In the South Bay, are we prepared for the Big One?

In the aftermath of Katrina, officials and residents take a hard look at how prepared we are. Officials drill, coordinate, plan and try to anticipate scenarios.

The suffering and devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans is a sobering reminder that the destruction that swept through the Gulf Coast is not so different from what could happen here.

In the case of earthquakes, it's not a question of if, but when, where and how bad. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked the top three disasters facing the country. Prophetically, the first two were a terrorist attack in New York and a hurricane in New Orleans. The third was a massive earthquake in California.

That's why officials from every level of government drill, coordinate, plan and try to anticipate any possible scenario, though even that's a guessing game.

"You never know you're prepared until it happens," said Jacki Bacharach, executive director of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments.

Since Katrina, a key policy issue throughout the nation is how prepared local communities are for a disaster of similar proportions. On Saturday, Rep. Jane Harman convened a meeting on disaster preparedness at Los Angeles International Airport. Attending the private meeting were representatives of the Department of Homeland Security, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, the U.S. Coast Guard, Los Angeles police and the Salvation Army.

They and others are asking the question: What if a major earthquake -- or some other calamity-- should hit the South Bay, cutting power, destroying water sources and causing fires to reduce whole neighborhoods to ash?

Most experts express optimism about their ability to respond, but others say there is a long way to go to ensure a disaster on the scale of Katrina would not inflict similar death and hardship here. They all agree on one thing, however. If there's one place that knows how to handle disaster, it is this fault-balanced metropolitan area that has battled fire, quake and riot -- sometimes in quick succession.

"I'd rather be in Los Angeles than any city in the world," said Terry O'Sullivan, a terrorism analyst at the USC Homeland Security Center. "In many regards, we're one of the best prepared in the nation in terms of experience and based on previous natural disasters and the like. "

Local responders feel most confident in their ability to communicate, regardless of what happens. Unlike the situation in Louisiana, where chaos seemed to reign and relief efforts often suffered from lack of coordination, local officials say something like that simply can't happen here.

Thanks to a system established after the Oakland fires in 1991 that destroyed more than 3,000 homes, all of the state's responders can communicate with the others.

"Prior to 1991, every city had a different way of administering disaster," said Lee Sapaden, a spokesman for the county Office of Emergency Management. "In the Oakland fire, they found out that Oakland and Berkeley couldn't talk to each other. And their fire hoses didn't fit."

After that, the state adopted the Standardized Emergency Management System, he said.

"What SEMS does is say you will have this structure," Sapaden said. "You will all use the same terms. All 58 counties have that. That didn't exist in New Orleans."

Also, several levels of redundancy are now built into the system so that if the initial Internet-based network dies, responders can communicate by radio or satellite.

Another area that thrives in California is a clear command structure, Sapaden said. Disaster response begins at the city level. If the city is overwhelmed, the county will step in. If the county is inundated, the state will provide assistance. And cities and counties work closely together to provide mutual assistance. If one area is hit hard, neighboring cities will jump in to help.

"If I have to get ice from Riverside County, I can get the ice," he said. "The rest of the country is trying to copy us. I'm not going to say what they did (in New Orleans) was wrong, but they sure didn't know how to talk to each other."

Like other cities across the South Bay, Redondo Beach holds regular drills for not only earthquakes, but terrorist attacks and even tsunamis. But not all city buildings are built to current standards, leaving them vulnerable in a heavy quake.

"There's always things that could be done," Fire Chief Bob Engler said. "In terms of physical layout, we could do a little work in that area."

And if something should happen on the scale of the calamity that struck New Orleans, even the highest level of training and practice could be left wanting.

"We are doing things, but it's an open question (if we're ready)" Engler said. "If something like New Orleans happened here, we will be set back."

A model published in May by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center assumed that a temblor with a magnitude of 7.2 to 7.5 would strike under downtown Los Angeles on a weekday afternoon.

Under various scenarios, the number of deaths could range from 3,000 to 18,000, with an average of 7,600. The number of injuries could range from 56,000 to 268,000, with an average of about 120,000.

