HUNTINGTON BEACH : Emergency Center Practices Quake Drill

Officials activated the emergency operations center in the basement of City Hall on Tuesday in a drill designed to tune up their response to major disasters and to qualify for federal funding.

About 75 city employees took part in the noontime exercise to grapple with an imaginary 7.9-magnitude earthquake on the San Andreas Fault.

During the drill, emergency personnel, making imaginary surveys through the city, reported that a roof at Ethel B. Dwyer Middle School had fallen on about 20 students, that the San Diego Freeway overpass at Beach Boulevard and Edinger Avenue had collapsed and that a 14-story office building at Huntington Center had toppled.

Officials also reported a hazardous waste spill accompanied by an ominous red cloud at McDonnell Douglas, a 500,000-gallon sewer spill near Edison High School, a fire at Humana Hospital-Huntington Beach, looting in the streets of Huntington Harbour and a number of other emergencies.

Though the incidents appeared to be far-fetched, such disasters have occurred in other California cities after earthquakes, said Fire Battalion Chief Chuck Reynolds, who doubles as the city’s emergency services manager.

Reynolds said there’s a real chance that the events can happen in Orange County if there’s a major earthquake. In fact, Dwyer School, which was reported damaged in the exercise, really did collapse in the 1933 earthquake, he said.

Reynolds said the thrust of the exercise, held during national Earthquake Preparedness Month, is to prepare top officials to organize individual disasters into priorities and to respond with personnel and equipment in a way to save the most lives.

Reynolds said he was pleased with the overall performance during the exercise, which was confined to the emergency operations center.

Glorria Morrison, the city’s emergency services coordinator, said scientists late last year upgraded predictions for Southern California to a 47% chance of an earthquake of a magnitude greater than 7 on the southern San Andreas Fault in five years.

Tuesday’s exercise also was conducted in order for the city to qualify for funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA provided about $33,000 for salaries of emergency personnel last year, Morrison said.

Huntington Beach also stands to receive about $147,000 from FEMA for reimbursement of emergency expenses incurred in flooding earlier this year, she said.