Cities Strive to Be Ready for the Big One : Disaster: News that the area could suffer a major earthquake has officials stressing preparedness at the municipal and individual levels.

This week’s news that scientists believe the San Gabriel Valley could face a major earthquake should be taken neither lightly nor in panic, regional officials say, but simply as a call-to-arms for disaster preparedness.

“That’s the only answer to earthquakes: Be prepared,” said Sierra Madre Police Chief I. E. (Bill) Betts, who is overseeing the recovery program in his small town, which was the focal point of the 5.8-magnitude quake that on June 28 caused an estimated $44 million in damages in the region.

Local officials as well as quake experts, however, emphasized there was no prediction of an imminent temblor and that the full implications of the findings by scientists from Caltech in Pasadena and the U.S. Geological Survey aren’t known.

The warnings about an impending quake were issued Tuesday in San Francisco by two teams of seismologists, who reported that during the last four years a pattern of quakes from Whittier Narrows and Montebello to Upland and Pasadena indicate the Sierra Madre Fault may be due for a jolt greater than magnitude 7. The fault cuts across the San Gabriel Mountains, passing under or near many foothill communities, in a line roughly from Sylmar to Upland.

In response to the report, state and local officials sounded a theme of preparedness and many said they are doing what they can to instill readiness among the citizenry.

“The research . . . underscores the importance of the aggressive earthquake preparedness . . . programs under way throughout California,” said Richard Andrews, director of the state’s Office of Emergency Services.

Alhambra City Manager Kevin J. Murphy said: “We’re going to have a major earthquake. That’s the reality. It may be this decade, the next decade or it may be tomorrow. But we have to be ready.”

In his city, Murphy said, he wants to take the preparedness beyond the level of city departments’ simply being ready with a plan of action. Every citizen, he said, has a responsibility to know what to do and to have a disaster supply cache.

Next year, he said, the Police Department’s “Neighborhood Watch” crime prevention program will train residents at the block-by-block level, setting up designated residents as responsible, for example, for emergency water or food or equipment for their streets.

The public is most receptive to talk of preparedness immediately after an earthquake or after such scientific news of an impending danger, said Pasadena Fire Chief Kaya Pekerol, who is the city’s assistant director of disaster preparedness.

“Nobody really wants to think about it,” he said. “But it’s going to happen. We just keep our fingers crossed that it’s not going to be the Big One.”

The key to preparedness, Pekerol said, is to adopt the attitude that sailors must have. “When you decide you’re going to learn to sail, you need to learn survive at sea--in case you sink.”

But, San Dimas City Manager Robert L. Poff said, “It’s pretty hard to convince people of the need for that preparation.”

The scientific findings, said Police Lt. Jim Dillon, deputy director of West Covina’s Office of Emergency Services, “wasn’t news to us. We’d been hearing those suspicions for a couple of years. And we’ve been preparing for that eventuality.”

West Covina, he said, regularly sends its management-level employees to a state earthquake preparedness training center in San Luis Obispo. On Monday, he said, 45 local amateur radio operators held a session to simulate how they might assist with communications during an earthquake.

In Glendale, improved emergency response procedures tested this year have included the use of “packet radios,” a device that links a shortwave radio to a personal computer without the use of power or telephone service, said Gerald Shamburg, the city’s new emergency services coordinator.

On Wednesday, Diamond Bar received word it will get a $15,000 federal grant to educate the community about earthquake preparedness, Mayor Jay Kim said. The timing, he said, is perfect.

But many communities have not done enough, said Rep. David Dreier (R-La Verne). The lack of comprehensive local programs spurred him, he said, to introduce federal legislation to create a national earthquake insurance plan.

The legislation also would require local governments to enact earthquake safety standards as part of building codes. The difficulty, Dreier said, is in convincing others in Congress that “earthquakes are more than just a California problem.”