Practical Lessons from the Loma Prieta Earthquake (1994) / Chapter Skim
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4. Emergency Preparedness and Response
4. Emergency Preparedness and Response
Pages 105-134
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From page 105... ...
history, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake was the largest earthquake to strike California since 1952 and the most devastating to hit the San Francisco Bay area since 1906. From the earliest hours following impact, as initial reconnaissance efforts got under way, it was evident that the Loma Prieta earthquake would become an important case study for the various disciplines concerned with earthquake hazard reduction.
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From page 106... ...
Thus, when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck, a large number of investigators were able to go into the field almost immediately to begin collecting data, and ultimately dozens of studies were undertaken on a wide range of topics. The Natural Hazards Research and Applications Information Center at the University of Colorado, which provides "quick response" grants mainly to social science investigators, was an important source of funding for initial reconnaissance studies on emergency preparedness and response following the earthquake.
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From page 107... ...
Among the most important of these are studies on the initial post-impact actions of community residents, earthquake-related injuries, emergency sheltering behavior, and the public response to aftershock warnings. Actions During the Shaking Period Using a survey approach like the one they employed after the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, Linda Bourque, James Goltz, and their associates conducted a telephone survey with a random sample of 656 respondents in the five counties most seriously affected by the Loma Prieta earthquake.
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From page 108... ...
Archea observes that while the majority of those interviewed actively tried to protect themselves, "they also unwittingly took some risks to do so, and many were still at risk 10 or 12 seconds later when the shaking stopped." Evidence from the Loma Prieta earthquake suggests that Bay Area residents were aware of what to do when an earthquake strikes and that even during the strong shaking period they were capable of making choices and taking actions to decrease their vulnerability. Public education programs are paying off.
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From page 109... ...
However, they are consistent with injury rates these same investigators found following the Whittier Narrows earthquake. ~ In the Whittier Narrows event, the injury rate was 26 per 1,000 residents in the area of severest earthquake shaking; in the Loma Prieta earthquake, the rate was 32.8 per 1,000 in the hardest-hit area of Santa Cruz County (Bourque et al., 1993b)
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From page 110... ...
However, as noted earlier, the findings from studies on overall numbers and rates of injuries resulting from the Loma Prieta earthquake are not consistent. It is unclear why one survey (Bourque et al., 1993b)
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From page 111... ...
Studies of the provision of temporary shelter after the Loma Prieta earthquake have revealed some interesting patterns with important policy implications. First, the research clearly shows that post-earthquake temporary shelter needs are closely related to a community's pre-earthquake housing problems.
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From page 112... ...
. 5 Following the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
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From page 113... ...
(For further discussions, see O'Brien and Mileti, 1992; Mileti and O'Brien, 1992, 1993.) RESPONSE OF GROUPS, ORGANIZATIONS, AND INTERORGANIZATIONAL NETWORKS A disaster of the magnitude of the Loma Prieta earthquake causes the mobilization of a vast range of organizational and community resources; it is probably fair to say that at the peak of the emergency thousands of different organizations and tens of thousands of people were involved in the response.
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From page 114... ...
was able to examine the activities of nine volunteer organizations in one community following the Loma Prieta earthquake. These organizations included the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, an amateur radio group, and a local volunteer coordinating council.
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From page 115... ...
Search and Rescue No major analytic reports on search-and-rescue activities following the Loma Prieta earthquake have been released; the accounts published to date are mainly descriptive. However, based on existing reports, it appears that except for the large-scale organized effort that developed at the Cypress structure and smaller formal rescue actions undertaken in the Marina District in San Francisco and the Pacific Garden Mall in Santa Cruz, the majority of the search-and-rescue that took place following the earthquake was conducted informally by community residents.
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From page 116... ...
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Hospitals, ambulance companies, EMS agencies, and other emergency medical care providers were the subject of considerable study following the Loma Prieta earthquake.
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From page 117... ...
Damage Assessment Early Identification of Problem Areas. Early efforts to identify the areas that had been hardest hit in the Loma Prieta earthquake were complicated by the fact that communications were sporadic and the information available to response agencies was incomplete.
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From page 118... ...
This was due in large measure to the fact that there were so many trained, qualified persons ready to work as inspec6 The evaluation guidelines had been published only a short time before the earthquake, and very few people had received training in their use. 7 This comment was not meant to imply that ATC-20 should have done so that was not the intention of the guidelines but rather to suggest that organizing damage assessment is a significant task in and of itself, separate from the technical decision making that goes into the evaluation of buildings.
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From page 119... ...
The existence of coordinating agencies like the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Transit Operators Coordinating Council, and the Regional Transit Association, as well as the fact that the various transportation agencies had a history of working together before the earthquake, helped the improvised system to get organized rapidly. Lifeline Organizations The Loma Prieta earthquake was in many respects a "lifeline disaster." Among the most dramatic examples of lifeline impacts were the collapse of the Cypress structure; the closures of the Bay Bridge, major highways in San Francisco, and Highway 17 due to damage; the loss of water for firefighting in the Marina District; and the damage to the Moss Landing electric-power substation.
