Businesses Urged to Improve Disaster Plans : Emergencies: Citing concern over a big California earthquake, the Red Cross wants companies to review their preparedness.

Drawing on real-life disaster stories, American Red Cross officials on Tuesday urged about 100 Ventura County business leaders to improve their emergency preparedness plans.

In a short but hard-hitting lineup, speakers touched on the devastation of Hurricane Iniki in Hawaii, Hurricane Andrew in Florida and numerous earthquakes in California, which geologists believe are a prelude to the Big One.

“Disasters will indeed take place,” said Brian Bolton, executive director of the county’s Red Cross chapter. “Let’s get prepared individually and corporately.”

Bolton’s message was underscored by James J. Mori, a U. S. Geological Survey seismologist, who reiterated that Ventura County is poised for a major earthquake. A portion of the Oxnard Plain moves an inch or two every year toward San Francisco, building up underground tension that eventually will be released in a major shaker, he said.

Although the county does not sit on the San Andreas Fault, Mori said the county is home to five small but active faults that could erupt in a quake registering 6 or 7 on the Richter scale.

“It’s certainly a hazard you should think about,” Mori told the business leaders in the exclusive Tower Club, a restaurant in the county’s tallest building.

A serious quake centered on the San Andreas Fault might not cause major damage, but it could result in two to four minutes of shaking in Ventura County, he said.

“If you’re sitting here, it’s probably going to feel like a lifetime,” Mori told the luncheon crowd in the Tower Club atop the Union Bank Building in Oxnard. Employees have reported that the 21-floor structure and its chandeliers swayed during an earthquake as far away as one occurring earlier this year in Desert Hot Springs east of Los Angeles.

Bolton cautioned that companies need to encourage families and individuals to plan, focusing on being self-sufficient for 72 hours. Without preparation, he said, people might find themselves trapped, wondering, “Where’s the cavalry?”

He handed out checklists for earthquake and disaster survival that detail what to do before, during and after a crisis. Two of the preliminary steps are to enroll in first aid and cardiopulmonary resuscitation courses.

Wendy Haddock, assistant director of the county’s office of emergency services, said her office is there to help businesses and others prepare for disasters. “Emergency preparedness is a form of insurance,” Haddock said. “The payoff is only received after the emergency strikes.”

Marti Schmidt, an area manager for GTE, said her colleagues were fortunate that the company had an emergency plan in its Hawaiian offices when Hurricane Iniki hit in September. GTE’s plan did not resolve all the problems, she said, but it helped.

The GTE plan, Schmidt said, addresses ways to deal with the aftermath of aircraft accidents, chemical spills, civil disturbances, national emergencies and the sudden death of a top-level GTE executive, all of which can affect the way the company operates.

Defino Lopez-Rojaz, emergency response coordinator for the 650-employee Procter & Gamble plant in Oxnard, said the briefing luncheon persuaded him that his disaster plan needs more attention.

The current plan, he said, might not be comprehensive enough to deal with all types of emergencies because plant officials worry primarily about fires.

“It will probably cause us to go back and think,” Lopez-Rojaz said.

FYI

For more information on emergency preparedness planning, call the Ventura County chapter of the American Red Cross at 643-9928 or the Ventura County Office of Emergency Services at 654-2551.