidal waves. Nothing much happens in St. George to disrupt the hum of daily life. And that’s kind of the point. Statistically speaking, St. George is the safest place to live in the country.
    The Bay Area is not. It’s fifth on the list of U.S. Department of Homeland Security hot spots; the Feds know that if we don’t get shaken from one of the faults under our feet or immolated in the next wildfire, we just might take it in the bridge from a bicoastal terrorist nasty. Factor in a few perks that beachside urban areas have to deal with—pandemics, tsunamis, water contamination and oil spills—and it’s a wonder we’re not all moving to Utah. But I’m not planning on moving to the Utah desert. Are you?
    In the last 25 years, the president has declared Alameda County a disaster area 10 times, most of them related to rains and flooding. But the fact is, we have a short memory for disaster. When disasters do strike, we spring to action, donating money to aid agencies, lining up at blood banks, slinging indignation at our bumbling emergency management agencies. But in the aftermath, when everyday life resumes and the adrenaline wears off, we tend to forget the lesson and settle into the warm notion that nothing similar could ever happen to us. Here are two things that just might. And sooner than you’d expect.

Earthquakes

    The Hayward Fault, the 66-mile jugular of Bay Area seismic activity, runs northward from a dry hill in Milpitas, up Interstate 580 to the backside of Piedmont, through the Claremont Hotel’s backyard, through the middle of Cal stadium, ending in a hornlike jut in the Bay at Point Pinole. Ten miles or so upstream from its southern terminus, a team of researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have been digging trenches in the soft ground of the fault near the Fremont BART station, searching for evidence of past tremblors. By examining the geologic strata and dating the layers from entombed woody materials, researchers can tell roughly when the fault went off, and with what kind of force, over the last 2,000 years.
    “Want the bad news?” says Mary Lou Zoback, the chief scientist on a three-year USGS working group that researched the probability of the next big one. “The Hayward fault has a major earthquake on average every 140 years. The last one was big enough to break the surface, minimum 6.5, probably a 6.9. That was in 1868.” Lessee, 1868, plus 140 years, carry the one, move the decimal point over—it seems 2008 could be a very auspicious year.
    And that’s just one fault. The result of Zoback’s three-year study was an ominous prediction: There is a 70 percent probability for one or more magnitude 6.7-or-greater earthquakes before 2030. Zoback’s study also looked at the “repeat time” of faults, the period between shakes. The  longer the period of a fault’s dormancy, the greater the probability it will be next. Statistically speaking, the next one will be the Rodgers Creek fault in Sonoma County, which has been quiet since records began being kept, in 1776.
    But the real threat was just reported by the USGS in December: The Hayward fault is likely connected to the Calaveras fault south of it, extending the team to well below Hollister. And when they go, they could go together with far worse results.
    Two things matter in an earthquake, according to Zoback. Distance from the epicenter, and the type of ground you’re on. In certain types of soft soil, like sand, the water saturating the material begins to flow from the wave energy of an earthquake, turning it into a kind of quicksand, which amplifies the waveform, giving it more destructive force. This happens most commonly on landfill, and in the flat areas fronting the bay. In the 1868 quake, more damage occurred in the flatlands than the hills.
    When a quake strikes, it begins moving along the fault, pushing focused wave energy in front of it, piling up the energy in a way that’s similar to the Doppler effect you hear in the rising tone of an ambulance coming toward you. These waves travel through the ground like ripples on the surface of a pond, bouncing around in the basins formed by low hills. San Leandro and Livermore are settled into basins like these, making them more susceptible to earthquake energy.
    When it hits, the first wave is a hard, compressive 14,000 mph roller that strikes fast, straight in front of the quake. It’s followed shortly after by a slow, back and forth S wave that has more destructive shearing force. A building with a height that matches the wave’s wavelength sets up a harmonic vibration that destroys the building from the inside out. What do you do to survive one of these? “Duck and cover” has been replaced by “duck, cover and hang on.”

