Southland’s Preparedness Is Tested by Mock Quake

A green chopper landed on the tarmac at Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center and its injured passengers were carried quickly to waiting ambulances.

The ambulances, boxy trucks with camouflage paint and red crosses in large white squares, carried victims of a massive Southern California earthquake from the airfield to a mobile field hospital nearby.

Three of the wounded would be flown to Fresno for treatment, after National Guard medical teams stabilized them. The fourth, a young woman, would die from her head injuries.

But a few minutes later, the woman was lounging in the inflatable hospital room, while the nurses and corpsmen stretched nearby.

For members of 175th Medical Brigade, part-time soldiers in the California National Guard, Friday’s simulation of a major earthquake was drawing to an end.

The volunteer victims, except for the day’s only “fatality,” were heading back across the airfield to a C-130 transport that would carry them to Fresno, outside the range of damage of the imaginary temblor.

‘Damage Reports’ Compared

On the other side of the disaster headquarters compound, government and military officials gathered around a makeshift conference table to compare their reports of damage from the quake, set on the southern San Andreas fault and pegged at 8.3 on the Richter scale.

In such a major, regionwide disaster, “resources from all levels of government--local, state and federal--as well as the private sector, must be brought to bear,” said Richard A. Andrews, assistant director of the state Office of Emergency Services.

“We’re just focusing on the gathering of information and the analysis of the information,” he said of Friday’s exercise. “We think that’s going to be the major problem.”

In a 1971 earthquake--a 6.5 on the Richter scale--that rocked the San Fernando Valley, it took authorities more than four hours to confirm that Olive View Medical Center in Sylmar had collapsed, Andrews said.

Information Is Needed

But that’s the kind of information officials need to direct rescue efforts, to deploy emergency equipment and personnel, and to route victims to medical care and evacuees to shelters.

Gov. George Deukmejian, who attended the exercise, declared that California is better prepared than ever for a catastrophe but said that when it comes to making old buildings safe, cities will have to fend for themselves.

The governor defended his veto last year of a bill that would have required communities to inventory and upgrade unsafe buildings, saying “that’s primarily a local government responsibility.”

Citing his own city of Long Beach, where a disastrous earthquake prompted officials to draft strict building codes, Deukmejian added, “I would certainly expect that the people (local government) represents would certainly want to insist . . . that (buildings) are brought up to earthquake standards.”

Cities’ Responsibility

The state’s role, he said, is in assuring quick response to disasters, but preparing for a quake, he said, “is a responsibility of city councils and the leadership of those communities.”

Los Angeles in 1981 adopted what is considered a model ordinance that sets a timetable for owners of unsafe buildings to upgrade their structures.

A proposal similar to the one vetoed by Deukmejian is once again being considered by state lawmakers. However, because of the governor’s philosophical opposition to state-mandated local programs, it is much milder than its predecessor and seismic safety experts say it would be more difficult to enforce.

“Scientists tell us we can expect a similar quake in California in the next decade,” Deukmejian said, adding, however, that California is much better prepared now because of lessons learned from the recent Mexico City earthquake and other disasters.

Friday’s simulation, part of Earthquake Preparedness Week, was designed to test the ability of agencies and government to communicate, gather information and track patients as they moved from evacuation centers to field hospitals to distant medical facilities.

As reports of derailed trains, collapsed freeway interchanges and crumbling buildings flowed into the command center, officials began to make the difficult decisions about where to allocate their limited resources.

‘Good Response Plan’

“That facility has a pretty good earthquake response plan,” a Los Angeles County official said, responding to a report that an aerospace manufacturing company had suffered extensive damage. “The only way you’re going to get in there is by air,” he said, adding that other areas probably needed the air support first.

“We can count on them being pretty resourceful,” he said.

The simulation included medical and evacuation exercises at the Santa Fe Dam Recreation Area in Azusa, at Camarillo Airport in Ventura County and later in the day at the Fresno Air Terminal and seven Fresno-area hospitals.

Victims, brought by chopper to Los Alamitos from evacuation centers at the first two sites, were given mock wounds--swollen, purple limbs and bloody scrapes--for the simulation. Some of the wounds were so realistic that reporters were prompted to ask if there really had been an accident during the exercises.

The communications phase of the simulation included the command center at Los Alamitos, the Los Angeles and San Bernardino county sheriffs’ departments, and a National Guard C-130 transport plane, circling above the seven-county disaster area, coordinating air traffic and relaying radio communications.