Neighbors Form Quake Mutual Aid Network

An earthquake registering 8.0 on the Richter scale strikes Southern California, leaving thousands of dead and scores of buildings in rubble.

In Orange County alone, more than 2,000 are killed and 70,000 injured. Several freeway overpasses are collapsed, utilities are disrupted and communication and emergency networks are damaged.

That’s the scenario presented in a report released earlier this year by the Orange County Emergency Management Council. In anticipation of that scenario or a similar disaster, residents of Bryce Place and Rushmore Lane in Santa Ana are banding together to help each other.

“We’ve just taken the neighborhood watch concept” and reshaped it for a disaster situation, said Larry Alpert, whose idea it is and who is organizing the residents.

The premise behind Alpert’s Neighborhood Earthquake Watch, probably the first of its kind in Southern California, according to a county disaster official, is that neighbors probably would have to rely on each other for several days before emergency help reached them.

At a meeting this month, 25 families in the unincorporated area near the Tustin border began setting up the program’s framework. Neighbors gave directions about their water lines, gas mains and fuse boxes so next-door neighbors could turn off utilities if families are away.

If the Big One hit, neighbors would attend to their own homes and then assist the rest of the neighborhood with medical aid and removing debris.

They are preparing for a disaster as if they were an isolated community with no communication, even with the nearest town, said Sharon Frank, Santa Ana emergency management coordinator.

“The odds are that it will happen during our lifetimes or during our children’s lifetimes,” Frank told the families, referring to predictions of an 8.0 quake or worse. Geologists have estimated there is a 50-50 chance of such an earthquake in California before the year 2000.

Studies foresee as many as 100 disaster victims for every emergency worker, Frank said. Faced with that outlook, Californians should expect to be on their own for at least 72 hours, she said.

Paul Hess, manager of the Orange County Fire Department Emergency Management Division, said several Neighborhood Watch groups have received basic earthquake training. But Alpert’s plan, he said, is “the first time I have heard of it being just for earthquake preparation . . . and it’s good.”

Since the recent quakes centered near Palm Springs and Oceanside, Hess said, his office has received four or five times more requests for written information and presentations on earthquake safety.

In Northern California, a few towns and cities have organized groups like Alpert’s on a larger scale, sometimes with the city’s support or even grants from the state, said Jim Brady of the Bay Area Regional Earthquake Preparedness Project. But Michael Guerin, an official with the state Office of Emergency Services, said he has never heard of a group like that in Southern California.