Keeping calm and carrying on

October 17 was the 'Great Shakeout drill' in California. Time to practice practice 'Drop, cover, and hold on'. 

It is 30 years to the day since the last 'Big One' in Northern California - the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. That quake happened during a live broadcast of a World Series baseball game and the TV feed cut out dramatically. The game meant that traffic was lighter on the freeways, which was a very good thing as it turned out because there were some dramatic structural fails on the roads. Particularly bad was the collapse of a section of double-decker freeway. As it was, the earthquake resulted in 63 deaths, 3757 injuries, and $10 billion in damages.

I happened to be at ThingOne's school to collect him for an appointment when the drill started at 10.17am. One of the office staff announced the drill over the loudspeaker and then rattled a pencil case into the microphone. Kids who were on office duty scurried under desks like little mice while we grown-ups stood around grinning awkwardly at each other. I sidled over towards an archway but then remembered doorways and archways are now out of vogue as places to shelter, so I sidled back towards a table. By the time I thought about ducking down the drill was over. Apparently adults are too cool for school when it comes to earthquake drills. Killed by embarrassment. One hopes we adults would take action in the real event. The point of the drills, though, is to practice so that action is second nature, and on this we adults failed. Benjamin Franklin put it perfectly: failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

Source: sierrafoothillgarden.com

By the way, the doorways-as-best theory is said to come from a photo of an old Californian adobe house where the doorway was the only part left standing after an earthquake! In modern houses doorways do not provide protection from flying objects. The revised advice is get under a desk, table, or chair. 

Having lived on the west coast of North America for the last 21 years, I've been through a couple of minor earthquakes. The 'best' was in Los Angeles when a magnitude 7.0 quake hit out in the Mojave desert. We were sleeping and got woken up by the sound of the windows rattling. Out in the shared courtyard the pool water had sloshed side to side over the edges. Weird - I just looked up the date for that earthquake and it was October 16, 1999 - almost 20 years ago to the day as I write this! 

Vancouver is apparently due for a Big One, but we only felt one small jolt while we were there. I did participate in lots of drills at work, and top of my to-do list for 15 years was 'prepare an earthquake kit'. Actually, this morphed into 'go to neighbors if there is an earthquake' since our well-prepared neighbors had one kit in their car and one kit by their front door. I was given an earthquake backpack at work, but each year I would always end up raiding the food supplies while working late nights so it wasn't much use.

The time I most thought about earthquakes was during the annual preparation of the earthquake packs for the kids. Starting with daycare and then later at school we had to fill a ziplock bag with earthquake supplies. The bags were stored in special earthquake-proof containers at school. We provided things like a game or toy, a trash bag, bandaids, wet wipes, a non-perishable snack, lists of people who were authorized to pick up our kids in an emergency... Most disconcertingly, we had to write a letter to your kid along the lines of "There has been an earthquake. I'm not with you right now, but be assured I am coming to get you as fast as I can..." 

Moving down to Northern California where the fault lines are rather more numerous (six fault lines within a 100 square mile area), I assumed the earthquake duties at the schools would step up a notch. Not quite sure what I envisioned, but it was something even more gut wrenching than writing those 'actually I'm squashed so this might be the last interaction we have' letters. 

 Demonstrating 'drop, cover, and hold on'.

But we parents have had to do nothing, nada. No kits, no letters, just the one drill a year. The big news this year on the 30th anniversary of Loma Prieta was the release of a cell phone app called MyShake from scientists at UC Berkeley.  Using a network of seismometers, the app can give as much as a 30 second advance warning of a quake. At first I poo-pooed the thought that 30 seconds could make a difference. But I timed it and it turns out 30 seconds is plenty of time to duck under the kitchen table, then change your mind because you think the dining room table is stronger, and then wonder if the office desk is actually stronger and further away from windows and make a dash for it... but not quite make it... so wind up crouching in a doorway feeling like a fool.


I think if you grow up here, earthquakes are in your blood, you know what to do, you prepare as much as one can, and then you get on with life.  Since Earthquakes are only one of the emergencies we have to think about here in NorCal, I wonder if some of the blasé attitude is down to emergency preparedness fatigue?