 

Wildfires

    A major fire has happened every 10 to 15 years in the East Bay Hills, as the dry chaparral and brush grow to become tinder. But this is natural; fires should burn often in the dry coastal ranges where there is limited rainfall most of the year and the fog burns off quickly. Left alone, grasslands will burn every five years or so, pine forests every 10 years and chaparral about every 25 years. But because we have active fire-suppression policies meant to protect property in these fire-prone areas, the fuel just builds until we have a conflagration. The last major fire, you may remember, was the 1991 Oakland Hills blaze, which burned 1,520 acres, destroyed 3,276 homes and killed 25 people. That was 17 years ago. We’re overdue.
    The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report in 2007 on how climate change would alter the frequency and degree of natural disasters. It warned that fire season will come earlier and stay longer, and that because forests will be hotter and drier, they will be more vulnerable to invasive insect species that can kill plants and trees, creating more fuel for fires, which will then burn more intensely.
    Because fires nearly always follow earthquakes, you can probably guess how the perfect nightmare unfolds for Renee Domingo, the head of Oakland’s Office of Emergency Services, the Oakland Fire Department office responsible for disaster planning. “The earthquake is the biggie,” she says, “and fires often follow.” This means that if you live at altitude, you need to prepare your house. The good news is that this is pretty simple to do, and simple steps can result in a much higher chance of getting through with your stuff intact.
    According to the state’s Structural Fire Prevention Field Guide, homes with noncombustible roofs and a “moat” free of dry vegetation had a 90 percent chance of survival in a 1990 Santa Barbara fire. Compare this to a 4 percent chance of survival otherwise. Nothing much will stop the kind of inferno San Diego saw last year, but those are still pretty good odds.
    Part of the joy of an over-civilized society is that living without natural predators but with an abundance of salt and vinegar potato chips, we get to grow a little soft. But that’s not an excuse to be unprepared. This issue is dedicated to exploring the various ways our zen-like composure can be disrupted and the pretty simple, straightforward ways we can increase our chances of riding out the storm. Or fire. Or quake. By preparing our homes, finances and families, and learning a few tricks for dealing with the aftermath, we just might make it through. with our skins and our stuff intact. What a story we’ll have for our friends in St. George.

I. At Home

    You think being stuck in traffic for a couple hours is hard? Try a week without TV. Or lights. Or running water. It’s not some hellish tough-love boot camp or the extreme edition of Outward Bound. In fact, you don’t even have to leave your house for this one. It’s a little thing called The Aftermath, and there’s that 70 percent chance it’s coming to a community exactly like yours within the next 22 years.
    So how can you make sure your family and a few shell-shocked neighbors survive the week before FEMA (and your insurance company) are able to get you back on your feet? Three things: Get Prepared, Make a Plan and Build a Kit.

Get Prepared

    It’s been said before, but don’t wait until your house is destroyed to find out what kind of coverage you have. Make sure that your home, cars and contents are fully covered—and that means at replacement value. Most homeowners and renters policies do not cover earthquakes, but
they may cover wildfires. Make sure you know the details of your policy.
    Take a household inventory to make sure that there is a record of all your stuff. To ensure that it’s accurate, take digital photos of everything in every room. Open up closets and doors, pull out shelves, hit the garage and storage room. Take close-ups of items with particular historic or monetary value. Store these photos online, or burn them to a CD and send it out of the area.
    Keep your important documents safe by getting a fireproof household safe or a safe-deposit box at a bank. Keep your insurance information, passports, car titles, birth and wedding certificates, and bank and mortgage details together.
    To be ready for fire, make sure your roof is made of non-flammable material, like asphalt shingles. Home exteriors made of stucco are naturally fire-resistant; and double-pane, tempered-glass windows don’t break as quickly in extreme heat. A 2005 state law mandates “defensible space clearance” of 100 feet around houses that are in wooded areas, like the hills. This creates a firebreak and gives firefighters room to work when they’re trying to save your house (the California Department of Forestry even wrote a song—I kid you not—called “Defensible Zone Space Song;” listen to it at www.fire.ca.gov/education_100foot.php). You can have plants; just make sure they’re a high-moisture variety and you keep them watered. If you have trees, “up-limb” them by removing branches at least 6 feet up so sparks or a fire on the ground can’t climb up and out.
    They don’t call them disasters for nothing. You may be given the chance to save someone’s life by performing CPR or first aid. But don’t rely on cloudy memories of your Lifesaving Merit Badge training; go join your neighborhood CORE (for Citizens of Oakland Respond to Emergencies) response team (www.oaklandcore.org). CORE is a free training program that teaches basic disaster first aid and light search and rescue skills for communities.

