Earthquake Preparedness Ends at Home : Emergencies: The county, cities and school districts have made disaster plans. But officials say most residents are ill-prepared.

Only a year after an earthquake that devastated the San Francisco Bay area, Ventura County residents have grown complacent about the possibility of a similar disaster in their home county, emergency officials say.

But Karen Guidi, assistant director of the county’s Office of Emergency Services, said county government is prepared with its emergency plan of action and many of the cities are following suit.

Most large elementary school districts have emergency plans and supplies, officials say. Some private preschools have disaster plans as well.

However, Guidi said, the county’s residents, who will have to depend solely on themselves and their neighbors during the early hours or days after an earthquake, are ill prepared to react to the event that scientists say will strike Southern California in the next 50 years.

Residents have failed to prepare emergency water and food supplies, buy fire extinguishers for their houses, install brackets to hold china cabinets, bookcases and water heaters to the walls, and coordinate disaster plans with family members, Guidi said.

And few have studied emergency first aid techniques that will be needed to save lives or prevent further injury, she said.

“All you need is a leaking gas line and a spark to start a house fire,” she said. “Are you going to call 911 with an individual house fire when there are major emergencies in town and expect the fire department to come right away? It’s just not going to happen.”

In fact, a large earthquake could separate residents from emergency and utility services for up to three days, Guidi said.

Ventura County is in a far better geographical position than San Bernardino or Los Angeles counties, which some scientists say are subject to a 60% chance of a major earthquake along the San Andreas Fault by the year 2020.

“Earthquakes probably don’t occur as often in Ventura County as they do in the Los Angeles Basin just because Ventura seems to be farther away from the main fault zone,” said James Mori, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey.

The southern portion of the San Andreas skirts the northern point of Ventura County near Tejon Pass about 70 miles from the city of Ventura, fault maps show. But the city of San Francisco is 80 to 90 miles from the epicenter of the Oct. 17, 1989, Loma Prieta earthquake. That quake killed 43 people and injured more than 400 others in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and other Bay Area communities.

“So the part of the San Andreas near Ventura County could produce a 7.0 or 8.0 earthquake that could easily be felt even 150 miles away,” Mori said.

In addition, scientists say Ventura County’s hillsides and the ocean floor just off the coast are replete with active faults and fissures, including three to four major faults.

The Oak Ridge Fault, an east-west fault that cuts south of Fillmore and runs beneath Santa Paula before it fractures into smaller fissures, could cause a 7.5 earthquake, according to a study by Robert S. Yeats, a geologist at Oregon State University at Corvallis.

The San Cayetano Fault, the Big Pine Fault and the Red Mountain Fault are less well-studied, but could also produce major earthquakes, Yeats and scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey say.

The area’s faults are in constant seismic activity, producing almost imperceptible shakers below the magnitude of 3 on the Richter scale, said Geological Survey seismologist Lucile Jones. Two to three times a year, one of the faults produces a 3 or above, she said.

A 2.0 temblor was recorded two to three miles north of Ventura on Nov. 24, and a 3.2 earthquake occurred Nov. 17 six miles west of Castaic Lake, Jones said.

Damage could be severe in Ventura County after a large earthquake due to the sandy soil and unreinforced masonry buildings, scientists say.

The Santa Clara and Ventura river valleys as well as the Pierpont area in Ventura and Oxnard Shores and Mandalay Bay in Oxnard are all viewed as liquefaction zones subject to extreme shaking because of the soil type and the high underground water table, Mori said.

“The beach and sandy areas amplify seismic waves,” Mori said. “The water bubbles up to the surface and then everything sort of goes to mush.”

The cities of Ventura, Ojai, Fillmore, Santa Paula and Camarillo have brick buildings in their old downtown areas that were built before 1935 when the Field Act required steel reinforcements.

Ventura is preparing an environmental impact report to analyze the cost of reinforcing downtown buildings and estimate the comparative risks of not doing the work. The draft is due out in early 1991, Assistant City Manager Lauraine Brekke said.

Santa Paula passed an ordinance Nov. 19 that requests owners of 120 unreinforced masonry buildings to voluntarily bring their properties up to a minimum safety standard. But the city offers no funds or low-cost loans, said Stephen Stuart, building and safety director.

In Ojai, building owners and the city Redevelopment Agency spent $1.7 million to restore the downtown arcade, a Spanish-style overhang of clay tile built in 1917 along the storefront walkways. Another 13 structures have been reinforced, but 11 more buildings would become subject to a proposed ordinance requiring upgrades, Ojai City Manager Andrew Belknap said.

Fillmore has an estimated 70 buildings of unreinforced brick along the town’s Central Avenue. City officials evacuated a two-story brick hotel in Fillmore that housed farm workers and their families when the 1987 Whittier earthquake shook the county. The building has since been reinforced.

Camarillo has no funds to help owners upgrade their unreinforced buildings in the older retail area along Ventura Boulevard, city officials said.

Many of the county’s 10 cities have detailed disaster plans, but the county’s Office of Emergency Services is designated as emergency response team coordinator.

A room in the basement of the county’s Administration Building in Ventura will become the communications center for the county in the event of a major quake. Emergency generators and radios are in place to keep the operations command post in connection with the rest of the county. The county also has stored 14-day food and water supplies for 100 people.

Guidi’s office, under the supervision of Sheriff John Gillespie, helps employers develop emergency plans and remove hazards from the workplace. The Office of Emergency Services also sends a coordinator out to school districts to help develop emergency plans.

Bret Breton, safety coordinator for the Self Funding Authority that administers a self-funded insurance program for the county’s 22 school districts, said Moorpark Unified School District, with 5,200 students, is among the best prepared in the county. The district began preparing after the 1983 Coalinga earthquake, which jolted the southwest San Joaquin Valley town and ruined brick buildings downtown.

Vishna Herrity, principal of Moorpark’s Flory School, said the school is ready at every level, including individual classrooms where designated students will take charge if the teacher is injured.

Some private schools, including the Great Pacific Child Development Center in Ventura, require that parents prepare individual earthquake kits for their children. The school provides flashlights and major supplies, but each student must bring a kit that includes snacks, a picture of the student with parents and a letter from the parents to help reassure small children in the event of a prolonged separation.

But individual residents who could be cut off from emergency services for up to three days are Guidi’s greatest worry.

She recommends that they display floor plans at home, showing family members and visitors the locations of exits, fuse boxes, water lines, water heaters and gas meters.

“The majority of the people still have not taken the necessary precautions,” she said. “The key to survival is self-sufficiency.”