THE BIG ONE : Putting O.C.’s Pieces Back Together After the Sure Super Shake

Two generations have passed since the last major eruption on the Newport-Inglewood Fault--the 1933 Long Beach Earthquake centered in Huntington Beach. But that 6.3 - magnitude quake, which killed 120 people and caused $40 million in damage, occurred when Orange County was a sparsely developed agricultural region.

Today, the county has 2.1 million residents and is a thriving commercial and industrial center. Disaster specialists warn that a major earthquake would be catastrophic.

Christine Boyd, manager of the county’s disaster planning wing, talked last week about the impact of such a quake, whether county government is prepared and how people can ready themselves to survive. The interview was conducted by Times staff writer Steven R. Churm.

Q: What sort of impact would a 7.3-magnitude earthquake on the Newport-Inglewood Fault have on Orange County?

A: It would be more severe to Orange County in terms of damage than would an 8.0 quake on the San Andreas Fault because one of the major criteria determining how badly an earthquake is going to affect you is how near you are to the epicenter, and we sit right on top of it. There won’t be anybody in the county who won’t be affected. A lot of people will be homeless. A lot of businesses will cease to operate for a long period. The road systems are going to be impacted. The sewage system will not be operational. We will lose major water lines, oil lines. We will see fires, and the secondary effect of fires in chemical facilities will be hazardous-materials clouds. And the response capability of the fire, police and the general government and medical services that people are used to relying on simply will not be there for a long period of time, maybe several days. We may see the need to move many, many casualties outside of the area for treatment. And even the logistics of determining where people are going to go and how we’re going to track the transport of those people is going to be very difficult and very stressful to the people who stay behind.

Q: How prepared is the county to respond to a calamity of this magnitude?

A: You really cannot be prepared for the level of catastrophe that we’re talking about here. We can only take steps, and it’s always going to be relative. For example, Caltrans tells us they’ve looked at all the freeway overpasses, and I know we’re in better shape now than we were, say, in ‘71, when the Sylmar quake hit. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have a long way to go. In terms of county government, we had about a year and a half ago our biggest-ever county disaster group, which was a drill for a major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. And we pulled in hundreds of people to work on that. But when you realize that was the biggest such exercise that we’ve ever had, and it was only for two days’ time, you realize we have a ways to go.

Q: What did you learn from that drill?

A: That we need to work with the other agencies that will be involved in disaster response on a more regular basis. For example, the utility companies. We’re not used to working with them in an emergency situation very often. We need to improve those relationships. Another thing we recognized during the drill is that in order to function as a county government, we to be able to live in our workplace for a few days. We have to have emergency food and water and other supplies. What we’ve done here in the county is to fund a program that we’re currently implementing to supply every workplace in county government with food, water, emergency supplies, sanitary equipment, gloves, flashlights and batteries. And in fact, this month we’re distributing the first batches of this equipment to the first responding agencies, such as fire and sheriff. We think this is a step in the right direction, but it’s only one small step.

Q: So those packages of goods and equipment would be stored in all county offices?

A: Yes, in all the workplaces around the county. But it’s not enough for county government to do that. We’re trying to get that word out to all businesses and to everyone at home. At least if their homes are prepared, and they know what plans are in place for their children at school, they will be better able to deal with such a disaster. But getting that word out is very difficult because it’s hard to make people believe it anymore.

Q: Are people taking the earthquake threat seriously?

A: I think people are definitely aware of it. A couple of years ago you may recall the storm around the Nostradamus so-called prediction of the earthquake, and people were really scared. I think folks are aware of what’s going on. But I think the difference is between being aware and actually putting into place those safeguards people know they should take. The public probably does not know, for example, what their schools are doing or not doing for their children. They probably have not thought through if an earthquake happens while I’m separated from my child and my child is at school.

Q: What is the county doing to make people more aware?

A: The county is a member of a countywide organization called OCCEMO--the Orange County Cities Emergency Management Organization. The first thing we’re trying to do is to coordinate all the cities so that we’re all moving in the same direction. We all are working on public education information programs. We have a lot more to do in that area. I would like to see us moving in the direction of working with all the neighborhood watch programs, but we’re not there yet.

Q: What will the county’s response be in the first few minutes or hours after a major quake? How does the county gear up to respond?

A: When the emergency first hits, the county department heads and leaders, including the Board of Supervisors and some of the support agencies that we work with, like California Highway Patrol, all converge on one spot at the Civic Center (in Santa Ana) called the Emergency Operation Center. And it is out of that facility that county government will operate, where major decisions about how to prioritize the needs will be addressed.

Q: How crucial are those first couple of hours after such a disaster?