Defensible Space Zone Song
(Song provided by CAL FIRE, courtesy of Mark Crisp ©)

Make a Plan

    It’s important that if your family has to leave the house quickly that everyone knows where to go to meet back up. This means two places: right outside the house (in case of a sudden emergency, such as a fire) and outside the neighborhood (in case you’re asked to evacuate the area or you’re caught outside of it). The city of Oakland and the local American Red Cross chapter have picked out designated shelter areas, but they purposely aren’t telling us what they are ahead of time in case they’re damaged in the bedlam. (Hint: one of them is McAfee Coliseum.)
    If the phones are down and your family isn’t all accounted for, make sure you have an out-of-state contact for everyone to check in with—oftentimes long-distance calls can get through when local circuits are overloaded.
    Make sure everyone knows how to shut off the gas, water and electricity, and have crescent wrenches nearby to turn them off. You’ll have to do this if you need to abandon the house. Calls to evacuate sometimes give residents as little as 10 minutes to pack up and go, especially in cases of encroaching wildfires. Think now about what you’d be able to grab quickly.

Build a Kit

    There are lots of lists out there to help you build the perfect disaster kit, and we’ve included a pretty comprehensive one here, but just think about what you’d need for everyone and your pets to survive for seven days. Canned or packaged food, water (a gallon a day per person and bleach to purify more), sleeping bags, clothes, flashlights, sturdy shoes, whistles and gloves for heavy lifting. Keep it all in a backpack for easy transport. Don’t forget whatever meds you’re taking, and include a pretty beefy first-aid kit.
    Other must-haves: Buckets for washing and transporting water. Plastic sheeting to keep the rain off and for patching holes in windows and roofs (and to cover the windows of your safe room in case of loose biohazards). A battery- (or crank-) powered radio, like the one the Red Cross sells, unless you want to spring for a household generator. Lots of cash in small bills so the stores don’t have to make change. Plastic bags with ties and kitty litter (for “going”). You’ll want a crowbar and a set of pliers. And duct tape, plenty of duct tape. Rope is good, and so is a notepad and pens for leaving “I’m with the Human Survival League. Back by dinner” notes to family members.
    The truth is, if you’re home when the disaster hits, and you’ve got your kit prepared, you and your family have a good chance of getting through the disaster safely.

II. Caught Out

    When you bought your house, you made sure it was on bedrock. When you made your rendezvous plan, you printed it on laminated wallet cards. When you made your disaster kit, you included gold bullion in case paper money becomes worthless in the After Times. You’re totally prepared for when the disaster comes—unless you’re not at home when it happens.

