Making Sure State Is Ready in Case Disaster Strikes

As California’s top disaster official, Henry Renteria has been working day and night since Hurricane Katrina struck, orchestrating aid to the ravaged Gulf Coast.

But Renteria, who previously guided Oakland through a 1991 firestorm and the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, knows that California itself is disaster-prone -- and that its ability to cope with one will be tested again and again.

In an interview last week, the director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services discussed the biggest natural calamities looming over the state, the impact of budget cuts on its readiness and problems that still need to be addressed.

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Question: The response to Katrina has been marred by problems with rescues, emergency housing, evacuations and aid delivery. How can you assure Californians that the same thing won’t happen during a disaster here?

Answer: No one can guarantee anything, but I can say we have had large catastrophic events in California and ... I think we have learned that there are things that need to be in place.... Having said that, whenever a jurisdiction is hit by an event so catastrophic that they never had to deal with it before, you always have to deal with the unknown.... Is it overwhelming? Maybe.... But in this case we have learned some lessons ... from the Gulf Coast hurricane.... One is that evacuation is a very difficult thing to plan for in large metropolitan areas.

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Q: Does California have evacuation systems in place?

A: I think we have more of those systems in place than they had on the Gulf Coast. We do have rapid transit systems that are part of our emergency planning, but obviously where you have something like an earthquake, where you do not have the warning, you may not be able to use that.

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Q: How much does California depend on the federal government in responding to disasters, and does the hurricane response raise concerns?

A: We are very resource-rich and also we have a very sophisticated and long-tested mutual aid system.... We learned lessons from events dating back to the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. So we have resources in place that we depend on to arrive quickly on the scene because they are from our own neighbors -- cities and counties.... We would not depend on the Federal Emergency Management Agency to do that for us.... We’ve always known it will take time for them to get here.

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Q: How many days?

A: We’ve always used the rule of thumb, 72 hours. In some cases they’ve been here quicker, other cases they’ve taken longer.... The point is that when a disaster strikes, if you know you’re going to need resources, then you need for ask for them quickly.

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Q: Are you concerned that, with a fourth of California’s 20,000 National Guard troops deployed to Iraq and elsewhere, adequate numbers might not be available to help with law enforcement?

A: We are always concerned if we do not have resources available here and they’re being deployed somewhere else, because we are disaster-prone. But in this case we had the head of the California National Guard do a very good job as to what could be deployed without compromising any of our abilities here.

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Q: Emergency Services has hundreds of fewer staff members than it did a decade ago -- about 500 now versus more than 900 in 1996-97. What impact does reduced staffing have on OES?

A: It impacts us more in the recovery phrase than in the response phase, because OES is not a first responder. Our local government is where the response happens. They depend on us to identify the state resources that could be utilized at the local level. Most of the staff we lost was working in the recovery phase, to help local jurisdictions in doing the paperwork and identifying the proper processes to get reimbursement from the federal government.

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Q: Is the agency hurting for staff, and if you had $100 million more, what would you spend it on?

A: That question is the same being asked of all state agencies.... But if I had more resources, I would provide more help to the locals for planning, preparedness assistance, training, exercises and things of that nature.

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Q: What are the biggest threats of natural disaster for Californians in terms of probability, destructiveness and potential loss of life?

A: Right now I would have to say the earthquake is always the biggest one, especially the large earthquake, because you never know when they are going to happen and it is hard to prepare for them. But I think we have made great strides in our building codes and response plans that would minimize the loss of life from earthquakes and reduce the property damage. I would say the other big threat is our fire threat, especially with the large urban sprawl that had gone into the forest.

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Q: Some critics have said incorporating FEMA into the Department of Homeland Security weakened the federal government’s ability to help states with natural disasters by focusing so much on terrorism. What impact, if any, has the threat of terrorism had on the state’s emergency preparedness for natural disasters?

A: I think we are very fortunate in that Gov. Schwarzenegger has recognized from Day One the need to have separate offices of emergency services and homeland security. We work together, train together and share information. We recognize that we each have a role to play.... My office has a lot of the operational responsibilities for the consequences of an event ... and they have the intelligence-gathering and the preventative part for terrorism.

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Q: Experts say it is only a matter of time before the Big One hits, but not all structures are designed to withstand a quake of magnitude 8. Is California adequately prepared to respond to widespread damage during work and school hours?

A: Preparedness is a work in progress always. We may have passed a law 20 years ago to strengthen certain types of buildings, and now it is 20 years later and codes have changed and we still have a building. You can’t just tear them all down and build new ones, but you can retrofit and change the way you build new buildings.... So in some cases, we get stronger and in others weaker, and it is our job to identify where our vulnerabilities are.

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Q: The 1994 Northridge quake, which killed 57 and injured thousands, damaged two dozen hospitals. The Legislature set a 2008 deadline for hospitals to ensure that their buildings would not collapse in a major quake. But lawmakers this year moved to grant a 12-year extension for many of them. Are hospitals one of the weak areas?

A: That is one of the areas that needs attention.... I don’t know if I would call it a weak area because we are aware of it, and our Health Department is on top of it and the governor has made statements about how he wants to see that area strengthened. The fact that we have acknowledged it is a big plus.

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Q: There were previous warnings about the levees in Louisiana, and California has a network around Sacramento. Are there any disasters waiting to happen?

A: The levee system is a potentially big issue to people who live around the levees. The earthquakes are potentially big to people who live near the earthquakes. You look across the state and everybody will tell you their vulnerability is worse than the other. But that is just the nature of living in California .... To me the whole state has areas where we’re doing really good or areas where we should be doing better.

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Q: Where would you like to see the state do better?

A: Because we have so many people moving into the state -- I think 500,000 a year -- one of our vulnerabilities is educating people who don’t know what hazards exist.

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Resources on the Web

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services offers a one-stop center for disaster resources, including:

* Ten tips to be emergency ready

* Business, industry preparedness

* Earthquakes

* Fires

* Terrorism

Go to www.oes.ca.govandinthesearchfieldnearthetoprighttype10tipsthenclickBe Prepared.