A: In terms of lifesaving, that is the critical time. They call it the golden hour, the first hour after a major injury has occurred. You can pretty much assume that when there are a lot of collapsed buildings and falling debris, if you don’t treat those injuries within the first hour or so, you’re going to lose lives. Today, for medical emergencies there are probably 10 service providers who will respond to one critically injured person at the scene, whereas in a major quake scenario, it would be more like 1,000 injured persons to one service provider. The question is how much is the public willing to spend on dedicating additional resources to meeting the needs of a major disaster that may or may not happen? Expense eventually does become a factor in this, and the public may--when they become more aware of how little we can do right now--decide it is something that we should be spending more money on, like they do in Japan.

Q: What does Japan do?

A: We spend a fraction of our government dollars--public dollars, tax dollars--on emergency preparedness in this country, as compared to Japan, the Soviet Union, Switzerland, France, all of those places. In the Soviet Union, they have what’s called civil defense when they’re preparing for war, whereas in Japan what they’re preparing for is earthquakes. And they spend a lot more money, and they take it very seriously.

Q: How would you go about asking the public whether they want to spend more? Is that something that’s ever been contemplated in this county?

A: Yes. A plan was put together in 1985-86 called the SCEPP plan--Southern California Emergency Preparedness Project. This is an earthquake plan designed specifically for Orange County. It would cost in the first 10 years--this was back in ‘85-86 dollars--about $12 million to put this plan in place for Orange County government. It would go a long way toward making government more prepared to respond. But since that time, we’ve been able to allocate only a few hundred thousand dollars toward implementing that plan. And over that period of time we should have spent millions, if we were actually going to implement the requirements of the plan. The problem is when the budget hearings are going on and the Board of Supervisors is having to look at funding a new jail or shelters for the homeless or salary increases to employees, all critical issues, it is difficult to set aside money for earthquake preparedness. How willing is the board going to be to look at something that they don’t feel they have to deal with right now? They don’t see an earthquake coming two days down the road, and yet it may. And so I don’t really know how you develop that as a pressing issue. I wish I knew.

Q: That sounds like the old problem of dealing with an immediate crisis vs. something that may may not happen.

A: Right. I mean you sound like Chicken Little when you’re talking about a major catastrophe versus a critical jail situation and or finding shelter for people sleeping in the streets. It’s a tough call.

Q: Where would the county draw volunteers to assist during a disaster, to go into the hardest-hit areas and dig out or clear roads or try to comfort people? Would county employees be used?

A: At first that’s probably what we’d try to do. We’re empowered to go out and tap people on the back and say, “You, you’re a disaster service worker, come and join us.” I think what we’ll really see, though, is examples of people in their own neighborhoods and workplaces forming teams to help each other out. That spirit of helping one another becomes very prevalent in disasters.

Q: And it is true that in the event of a major quake that it may be hours or even days before some kind of official aid reaches those hard-hit areas?

A: The initial response will start happening immediately, but it will not be palpable for probably days. And it will be many, many months before any sort of normalcy returns to some I think the medical emergencies are something that people are not used to dealing with. Anybody that can be encouraged to learn about first aid and to learn CPR should. For an emergency today, you get a response within five minutes from the paramedics. But during a major quake it may be three, four, five days or longer. That’s sobering. And unless the public is willing let’s say to quadruple or hire 10 times the number of paramedics we have now--and pay for that--what are the alternatives? That’s what we’re trying to work on. And home preparedness is the best solution we’ve been able to come up with so far, given the funding.

Q: What is your best guess about how life will be disrupted. Are we talking about weeks? Are we talking about months?

A: Well, let’s just ask this one question: How many business databases will be destroyed when the power shuts off for a number of days? If your complete database was destroyed, how long would it take to restore it. Think about it. And when one considers that a lot of the key financial institutions for the whole world are here in Southern California, the issue becomes even bigger. Some of those database losses could have a permanent effect. We have no way of predicting that will happen, but it is a possibility. The scenarios about impacts are endless.

Q: Are you at all optimistic about our ability to survive The Big One?

A: Compared to five years ago, I feel a lot better because now, as a person involved in planning, I understand there are many, many things that we as individuals can do. We’re not there yet, and for right now my best advice is for everybody to get prepared at home and in their office and at their schools. I used to think, “Well, sure we’re in earthquake country, this is going to be a horrible thing. I can’t do anything about it.” But the fact is, you can’t do anything about the quake, but you can do a lot about your response to the quake. I think what I found personally is that it’s made me think more about my family and how they’re preparing, what my husband and child will be doing and where they’re likely to be. We’ve done a couple of things as a result. We have emergency supplies in both our cars now, and our home is prepared. And I have supplies at the workplace too. So when you put yourself in that situation and really start thinking through it, it helps.