At Work

    The fact is, you might be at work when Shaky M. Shaker gets to town, and your kids might be in school. So what do you do? Erroll Najee, the founder of Business Emergency Safety Training, an Oakland company that provides safety training for businesses in Northern California, recommends learning how to use a fire extinguisher, because the main threat will probably be from fire, which spreads rapidly.
    “We grew up with them, but we don’t know how to use them. People think they work like a grenade. You pull the pin and stand back.” Then he asks me, “How long do you think they last?” “I dunno. Five minutes? One?”
    “You’re pretty good!” he says. “There’s only 15 seconds worth of material. How far away do you have to stand?” It goes on like this for a while. Soon I find out that anything bigger than a small trashcan should be handled by the professionals, unless there aren’t any around. Also key is that you need to aim at the base of the fire. But wait! There’s an acronym (the disaster preparedness industry, as you might expect, is filled to brimming with these little call-and-response chestnuts). “It’s P.A.S.S. Pull the pin, aim at the base of the fire, squeeze the trigger and sweep from side to side.” Just make sure you call 911 first if you’re the only one around battling the blazing bag of popcorn.
    Also make sure to keep a smaller version of the home disaster kit at work, in case you’re stuck in the building. Include sturdy shoes, if you wear ones that aren’t, a few energy bars, a big bottle of water and a blanket in case you spend the night (see tip No. 18 for a more complete list).

Kids at School

    If you have kids at school, your first response will be to call the office. In a real emergency, there may not be someone manning the phones, even if they’re still working. This is where having an out-of-state contact becomes crucial. Often, local phone service is overwhelmed, but calls out of state can get through. If your kid has a cell phone, have him try you first, then your out-of-state contact (make sure that person’s phone number is somewhere your kid can find it). If he doesn’t have a cell phone, make sure he’s got a buck in quarters to use in an emergency.
    One thing to remember about earthquakes is they’re murder on roads. If the Hayward fault goes, it could slice freeways and city streets down the middle, dividing the county into nearly impassible east and west sides. Jeanne Perkins, an earthquake and hazards program consultant at the Association of Bay Area Governments, recommends adding a long list of friends and relatives to the release form you sign at the beginning of each school year indicating who can pick up your kid, taking care to include people who work close to the school.
    “If you have a combination of messed-up roads and the phone system is overloaded, you’re not going to be able to get a hold of your cousin to go pick up your kid,” she says. “You have to have thought of that ahead of time. And so your kid’s going to be stuck at the school, unable to go home with a friend or relative, because you didn’t put that person on the emergency [release] form.” In the chaos that follows, Oakland’s Office of Emergency Services recommends using a password system with your kids to determine friend from foe. If a co-worker or friend of yours that your kids don’t recognize comes to pick them up, they can say the password so the kids know they’re on the good side.

III. Medicine

    Before Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency suggested that your home disaster kit have enough food, water and medicine to keep you going for three days. Now FEMA is recommending that you be able to survive off the grid for a week, and that means having a proper supply of medication on hand. The trouble is, medication has a limited shelf life, so you need to be diligent about keeping your supply fresh. That, and insurance companies generally don’t cover an extra emergency refill that you could sock away. What do you do?
    Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution. The easiest thing to do is get a supply of samples from your doctor, if your doctor is amenable. These freebies from pharmaceutical companies come in sealed packages, perfect for adding to a disaster kit. Just make sure you’ve noted their expiration date on your calendar. When that date gets close, take them out of your kit and swap with a week’s worth of your current supply, or go back to your doc and repeat with some fresh samples.
    One thing most insurance companies offer, including Blue Shield of California, is a vacation supply of medication. This is intended to allow people who are going on long trips to stock up before they go, providing they have refills remaining. This could be tricky (and you didn’t hear it from us), but you may be able to refill your prescription before you’ve used up your vacation supply, giving you a little back stock. You can also get an extra prescription if your doctor allows it, and pay for it outside of your insurance system.
    Another option for making sure that you always have meds on hand is difficult for us procrastinators, but it’s making sure you refill early, so that you always have at least a week’s worth to spare. Instead of waiting until you have that last pill rolling around in the bottle, call ahead of time.
    If you’re insulin-dependent, you know that insulin has a short shelf life. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, even if insulin is kept in the refrigerator, you can’t really push the expiration date, which is usually one to two years. When the big one hits, and the power goes out to your fridge, insulin can be kept unrefrigerated for up to 28 days.
    Don’t forget that you might not be able to get back home if you’re away when disaster hits, so keep a few days’ worth of medicine in your car and in your disaster kit at work.