According to the USGS study, the number of people displaced could range from 142,000 to 735,000, with an average of 274,000. In the case of widespread devastation, each South Bay community has plans to evacuate its residents, but it's an eventuality they are not confident about facing. Again, they insist, an earthquake probably will not cause the kind of widespread damage that forced of Louisiana residents to flee their homes.

"We have plans for evacuation," Engler said. "We would go door to door. Could we take the 65,000 people and put them somewhere else? That would be a difficult task, as we have seen."

A major earthquake hits California on average of every 15 years, said Lucy Jones, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, and there's a 90 percent chance of a 7.0 hitting Southern California in the next 30 years. But Southern California covers a lot of ground, and unlike familiar pictures of concentric circles emanating from ground zero, quake damage can hopscotch from location to location.

While one neighborhood could be badly damaged, another one close by might not receive a scratch. That's why officials chose to remain fluid in creating evacuation plans. They don't want to say where to go before a quake because that location might be difficult to reach, while a nearby spot is easily accessible. But they admit that moving and housing large numbers of people remains a problem.

As for the South Bay, while there was some damage after the Northridge quake, the last time the area saw substantial harm was more than 70 years ago.

"For any one region, it's a lot less frequent," she said. "In the South Bay, you really only got (the Long Beach earthquake in 1933). None of the others really did us any harm."

Still, O'Sullivan worries about hospitals being able to handle the large numbers of injured.

"It's the best of times, it's the worst of times," he said. "We're the best prepared in the world for these disasters, but at some level in the event of major public-health needs, we're pulling up short. We're as well set up as anybody can be, but we can always use more money and training. If there's a major bioterrorist attack, we don't have the ability to treat them."

Others say that while the number of injured could be huge, Los Angeles County has a population of nearly 10 million spread out over a vast area. And local officials say they can accommodate an influx of casualties.

"Hospitals in general have a mandate to be ready in a disaster," said Craig Leach, chief operating officer of Torrance Memorial Medical Center. "Since Sept. 11, I really think hospitals looked at that and said we need to be ready for anything. We became more focused on our disaster preparedness."

In the aftermath of Katrina, the most vulnerable of society -- the sick and elderly -- were often left to fend for themselves. To the shock of many, some senior citizens were left alone to die in nursing homes.

But Leach said that while people may be stranded after an earthquake, it won't have the same impact of being surrounded by miles of water.

"People who need medical attention and a place to stay, we would put in our conference room," he said. "We would be able to put a lot of people in that building. If the weather was good enough, we could put a lot of people in the garage on the first floor."

After the Northridge earthquake, the state passed a law forcing all hospitals to meet tough safety requirements by 2030. Leach said all but one of his hospital's buildings meet the stringent standards. And he said the facility is well equipped to handle whatever comes its way. Torrance Memorial has enough food, water and medicine to last for up to five days. A new parking structure can be filled with cots and turned into a makeshift ward and is equipped with showers in case people need to be decontaminated after a biological attack.

Leach also said arrangements have been made with vendors to get supplies in as quickly as possible.

"One thing that is nice is our proximity to Torrance airport," he said. "We have made arrangements to deliver food and pharmaceuticals via air."

Torrance Memorial is also in contact with the area's other hospitals, which have also undergone retrofitting.

County Harbor-UCLA Medical Center "got a big earthquake retrofit," said Mike Martinet, executive director of the Office of Disaster Management, Area G, which covers 14 South Bay cities. "It's got an exoskeleton on both ends, huge concrete beams and columns that wrap around the hospital like giant fingers."

And a recent addition to Little Company of Mary in Torrance was also built to current standards.

"You can't believe the steel that's in there," Martinet said. "Huge amounts of concrete have gone into that."

Likewise, most Southern California bridges and overpasses have been retrofitted since 1994.

"In general, you could say our freeways are in much better shape than they used to be," said Jones, who also serves on the state's safety commission. "(The California Department of Transportation) has spent $6 billion since 1969. There's been a huge state investment."

But while hospitals and public structures may generally be in good shape, it's small and mid-size private structures that worry Jones.

"Our biggest myth is that if we have good building codes, we have good buildings," she said. How much of the South Bay was built in the '50s and '60s? They were built in a style that is no longer allowed."

