L.A. Disaster Officials Gather to Build on the Past

Los Angeles disaster response officials are a battle-scarred bunch. This decade, they have faced the worst riots in modern American history, a slew of wildfires and mudslides and the largest, costliest natural disaster of all, the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

So when 130 of those officials gathered for their annual conference this week along the piney shores of Lake Arrowhead, they brought plenty of experience.

There was Bernard C. Parks, who was a street cop during the 1965 Watts riots and who ran the emergency operations center in the early hours after the 1994 earthquake; he now serves as the city’s police chief. There was William R. Bamattre, a Fire Department battalion chief during the 1992 riots and now chief engineer of that department. And there was Mayor Richard Riordan, a private citizen during the riots and a restless problem-solver during the earthquake--when he bypassed state and local rules to speed relief.

Those three were joined by dozens of high-ranking city officials charged with preparing the city for its next disaster. Their mission: to draft a five-year plan to keep residents from harm. Broken into working groups and brought back together for presentations, they produced a host of suggestions, from streamlining communications to improving technology to capitalizing on the subtle lessons that only a disaster-weary city would know.

“We’re better prepared,” Chief Parks said at the meeting’s conclusion. “I think we’re in good shape.”

Among the lessons of the past:

* In 1994, rescue workers discovered that some people were reluctant to go to city shelters because the shelters did not allow pets. The solution: Install kennels alongside shelters.

* In both the earthquake and 1992 riots, the Department of Water and Power was forced to manage electrical systems without knowing precisely which areas were hit hardest. The solution: Include the DWP in the city’s developing computer systems so that power officials can assess damage and try to limit blackouts.

* The traditional focus of disaster relief on police and fire operations has obscured the potentially important contributions of smaller city departments. The Department of Aging, for instance, has extensive knowledge of the area’s older people, many of whom are fragile enough to be put in grave danger by any disaster. The solution: Include those department officials in the city’s emergency response and use them to try to target relief efforts to residents who may be in the most peril.

Based on what they learned this week, conference participants said they hope to expand the city’s emergency computer systems to include information on the elderly so rescue workers can better serve them in the wake of a disaster.

The conference is normally off limits to the media and public, but this year, Riordan allowed a reporter to attend the final session. In it, the city’s top officials and their most trusted aides focused on disasters both natural and human-made. Although earthquakes remain the city’s most feared natural peril, increasingly ominous is the threat of terrorism, whether at Los Angeles International Airport or elsewhere.

This year, however, the most topical of the potential calamities was El Nino.

On that front, the conference participants got a jolting but welcome presentation from a National Weather Service representative, who countered forecasts of as much as 600% of the city’s normal annual rainfall by predicting 50% to 100% above normal, making it a wet year but not necessarily a dangerous one.

On the proactive front, technological improvements--some already available, some being developed--were highlighted as possible solutions to many of the city’s disaster-preparedness shortcomings.

Riordan agreed that new equipment will help disaster relief, but he stressed, as he often does, the need for strong systems of authority and accountability.

* O.C. RACES RAINS

County and Caltrans rush to ready freeways and flood channels for the next storm. B1