Quake Experts Want to take Lesson From Japanese

The hotel waitress in Shizuoka, Japan--a city that sits in the heart of Japan’s earthquake zone--nodded vigorously when four California researchers at dinner asked if she had made any earthquake preparations at home.

“Oh, my, yes, of course,” she answered quickly, and described how portions of her wood-frame house have been strengthened and cylinders of propane gas strapped with heavy chains. “Earthquakes are a very scary happening.”

Back home in quake-prone San Jose weeks later, researcher Guna Selvaduray was approached by a neighbor who asked why he had strapped plumbing tape around his water heater. The neighbor, though a retired plumber, had never heard of using the tape to keep heaters from shaking apart and causing fire during a severe temblor.

“Everyone in Japan knows about preparing for quakes,” said Selvaduray, a professor at San Jose State University. “But most of my neighbors here know nothing about what to do.”

To Ride Through a Quake

After several field trips to Japan within four years, California emergency planners want to take a few pages from the Japanese to improve the state’s ability to ride through a major quake that seismologists say is inevitable within decades.

Ask the Japanese about earthquakes and chances are excellent they can tell you what preparations they have taken and what they plan to do when a quake occurs. Both the Japanese government and industry have spent billions of dollars in the last decade to improve building safety and teach citizens how to minimize loss of life and damage from disasters.

On Sept. 1 of each year, the anniversary of the 1923 Kanto, or Tokyo-Yokohama, quake that killed almost 100,000 residents, the entire nation enacts disaster scenarios, and a full-scale mock event takes place in the Shizuoka area 125 miles southwest of Tokyo, where a major quake is predicted within years.

The Japanese vigilance contrasts with a barely visible level of activity in California, where seismic activity and the potential for urban loss are similar.

“The Japanese are light years ahead of us in public education and preparedness,” said Shirley Mattingly, who directs emergency service planning for Los Angeles.

“We talk about earthquake preparedness, but the Japanese mandate it,” added Richard Eisner, who heads a state-funded project in the San Francisco Bay Area to improve disaster readiness.

Japan’s commitment to earthquake preparedness involves efforts in three major areas: improving structural strength of buildings; boosting office and residential safety through non-structural interior improvements, and educating the public on what to do before and during a quake to reduce deaths and injuries.

‘Japanese Apply More’

Mattingly, Eisner and other Californians who have studied the Japanese programs have particularly focused on issues of interior building safety and citizen preparedness. This is partly because structural measures taken in the United States are generally considered to be on a par with those in Japan. Moreover, U.S. government studies indicate that two-thirds of all losses and injuries from a major quake would result from interior damage, not from structural collapse.

“Our research (on preparations) is similar but the Japanese apply more,” said Robert Reitherman, an earthquake architect with Scientific Service Inc. of Redwood City, who recently returned from Japan where he studied disaster preparations by private companies.

As examples, Reitherman noted that 20% of Tokyo residents have equipped their homes with devices that automatically shut off gas when shaking begins. All employees at the Fuji Bank headquarters in Tokyo have hard hats and food supplies under their desks. The Kajima Corp., a large engineering and construction firm in Tokyo, maintains earth-moving equipment near its headquarters to assist authorities. NHK, the semi-government broadcasting corporation, has designated 600 employees to cover an earthquake and has already laid in a food supply for them. The company has anchored desks, file cabinets, computers and broadcasting equipment to walls and floors.

“Walk into any hardware store in Japan and you’ll find a section designated for survival implements,” said architect Chris Arnold of Building Systems Development Inc. of San Mateo. The vast majority of Japanese homes contain fire extinguishers, and all kerosene heaters--a common method of home heating in Japan--automatically shut off if shaken.

In California, by contrast, only an estimated 1% of residents have made one of the simplest and most cost-effective earthquake preparations--strapping their water heaters. This not only prevents fire in the event of a quake, but protects an emergency water supply.

Bought From 3M Corp.

Mattingly was surprised to find that many high-rise buildings in Japan have applied a film on their windows to prevent large glass shards from falling onto employees or onto streets during a quake. When she asked where the film was obtained, the Japanese laughed and said they bought it from 3M Corp.--”an American company!” Mattingly said, laughing herself. She also praised the wealth of detailed but easy-to-read brochures for public consumption that explain everything in seismic situations from how to evacuate a movie theater or bring a car to a halt to the hardware needed to secure a vending machine.

“The material is so graphic that even if you don’t understand Japanese, you can get a great deal out of it,” Mattingly said.

On a larger scale, the Japanese government has implemented plans for secure emergency command centers and for uninterrupted communications in case of a major temblor. Each year, top scientists and government officials practice operation of a command post, starting with the simulated receipt of signals from an existing offshore warning system indicating that a large quake is imminent.