IV. Communications

    If it wanted to, Oakland could rock the hills with some block-rockin’ beats. That’s because after the 1991 wildfires, the city installed an alert system with 30 ear-piercing alarms intended to give hill dwellers as much notice as possible to evacuate in the event of another wildfire. There are also sirens along the Interstate 880 corridor, all of which have one message to give: Get out.
    In the event of a wildfire, the scenic roads in the hills and forestland of the East Bay become liabilities, easily choked by debris and two-way traffic with residents going out and firefighters coming in. Time becomes precious and short. So when it comes time to give the word to evacuate, the Oakland Fire Department will activate the network of cochlea-busting alarms and call residents in the affected area using the “Reverse 911” system the county has implemented. Also called CityWatch, the system uses a database of current home phone numbers and overlays it with geographic information so it can call the home phones in a specific geographic region or zip code over and over again until it gets through. It was used successfully in the recent San Diego fires to notify people in the path of the blaze.
    The trouble with the system is that it only works on landline phones, those curious antiques with the stuttering dial tone collecting dust on the downstairs end table. That’s one reason why it’s important to maintain one, even if the rest of your time is spent on your cell phone. Landlines usually work even when the electricity is out; just make sure the phone is corded (no wireless handsets). There’s always a fire-sale price on these at Radio Shack; $6.99 at last check.
    One of the great myths of our communications systems is that the cell system works independent of the landlines. Not true. A disaster that knocks out landlines will also knock out the cell system, says Jeanne Perkins at ABAG. “There is a myth on the part of the public that cell phones are independent from landlines. But they’re not. To somehow think that, ‘Well, I’ve got a landline in my house, and I’ve got a cell phone, therefore I have a duplicate system,’ [is wrong].”
    In all the confusion that follows a disaster, Perkins recommends staying off any phone unless you absolutely, positively need to; it’s important to keep some bandwidth clear for rescue workers. And yes, that means no calls to your friends asking, “Hey, did you feel that?”
    Every disaster we’ve had teaches fire departments and police how to better manage the chaos that follows an event. “In the Northridge quake, we learned about communicating,” said OES director Renee Domingo. “And communications are going to be the biggest challenge in the next one.”

V. Security

    One of the most unnerving aspects of natural disasters is the aftermath. When the fire swept through the Oakland Hills in October 1991, teacher Molly Coffey-Smith was living in Piedmont, an area just skirted by the blaze. She was home when a police car rolled up the street with speakers telling everyone to evacuate. The news channels were soon showing a map of the fire’s progress through her neighborhood. When the residents evacuated, the looters moved in. “There was looting all around the Oakland Hills,” she says. “People got wind of the disaster and knew that everyone was evacuated.”
    After the confusion that accompanied the blaze, it was apparent that what was needed among the dozens of responding government agencies was a standardized command structure, a familiar, unified form that could be conjured when multiple departments convened on the scene. So in 1993, California created the Standardized Emergency Management System, a system that all responding agencies trained to be a part of when called. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security created a similar national system in 2004 called the National Incident Management System. What it trains police officers and other departments to do, according to Oakland Police Department Sgt. Michael Poirier, of the chief’s office, is use a standard set of doctrines and procedures that everyone can understand, including forming an interim agency complete with departments—command, operations, planning, logistics and finance. Captains take charge of each unit and integrate members of other agencies (like fire, public works and others) into units when they arrive.
    The OPD is in charge, and in a disaster, “everyone gets called in,” Poirier says. “The big shaker happens, and you have to handle the earthquake and get [officers] on the streets.” The daily watch commander issues the first commands—to call in officers, bring in 911 operators and put more dispatchers on duty. But resources will be stretched thin, and according to OES’ Domingo, the region needs to expect to be on its own for a week before federal assistance arrives. That’s why your best bet is to make sure that you can stay in your home as long as possible after an event.

