LA Times thoughts on a 9.0 earthquake

Very surprising is this disturbing article in today's LA Times:

http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-0316-lopez-lucy-20140316,0,296401.column#axzz2wAF0LhdY

The lack of preparedness in this community is rather surprising, since the potential threat is quite obvious. It's not like we don't have abundant evidence of the damage and disruption that will occur whenan earthquake occurs.

I think one sentence in your article explains the problem:
"Jones was better off when she could just worry about tectonic plates, which move faster than politicians do."

I dunno, AKSAR. The Pacific Plate is moving toward your turf about as fast as fingernails grow. I'm not sure we can say that about politicians...Do they move at all?

The slovenly approach toward an obvious hazard leaves me agast....

pulling quote from the article.

""In Grays Harbor County in Washington state, crews will begin building an elementary school gym this summer to double as a "vertical evacuation center" — built so that 1,000 people can flee to the roof during a tsunami, protected by a high wall.
"We have no natural high ground," said Ocosta School District Supt. Paula Akerlund. "So we have to evacuate vertically.""


I get the logic of going up to avoid a tsunami; I just hope they build the sucker pretty darn strong- I would hate to climb on the roof of a building 10 minutes after an earthquake...

This is suddenly relevant...

Hikermor

The LACK of awareness in LA is stupendous.
I just had a conversation a couple of days ago with a young lady (with an advanced education). I pointed out to her the DIRE necessity to have enough water for a couple of weeks, and an ample pile of granola bars and cans of tuna fish. Nothing exotic. The bare bones necessities. Fortunately, she did get the point.

But the last time I did a survey of my building (I work in LA), FEW people had enough water for more than 2-days consumption. This LACK of preparedness is inexcusable. But it is real and very common in Los Angeles. There is going to be a lot of suffering when a good sized quake comes along. IF we are lucky, we will get a mag 6-7 quake in the LA area. That will do enough damage that people will be shocked into readiness again.

Some cities near LA have got NO CHANCE when the Big One hits. The whole Palm Springs area will be toast. The same thing goes for Desert Hot Springs, Banning, Beaumont, the Morongo Casino, Phelan, Pearblossom, LittleRock, Palmdale, Lake Hughes, and Frazier Park. All these places will be complete write-offs after the Big One hits - they are sitting almost directly on the fault line. In the "old days" there were not many people out there. But now, the bedroom communities have had an exploding population because of real estate prices.

People should never have been allowed to build in these places. But what can you say ... GREED rules!

Pete

This is a question from an East-Coaster. Is it feasible for most West Coasters in the danger zone to store several weeks supply of potable water? Is it really necessary for reasonable emergency planning? Is maintaining a godod water filtering/ purification capacity , perhaps with an enhanced ability to filter debris or common chemicals, sufficient as an alternative?

I was wondering something similar---how much water would be needed per person per day?

I have always heard "1 gallon per person per day." Given the heat in SoCal, that might not be enough, but taking Pete's "a couple of weeks" as an example, that would be 15 gallons (with a little left over), or 3 of those 5 gallon plastic water containers that sit on top of a water cooler. Storage of that much water does not seem to be that hard. Several people I know use these on a regular basis as they don't trust their well water for drinking/cooking. (I am lucky; my neighborhood is on County water--those just south of me---are not.)

Per person for a family of 3 = 45 gallons, tougher in apartments or condos but no sweat in single family homes. In the PNW we operate with 3 gal per day by (hopefully) ~9 days before a water truck might hit your neighborhood once, and we're well away from coastal areas that will be without for months from a Cascadian Subduction Zone quake. I have given up on calculating how much to store for my nuclear family of 4, instead each Christmas I give out boring 5, 15 or 30 gal containers (last 2 with simple pumps) to my family members in adjoining zip codes. Together we (45 of us) have sufficient water to avoid dying of thirst, assuming some or all of it doesn't end up under wreck and rubble. I personally store hundreds of gallons, as I anticipate helping out two aging neighbors and a handful of friends who aren't so prepared, and also anticipate friends and acquaintances caught on this side of the now broken floating bridges. They will need a place to safely bunk, and I would rather not have their inconvenience threaten my supplies.

I'm in a pretty safe part of the country, at least geographically. I store about 30 gallons of water at all times, and I feel bad/lazy that I don't keep more. For a while I've been meaning to get a couple of the 55 gallon barrels and the water treatment but I've never "got around to it" yet. Better get it done this summer!

Water is so amazingly cheap and plentiful when weighed against the consequences of not having it. I've always been amazed at folks that don't store any at all! We take it for granted that when we turn on the tap, water will flow. In many parts of the world that's a luxury people don't have. Lots of things could temporarily disrupt the water supply. In the last few years I can recall at least one boil order and one time when part of the town was w/o water briefly after a big main broke.

I keep in rotation a stock of at least 9 Kirkland bottled water cases (47.5 gallons). In other words, I use the oldest first. That's 47.5 gallons for a family of 3. I should probably up that to at least 12 cases (63.3 gallons) because most of my family and surrounding neighbors are clueless.

I store enough for about a week. But the truth is, if I lose water where I live (Washington, D.C.), I'd be leaving the city within a couple days (well, probably a couple hours). Have a place to go that's on a tributary to the Chesapeake Bay and which has well water, a backup generator and two very large propane tanks that would power everything, including the a/c, for a couple weeks.

If I can't get to that place in an emergency it will be Mad Max for real on the east coast.



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Plus some for the pets...

Water, and Sanitation. No mattter how primative the level of technology or infrastructure, the need to get potable water in and non-potable waste out is a universal need for all human settlements.

Water is cheap, and soap and emergency toilets aren't that expensive.

If you build it, they will come!