Ready to Roll : Maker of Earthquake Kits Is Packing 'Em In

By SUSAN CHRISTIAN

July 3, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SANTA ANA —

When a major earthquake jolted Southern Californians out of bed Sunday morning, the furthest topic from most people’s minds was their jobs.

But Kathy Rainey has trouble separating fault lines from her company’s product line: She owns Emergency Lifeline, a small company in Santa Ana that assembles and markets earthquake preparedness kits to businesses, schools and families.

So as soon as the house stopped quivering, she recalled, she turned to her husband and said, “It’s going to be a busy week.”

While sales for most retailers are seasonal, picking up during the Christmas holidays, boom periods at Emergency Lifeline are as unpredictable as the acts of nature that spark them.

“People always kid me, ‘Do you pray for earthquakes?’ ” said Rainey, 42, who founded the company in 1985. “Anyone in business is glad when sales are good. But if I could have my wish, it absolutely would be that California wouldn’t have earthquakes. I just see my business as my way of helping out.”

Sure enough, orders came pouring in Monday after the Yucca Valley and Big Bear shake-ups and continued running high throughout the week. Rainey estimated that sales have quadrupled since the quakes and, if they follow the pattern after previous temblors, will remain up by at least 20% for another six months.

Business had been a bit sluggish at Emergency Lifeline, in part because of the recession. “Our biggest challenge is the apathy that sets in when there hasn’t been an earthquake for a while,” Rainey said.

Things were so slow, in fact, that Rainey had let three of her four teen-age assembly workers go on vacation during the very week that the earthquake struck. She quickly rounded up temporary help to put kits together in the narrow, compact warehouse.

Nuvia Gutierrez, 17, had her hands full Wednesday afternoon stuffing family first-aid kits with rubber gloves, scissors, bandages and splints. She and three of her classmates at Century High School in Santa Ana have worked part-time for Rainey since they were 14 years old.

Yes, this is busy, Rainey said as her telephone rang nonstop in her utilitarian office. But it’s nothing like the days after the Santa Cruz quake in 1989. “We did a year’s worth of business in one month,” she said.

Although she would not give annual sales figures, Rainey said that her business has grown by leaps and bounds with each hardy shake. Sales were modest in 1985 and 1986, when Emergency Lifeline was getting off the then-steady ground. When the Whittier quake hit in 1987, revenue doubled. And the Northern California quake two years later kept the wheels turning.

Rainey attends trade shows and mails out catalogues to spread her company’s name. She says that 80% of her customers are corporate clients and schools, which order desk kits for individuals or larger packages for groups of 10. Her customers over the years have included First Interstate Bank, an Anaheim school district, Shell Oil and the El Toro Marine Base.

The $259 “corporate kit”--designed to support 10 people for 72 hours--includes water packets, dried food, a transistor radio, a flashlight and medical supplies. Rainey purchases the goods from a variety of manufacturers.

Even if she had the space, Rainey couldn’t stockpile enough kits to last through years of surprise temblors. “Everybody wants the products right now,” she said. “They don’t understand that we don’t sit around with an overload waiting for an earthquake to happen. The water and food have a shelf life of only five years.”

Rainey came up with the idea for her company after the devastating Mexico City earthquake in 1985. “I have a fear of earthquakes, and this seemed like a proactive way of dealing with it,” she said. She has a handful of competitors, most of them based in Los Angeles.

“This business is like selling insurance,” Rainey said. “You hope people won’t need what you have, but if they do, you’re here for them.”

Contents of a Kit

A emergency three-day survival kit for a family of four would include:

* Four food-bar packages. Each 3,600-calorie food bar provides three days of nutrition.

* First-aid kit

* First-aid guide

* Blankets

* Toothbrushes and paste

* Two alkaline batteries

* 50-hour candle

* Whistle

* Collapsible five-gallon water carrier