Securing the Port

    The biggest security concern for Oakland officials isn’t City Hall, and it isn’t downtown. It’s the Port of Oakland as a potential target of terrorists. As the fourth-biggest container port in the country, the port received nearly 2,000 container ships in 2006. “If they wanted to hit us economically,” says Domingo, “they could hit the port. It would have a $2 billion-a-day ripple effect throughout the region.”
    Mike O’Brien, a former U.S. Coast Guard officer, is the port facilities security officer. Because the port doesn’t have its own security force, his job is to provide day-to-day coordination between the many agencies that patrol the 900-acre area—the U.S. Coast Guard (which handles the waterways), the Alameda County sheriff’s office, OPD, California Highway Patrol (which watches the bridges), U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Before 9/11, he says, port security’s aim was to not slow down the flow of commerce.
    But now security makes sure that nothing dangerous enters (or leaves) the port area or waterways.
    O’Brien and the Coast Guard understand their job doesn’t end at the port. “We concentrate on overall regional risk reduction, not just in one area, like the port. The waterways are connected, and an accident will affect every port in the region,” he says. The port’s strategy is a preventative one—tight security, constantly.
    Besides cameras watching the fences and ID checks for traffic coming in, the containers bound for the port are monitored as well. Twenty-four hours before containers are loaded onto ships bound for Oakland, a manifest must be sent to the port, which then approves each container. When the containers are offloaded, they are scanned to make sure their contents match the manifest. They are also checked for radiation—the containers are loaded onto trucks, which are then driven through a large yellow horseshoe-shaped detector before leaving the port. The Coast Guard also checks the backgrounds of the ships’ crews, the last five ports of call, and safety and compliance issues.
    But in the event something slips through, O’Brien has a top-secret manual under lock and key called the Maritime Security Plan. “It’s the master plan for the region maintained by the Coast Guard. It outlines the likely threat and what the response is. It organizes the chaos,” O’Brien says. And while he wouldn’t share any details of the plan, he did say there are full-scale trainings four times a year. So if you happen to be caught in a swarm of armed, black-clad soldier types while shopping at Jack London Square sometime in April, don’t worry. It’s just your tax dollars at work.

