Lessons of ’94 Quake Suggest Change Needed

The Northridge earthquake caused the Federal Emergency Management Agency to change its ways, but homeowners still may not have been galvanized into taking sufficient safeguards against the next big shake, said participants in a conference Wednesday that examined the legacy of the 1994 quake.

The biggest lesson of the quake was, “I told you so,” said Lucile Jones, U.S. Geological Survey seismologist.

Much of the damage was to the contents of structures, which could have been avoided, Jones said.

“We could’ve reduced it hugely if everyone had gone over to the hardware store and picked up quake wax, Velcro straps to hold down your computer, ‘L’ brackets to attach your book cases to the wall and latches for kitchen cabinets to hold in your good china,” Jones said.

Simple structural reinforcements to homes and buildings could strengthen them against shaking, but not everybody makes them, nor are they required to, she said.

Although building codes today are stricter, many buildings were erected in the 1950s and ‘60s before the codes took effect, Jones said. Pointing to the Northridge Meadows Apartments complex that collapsed from the 6.7 earthquake, she remarked, “Any engineer in the world could’ve told you that that building’s going to fall down.”

The two-day conference began Wednesday, sponsored by the city and county of Los Angeles, along with a network of 160 community-based organizations and other agencies.

FEMA now operates differently because of the quake, said Michael Armstrong, the agency’s associate director for mitigation.

Accepting applications for aid at disaster centers angered some people kept waiting as long as four hours in long lines, Armstrong recalled, so the agency began taking applications by phone, now a standard procedure.

Similarly, applications were being processed too slowly, so the agency created a quicker payment process that uses disaster data and maps to assess which ZIP Codes were hardest hit. Checks for three-months’ rental assistance are automatically issued to applicants from those areas.

FEMA did not anticipate the languages needed, Armstrong admitted. It was equipped to handle Spanish-speaking victims, but not the 30 other languages spoken by quake victims in Los Angeles. FEMA had to bring in interpreters from the Department of Defense and other agencies to go into areas identified by census data as having pockets of non-English-speakers. The agency has since been building up a network of multilingual on-call reservists who can respond to emergencies, Armstrong said.

FEMA has spent $6 billion to date on assistance for the Northridge disaster and accepted 670,000 applications for federal assistance, he said.

Armstrong, like Jones and organizers of the conference, urged people to do more “disaster immunization” to prepare their homes.

“We must inoculate our high-hazard communities in the likelihood of future disaster events,” he said, noting some banks offer low-interest loans to invest in pre-disaster preparation.