Pupils Learn Drill Should Dam Shake Loose

“All present or accounted for?” the commander asked through her bullhorn.

“All present or accounted for,” came the reply.

Sharon Lee, a tall redhead in designer jeans and jogging shoes, stood before her assembled troops, looking like the field marshal of Lilliput.

Drawn up in ranks on the playground at Emelita Street Elementary School in Encino, where Lee is principal, were 462 children ranging in age from 5 to 12.

At other schools’ earthquake awareness drills this week, children were being taught to stay put in the event of a major quake until parents or relatives come for them. But Emelita students, in the first exercise of its kind, were being trained to flee if a reservoir in the Santa Monica Mountains should threaten to inundate their school.

“Are you ready?” Lee asked.

“Mrs. Fishbein, go ahead,” she ordered a teacher. “Mrs. Krivit, please get in position.”

Under a plan assigning each child to the care of an older child, Greg Morantz, 10, of Tarzana, at the head of a line of fifth-graders, took the hand of Kira Miller, 5, of Tarzana, the first in a line of kindergarten pupils, and led her out the gate of the playground.

Two by two, the rest of the school filed behind, parading gravely in an orderly, three-block-long line through the residential streets toward White Oak Boulevard, hurried along by 30 teachers and school employees.

Emelita is one of 79 schools earmarked for evacuation if threatened by floodwaters from any of four dams that could be weakened by an earthquake. Four public schools, including Emelita, and at least three private schools could be menaced by water from the Encino Reservoir, according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

The reservoir, which is 300 feet above the San Fernando Valley floor and 3,000 feet across, holds 10,000 acre-feet of water. In the unlikely event of a complete collapse of the dam, according to DWP estimates, the water would plunge through the Encino foothills, cross Ventura Boulevard and flow over the Ventura Freeway. It would spread westward to Etiwanda Avenue and eastward past the San Diego Freeway. Eventually, it would all drain into the Los Angeles River channel and the Sepulveda Flood Control Basin, according to the DWP estimates.

DWP officials, who say the projections are rough guesses based on a number of imponderables, warn that the water could reach the school in 15 to 20 minutes--too little time for school officials to count on getting a warning after a major temblor.

But the DWP does not expect that even the most severe quake would actually bring about the widespread flooding the disaster plans prepare for, department engineer Walt Hoye said.

The plans are designed to accommodate total failures of the dams, releasing the maximum amount of water within a few minutes, or even failures of all the dams. “There is no possibility of such an event,” Hoye said, and the failure of any single dam “would probably result in a gradual release of water, not an instantaneous discharge.”

Failure Is Remote

The Encino Dam, originally built in 1921, was rebuilt in 1961 of compacted earth, “using the most modern methods,” he said.

A spokesman for the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, which administers the Hansen Dam in the northeastern Valley, said the reservoir behind the flood control structure “is almost never full and rarely has any sizable amount of water behind it.” Right now, he said, “for all practical purposes, it’s dry, except for a small pool that’s silted in.”

Although it would be up to the state Office of Emergency Services and school district officials to decide whether other schools should be evacuated, the principals of the schools in the path of potential floodwaters have been authorized to use their own judgment after a major quake “because there might not be communications available, or time to check things out,” said Peter J. Anderson, an Encino-based emergency planner for the school district.

Although public schools in projected inundation areas have been under orders for two years to be ready to evacuate, no school had attempted a rehearsal until Wednesday. Administrators of all the schools are supposed to have designated evacuation destinations, he said, “but we haven’t checked yet on whether they’ve actually done that.”

Last Year’s Simulation

Last year, Lee said, the school staged a mock quake disaster that included simulations of injured and dead students and teachers trapped in the wreckage.

This year, Lee said, she felt the children should be prepared to evacuate and school administrators should learn how long it would take.

In Wednesday’s rehearsal, it took 15 to 20 minutes. The students walked a loop that brought them back to the school 20 minutes later, keeping precisely to Lee’s schedule.

Shepherded by city police and school district police cars, the students and teachers walked a half mile to White Oak Avenue and Bullock Street. There, teachers pointed out to each group that, after a real earthquake, they should turn north on White Oak, cross the Los Angeles River channel and assemble on the vacant land at White Oak and Victory Boulevard in the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area. They would be safe across the river channel, they were told.

The children did not walk the entire distance, Lee said, because she did not want to send them through the heavier traffic on White Oak.

The children took the exercise seriously. “This is really important because people could get hurt if they don’t listen,” said Courtney Shelley, 9, of Encino.

But they did not lose sight of other benefits. “It’s fun to walk around,” said Brian Jones, 8, of Encino. Asked if it was more fun than going to class, he grinned and said, “Yup.”