Last week we had fire-prevention power outages across Northern California. Strong, dry east winds were forecast and the combination of this particular kind of wind plus the tinder-dryness of the region's grasslands and woodlands (no rain since May) posed a risk of high-speed wild fires. The power company PG&E had good reason to worry - these conditions caused power line damage that in turn caused the fast-moving Camp Fire in November 2018 that wiped out the town of Paradise in minutes. At one point the fire was destroying 80 acres per minute. That is just under one football field per minute. PG&E has since filed for bankruptcy protection and is facing billions of dollars in liability claims; turns out the company has neglected to properly maintain power lines for the last decade.

Warnings came that we might experience power outages that could last as long seven days! Our neighborhood borders the foothills of the Santa Cruz mountains, one of the high risk areas.  The afternoon before the planned outages there were lines at the gas stations (pumps don't work without power) and people were stocking up on supplies at Safeway. I joined the hysteria and got gas and tuna. 

We didn't lose power at our house, but two of the schools in our district lost power so all schools were closed for a day. My mild first-world-trauma was that the power was out for a couple of days where birthday events were planned - but in end the power was back for our region by Friday. It was a little spooky when the hot dry winds started. There were some panicked emails that circulated around on various neighbourhood groups when people could smell smoke around us - but it turned out to be a BBQ. However, an estimated million people across northern California were affected over a five day period. 

The third bit of emergency preparedness is too disturbing to write about. Both kids have done 'Run, hide, defend' drills at their schools to practice what they should do in the event of a school shooter.

Earthquake, fire, and guns. 

Talking with my mother about sheltering under desks reminded her of drills from her youth. I called earthquakes, fire, and guns. She raised with armed uprising. She recounted how by the 1960s in  South Africa the assumption among liberal whites was that there would be a violent uprising and that the white 20% of the population would be killed. At my mother's former all-girls high school the drill for 'when the Africans come' was for the girls to hide under their desks and arm themselves with their rulers. At home, my grandmother came up with a plan where she would climb up into the loft and her African maid Rose Megabane would close the hatch and then take away the ladder. Grannie would stay hidden until the danger had past. Upon practice of the plan, however, a flaw was discovered. My grandmother's loyal dog, Tinkie, could not climb the ladder and was too heavy to carry. She instead sat under the loft, her soulful gaze clearly indicating the whereabouts of the white lady. My grandmother and Rose revised the plan: no more running. Grannie would 'die with dignity beside Tinkie'. The uprising never came. Tinkie and Grannie both became old ladies. Grannie lived long enough to see Mandela walk to freedom and negotiate a peaceful end to Apartheid. 

"And, of course, we are preparing for the worst with Brexit," my mother added. "Apparently loo roll is going to be in short supply so we bought 12 rolls! But then it turned out it is only very fancy loo roll that will be in short supply and we always buy the absolute cheapest, so we would have been fine." 

I got an interesting email about Brexit recently:

I hadn't even thought about how Brexit might affect us directly but I suppose I should add that to my list. 

Or not. 

Why do I have this terrible emergency preparedness inertia? Part of it is that when I start thinking about preparing for the worst, it just seems faintly ridiculous to think that anything will make a difference. Our youngest, ThingTwo, came home from her 'Run, hide, defend' drill saying that it was great fun, except the Sheriff told them they had hidden on the 'wrong side' of the classroom. The Sheriff goes around the school inspecting how each class carried out the drill and giving advice for what they could do better next time. "What made it the wrong side?" I asked. "We were right next to the door where he came in." The problem? ThingTwo's classroom has two doors, one on each side, no closets, nowhere to hide essentially. But apparently there is a right side and a wrong side.

The other factor that causes my inertia? I suppose it is that preparing for a disaster acknowledges that there is a non-zero chance of disaster. And that is scary.

One of these days I will stop fretting about the fact that I am not fretting enough about all the potential disasters that could occur. Or maybe I will actually do some preparation. Three days of supplies of water and food. How hard can that be?

Meanwhile...

Source: Adobe Stock

Update October 26,2019: Turns out you can just buy ready-made three-day emergency kits and so my problem is now solved! Turns out my inertia was a sort of shopping phobia that went away when I could sit on my couch and click just the once. Yay for the internet. Hopefully the order arrived before we need it: we are on alert yet again for power outages this weekend due to severe wild fire risk!