VI. Transportation

Earthquake

    The reason you stock your disaster kit with food and water isn’t because there won’t be any at the stores. It’s because most likely you won’t be able to get there. ABAG estimates that if the Hayward fault blows, there will be more than 1,600 road closures from Milpitas to San Pablo Bay. And these aren’t the kind of rifts in the road you can blast over in your new Chevy Tahoe.
    A Hayward-fault quake will slice the Interstate 680 freeway into three sections near Fremont, with the sides of the fault moving as much as 10 feet. It will sever highways 262 and 84 in San Jose. It will cut through a dozen major roads on its way through the monster I-580 interchange in Castro Valley. It will take out I-580 again near Golf Links Road, again at the intersection with highways 13 and 24. It will neatly bisect the Berkeley Hills, roughly following the Arlington and the base of the foothills to cut through Interstate 80 on its way out to the Bay.
    This is why in a big one, the most important thing isn’t what kind of car you drive, but what side of the fault line you’re on. When the Northridge earthquake hit, people just assumed they could get in their SUV and bulldoze across the backroads to get home, avoiding the freeways. But they ran into problems, according to ABAG’s Perkins. “The problem is that underneath the buckled backroads ... there are going to be other problems where that fault crosses. You’re going to have sewer and water lines broken; you may have a natural gas line that’s broken. And you’ve got repair vehicles that are trying to get up there—and you’re going to be in a mess. You’re contributing to the problem by preventing utility repair trucks from doing their job.”
    When disaster planners look for a good example of what could happen when the big one hits, they don’t look at the Northridge earthquake, but to Kobe, Japan. In 1995, Kobe suffered a 6.9 earthquake, about the size of the one the USGS is predicting for the Bay Area sometime in the next 25 years. It hit early in the morning with no foreshocks, and it was devastating. Natural gas lines broke, igniting fires that firefighters couldn’t 8 put out because the water mains broke, too. Like the Bay Area, Kobe had many unreinforced masonry buildings—brick mostly—that toppled, and much of its land was fill, which liquefied into quicksand. Local officials were criticized for not providing proper traffic control, and the roads quickly turned into gridlock, stranding emergency vehicles and keeping the injured from getting to the hospitals.
    This is the part we often forget—that even if hospitals and airports and ferry terminals survive the quake (the airports and the port of Oakland are on stronger, engineered fill), they aren’t much good if the roads are impassable. This is why in a real emergency, it could take days for the Feds to arrive and take over recovery efforts, and so the initial effort is up to the Oakland Office of Emergency Services. “In the first 72 hours. Oakland OES will be it—for the first 72 hours to a week,” says Renee Domingo, OES director. “There are going to be delays in having the federal government come. A big 7.0 earthquake will cause havoc in the region, and we probably won’t get help from the neighbors because they’ll be in the same position.”
    What about BART? The system is undergoing an Earthquake Safety Program, a seismic upgrade that’s the result of 2004’s Measure AA, a 10-year, $980 million bond measure meant to strengthen vulnerable parts of the system, including elevated tracks and the transbay tube, in order to make sure it gets back in shape quickly. The tube is especially vulnerable because it’s reinforced with fill that could liquefy in a quake. In the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, BART was running again within hours, according to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, but that quake was 50 miles away.
    The next one could be anywhere, which is why the BART seismic plan is girding against the “maximum credible earthquake,” a scenario that could conceivably happen. And that might be along the Hayward fault, which runs across both the Dublin/Pleasanton and Pittsburg/Bay Point lines. “Over the years we’ve gotten more knowledge about how earthquakes happen, and how to strengthen our [infrastructure],” says Johnson. “But there’s always a possibility that an earthquake does more damage than we anticipated.”

VII. Pets

    This dictionary might define “snowball” as a ball of packed snow, especially one made for throwing at other people for fun, but for pet lovers the world over who watched the little white puffball get wrenched from a crying boy’s hands in the aftermath of Katrina, the word is as dear as Alamo is to a Texan. That’s because the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, otherwise known as the Snowball Bill, was born in California Congressman Tom Lantos’ heart the moment the boy’s cries were broadcast from Louisiana station WWL-TV.
    Passed in 2006, the PETS act requires local and state disaster plans to include household animals in the event of a major disaster or emergency. In Oakland, the police department’s Animal Services department has developed a Pet Preparedness Packet (available at www.oaklandnet.com/fire/core/pets.html) to help get your animal ready to brave the aftermath. The suggestions include getting enough food and water ready to keep Miss Kitty in kibble for at least a few days, making sure that even indoor animals are micro-chipped and have ID tags on collars, and having an understanding with your neighbors that in the event one of you is stranded on the other side of the fault line, the animals should be taken care of. Have a few hard-copy photos of your pets in your disaster kits—in case the pets get away, you can ask around if anyone’s seen them. Make sure to have pet carriers to confine pets and to keep them from bolting. Don’t forget to have enough litter and a pan around for them to last for a week, and use common sense about what other supplies—first-aid kits, medicines, leashes, bowls, etc.—you’d be smart to keep in a centralized location so your animals can weather a disaster.
    Most disaster shelters will not be able to take your pet, because of health regulations, so you’ll need to find a hotel, friend or relative, or out-of-area boarding veterinarian that can take you all in.
    Finally, get a Rescue Alert Sticker—from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals or another organization—to put in your window. It lists the number and kind of pets you have in the house, and when you leave with them, you can write “evacuated” across the front of it, letting everyone know you got Mr. Chips and Miss Piggles out safely. Other organizations, such as local humane societies, also produce material with disaster planning tips to help you ensure the safety of your animals, so it’s a good idea to explore those options as well.


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