For homes, Jones recommends strapping water heaters to walls, securing houses to foundations and bracing cripple walls, which are short walls that rest on foundations and support floors.

Another image that resonated across the country in the days after the hurricane hit was looters emptying stores of anything they could carry. But that was actually an exception, experts say. Disasters more often actually bring out the better part of human nature.

"The looting in New Orleans was really quite extraordinary," Martinet said. "There's been a lot of research over the decades and looting is seldom a problem. On a day-to-day basis, you've got people doing muggings and burglaries.

"Just because there's a disaster, there's no difference, but TV cameras are around to see it. If someone gets mugged, normally there's no TV cameras around to show it. Some of the stuff we saw on TV is normal background noise of criminal activity."

But Martinet has other concerns about a major earthquake, which he called "Katrina without the water." Most importantly, he said, emergency crews would be overwhelmed in the hours after a devastating quake.

"We are prepared to an intermediate degree," he said. " I say that because how well prepared we are depends on how big the disaster is. It's like two sumo wrestlers. A guy could be huge, but if a guy outweighs him by a hundred pounds, it's not much."

"Do the math," he said. "That leaves you with one paramedic for every 3,000 people. If only 1 percent are injured, that's still 30 people for every paramedic. Who wants to wait in line? It's important for people to know first aid."

Congress created the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program in 1977 after a series of major quakes in Alaska, California and China. The goal was to reduce the loss of life and property by funding research on how buildings and structures respond to earthquakes, improving building codes, and conducting earthquake models along different fault lines.

About $125 million was allocated in 2005 -- a decline of more than 30 percent in real dollars from its first 1978 budget of $67 million, according to House Science Committee budget figures.

The USGS has about 140 employees working on earthquake issues under the joint federal program, down from more than 300 a decade ago, said William Ellsworth, chief scientist with the earthquake hazards team.

"We have greatly reduced the number of people we have doing research," Ellsworth said. "We have had to cut way back on field investigation programs. We've had to work smarter with less."

With authorities overburdened, experts stress the importance of people relying on themselves at the outset of disaster -- having enough supplies to last at least three days without help from authorities.

Like others, Gus Martin would rather be in California than anyplace else during a disaster. But the California State University, Dominguez Hills, professor said there is one threat that could leave the region at a loss.

"Californians have been waiting for the big one for so long and there are so many contingency plans, I'd feel better in California," said the chairman of the school's department of public administration and public policy, and author of two books on terrorism. "But when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, the picture is not so rosy. Very few emergency supervisors can handle that scenario."

Martin looks at the sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995 as an example of how things can go wrong here. During that event, 12 people were killed and more than 6,000 injured.

"(Most of them) had to find their own way to the hospital," he said. "One wonders if any major city has the capabilities to respond to a catastrophic event like that."

What worries Martin more than injuries is the public response to such an event. He said that while a dirty nuclear bomb may not kill many people, it could cause terror.

But even the earthquake that will almost certainly hit Los Angeles some day will not leave the city so crippled that residents will be as vulnerable as people were in New Orleans, experts said.

"Even if we had the exact same geophysical situation here, our planning and response capabilities are far beyond what they have," said USC's O'Sullivan. "Not to put a happy spin on it, but we've made tremendous progress."

I got so frustrated with someone the other day...they have zero preparations....and they were joking about it...

I counted 60 water bottles the other day...and I have a weeks worth of canned food.

Honestly I ebb and flow a lot on earthquake prep. I buy lots of water and then drink it and buy it again. After the Northridge quake I ran out of bottled water.

A friend shared some extra bottles distributed after the quake by a beer bottling plant. It was horrible tasting. It must have been for washing only, that or another one of Montezuma's mysterious paybacks.

When I heard KNX's simulcast with Dr. Jones saying that we all need at least 2-3 weeks worth of food and water after a major quake I went out and restocked.

From the Northridge quake I learned that many things fly if not anchored down, like the tv, flashlight, hanging pictures on the wall, books, dishes in the cupboard, lamps, bookshelves, shampoo, olive oil, etc.

Beyond that I have trained myself to perform a quick clothes check in the mirror before running outside or brace myself for the stares and giggling from neighbors.

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