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From page 120... ...
No systematic research was conducted on the effectiveness of local emergency-management systems following the Loma Prieta earthquake. However, many jurisdictions and organizations developed their own assessments of how well emergency tasks were performed and outlined the lessons they had learned (County of Santa Cruz, 1990; City of Watsonville, 1990; City of Oak8 Such coordination was easier in the Bay Area following the Loma Prieta earthquake than it would be in many other communities, because Pacific Gas and Electric provides natural gas and power to the entire Northern California region.
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From page 121... ...
The report of the State/Federal Hazard Mitigation Survey Team ( 1990) identified the following response-related needs that were highlighted by the Loma Prieta earthquake: · formal procedures for the federal response to a major but not catastrophic earthquake; · more-specific planning to assign responsibility for all Emergency Support Functions in the Federal Response Plan; · policies and criteria to enable federal and state agencies to provide automatic assistance to local jurisdictions for time-critical response elements; · a model emergency-management structure and procedures, common to local, state, and federal response agencies; · enhanced communications systems at the federal, state, and local levels; · a systematic approach to collecting data on damage; · a model resource-tracking system for state and local jurisdictions; · the identification of staging areas for various resources; · the establishment of regional planning groups (e.g., in the Bay Area)
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From page 122... ...
In July of 1991, the Bay Area Regional Earthquake Preparedness Project convened a symposium to bring together officials from the cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and Los Angeles to discuss lessons the Bay Area cities learned from the Loma Prieta earthquake and to determine whether Los Angeles's planning assumptions needed to be modified on the basis of the Loma Prieta experience. The conference focused on five main areas of concern: managing the disaster response, issues related to public works, emergency shelter and housing, financial issues, and community and business preparedness.
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From page 123... ...
Like local emergency-response activities generally, intergovernmental coordination was not the subject of intensive study following the earthquake, but it was addressed in some reports. In one study that focused on the emergency response to both Hurricane Hugo and the Loma Prieta earthquake, Schneider characterizes intergovernmental coordination in the earthquake as reasonably effective but somewhat disorganized: Despite greater general preparedness, some officials still had difficulty coping with the disaster .
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From page 124... ...
CONCLUDING COMMENTS Research on the public and organizational response to the Loma Prieta earthquake reemphasized many old lessons. Among these lessons are that disasters create an outpouring of altruism, but this massive response can in itself create coordination problems; that people behave adaptively in disaster situations, and public education can improve their chances of remaining safe; that when organizations show a real commitment to disaster preparedness, those preparedness efforts increase organizational effectiveness when disaster strikes; and that disasters invariably produce unexpected challenges for responders, calling for flexibility and the willingness to develop innovative solutions.
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From page 125... ...
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank Linda B Bourque for her comments on an earlier draft of this report and the staff at the National Clearinghouse for Loma Prieta Earthquake Information at the Earthquake Engineering Research Center for making their reference files available.
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From page 126... ...
1992. A Case-Control Study of the Casualties Associated with the Loma Prieta Earthquake: County of Santa Cruz.
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From page 127... ...
1990. Hazard Mitigation Opportunities for California: The State/Federal Hazard Mitigation Survey Team Report for the October 17, 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, California.
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From page 128... ...
Study Methods and Progress Report: A Case Control Study of the Casualties Associated with the Loma Prieta Earthquake: County of Santa Cruz.
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From page 129... ...
For a manager, the biggest problems in a disaster always come from the unknown, yet the unknown is usually staring you in the face. After the Loma Prieta earthquake, local governments' biggest problem was shelter how to deal with the pre-existing homeless problem in Oakland.
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From page 130... ...
So the local government is working very closely with the county personnel responsible for emergency medical issues to establish casualty collection points and staging areas where medical and first-aid services can be offered. I know Richard Ross is probably going to mention SP18-41 and the ability to use a standardized system of emergency management, but it is important that we all respond using the same language, terminology, and the same management techniques.
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From page 131... ...
The concept of a multihazard mitigation and insurance program is to provide multihazard insurance on standard household policies, provide mitigation funds to all states and territories, and ensure that the insurance industry can continue to make insurance available regardless of the severity of disasters. Richard Andrews, Governor's Office of Emergency Services It is a pleasure to be here.
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From page 132... ...
Emergency-management organizations need to factor this more into their planning. The Loma Prieta earthquake showed that emergency shelter is really an emergency-response issue it is not a recovery issue.
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From page 133... ...
allocated by the legislature after the Loma Prieta earthquake, the Governor's Office of Emergency Services is putting into place a satellite-based emergency communication system (OASIS, Operational Area Satellite Information System)
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From page 134... ...
James Lee Witt has been nominated to be the director of FEMA by President Clinton. Witt's instructions from the President are simple: take the existing system and create an emergency-management system that is based on hazard reduction and not chest-pounding- reinvest, reengineer, and reinvent emergency management in the United States, never forgetting that the victims are also clients.
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