Japanese planners say the 1971 San Fernando earthquake that killed 66, including eight heart-attack victims, was their immediate impetus for their major programs, citing the unexpected damage and confused communications resulting from what was only a moderate quake--just 6.1 on the Richter Scale. The lessons from 1971, the planners say, fit into a historical framework of Japanese memories of earthquake disasters and conflagrations, including the calamitous World War II fire bombings.

The Immediate Task

For Californians, the immediate task seemingly is to try to achieve a fraction of what has been accomplished in Japan.

“We need to carry out some of the paper planning we’ve done here,” said Richard Andrews, Southern California director of the state Office of Emergency Services. “We can obviously do similar things to what the Japanese have done in how to operate command centers, maintain communications, train volunteers.”

Andrews, whose office walls display Japanese preparedness posters, said the state government’s microwave radio link is not reliable during a major temblor and needs to be improved. He will soon move his office from downtown Los Angeles to the Armed Forces Reserve Center at Los Alamitos to make it easier to immediately establish an emergency center after a disaster. During an April exercise, state officials found that it took the better part of a day to set up the Los Alamitos coordination center, Andrews said.

He praised the Japanese for their ability to respond quickly when a quake strikes. They are able, he noted, to immediately deploy helicopter-borne TV cameras to provide pictures of damage so that rescue teams can be quickly dispatched. In the San Fernando quake, he said, relief officials were unaware for hours that a large hospital had collapsed because of downed communications.

Preparedness Spending

Andrews and state geologist Jim Davis also pointed out that the Japanese spend far more money per-capita on earthquake preparedness: $100 a person a year compared to 65 cents a person in California.

Davis wants to place instruments at active faults near Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego with an automatic warning system similar to one in place in Japan for trains that could provide up to several minutes of warning to urban areas of a major quake by detecting initial fault motions. But he is unsure whether an initial $112,000 request will be approved by the Deukmejian Administration and the Legislature.

He said that everyone is for earthquake preparedness, but that the single biggest obstacle he finds is deferment in funding requests.

California planners attribute the vast disparity in funding in part to historical and cultural differences between the state and Japan.

“The Japanese perceive the risk as personal,” Arnold said. “In California we say, ‘I live in a quake area but I won’t feel it.’ Or, ‘If I feel it, my house won’t be damaged.’ Or, ‘If my house is damaged, it won’t collapse.’ Or, ‘If it does collapse, I won’t be hurt.’ Or, ‘If I am hurt, I won’t be seriously injured.’ ”

Turnover in Residents

Davis pointed out that the turnover of California residents is such that, even if everyone were saturated with earthquake information as in Japan, there would be millions of residents within five years who would again need basic instruction. In Japan, almost no migration exists in and out of the country.

Nevertheless, much more could be done based on Japanese models, especially in improving citizen responses, they say.

“Personal preparedness is one of the most cost-effective areas,” Davis said.

Reitherman criticized state and county disaster planning offices for not making basic information more readily available and in an easy-to-understand way. Reitherman prepared a well-illustrated how-to booklet on low-cost office and household improvements in February, 1983, for the Southern California Earthquake Preparedness Project, an agency based in Los Angeles and financed jointly by the federal and state governments. But only 500 copies were initially printed and sent to state and county administrators.

“I had to jump up and down to get more copies to send around,” said Kent Paxton, head of the San Mateo County Office of Emergency Services. “It’s a great, practical book that shows many problems are not insurmountable and can be done at low cost now if you show people specifically how to do things.”

General Telephone Organized

General Telephone of California, which has one of the most highly organized seismic preparedness plans of any company statewide, used the book as the basis for its program.

Almost three years later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is printing 100,000 copies of the guide. But with many government brochures distributed only through state and county disaster offices, their public availability is limited. In San Francisco, for instance, the telephone information service has no listing for the area’s earthquake project office.

“I want explanations like the Japanese have,” Mattingly said, “where things are standardized and we tell the nuts and bolts of how to prepare, not simply say, ‘prepare.’ ”

Los Angeles will issue a report next month suggesting programs it can begin based on Japanese experiences. The state Seismic Safety Commission director plans to introduce legislation early next year to require some seismic inspection of residences when they are sold, similar to termite inspections required by the insurance industry. Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), just back from a look at Mexico’s damage from its September quake, will try to obtain $1 million for Davis’ warning system when the Legislature reconvenes in January. Stirling also wants schools to reinstitute earthquake drills statewide, a practice that most districts have dropped over the last 20 years.

“I think California is entering a second stage, where people have been made aware of the danger but have to get prepared,” Arnold said. “That is much more difficult to get across, and, unfortunately at this point, a disaster is still the best way to get people’s attention. So, for us, Japan is a good model to follow, whether for industrial, business or homeowner.”