The Great ShakeOut Report

As a member of the LAFD Auxiliary Communications Service, I was privileged to participate with the ACS in this drill. Our task was to set up multiple HF radio communication stations and communicate with each other using NVIS propagation. In plain English, we set up and exercised comm systems that allowed us to have communications over a wide area using Amateur Radio 'shortwave' frequencies.

I am very pleased to report that all of our stations, including portable stations at several regional hospitals, were able to contact each other, and we were able to maintain communications to the City of Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center, and the Office of Emergency Services in the Governor's Office in Sacramento. Had this been a real emergency, we would have been able to provide emergency communications as necessary.

The Drill did expose some shortcomings in our training -- especially in formal message handling, and we'll continue to train and improve.

The following is a report of the Great ShakeOut drill. Interesting information inside...

Moderator

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-quake27-2008dec27,0,2002741.story

From the Los Angeles Times

Major Southern California quake drill reveals significant gaps in preparations

The Nov. 13 'shakeout' showed officials that in the event of a 7.8-magnitude temblor they will need more emergency workers, better sources of water and come up with new ways of restoring electricity.

By Jia-Rui Chong

December 27, 2008

The largest earthquake drill in U.S. history, held last month in Southern California, found some serious gaps in local earthquake planning, prompting utility companies, emergency managers and others to rethink their planning for a major temblor.

The Great Southern California Shakeout was the first time so many agencies and earthquake officials teamed up to examine what would happen if a huge quake struck the region, in this case a 7.8 magnitude temblor. Many Shakeout participants said they have gone through earthquake drills before, but never with a scenario so detailed.

Based on the results of the Nov. 13 experiment, in which each agency estimated damage and emergency services requirements based on detailed quake scenarios developed by supercomputers, officials said they will need more emergency workers, better sources of water and come up with new ways of restoring electricity.

Fire protection

For local fire officials, one of the most worrisome estimates from the drill was the 1,600 fires expected to ignite with lamps overturning, electrical wires shorting and natural gas lines bursting open. Many fires would grow out of control as firefighters struggle to get fire engines across damaged roads and water stopped coming out of their hoses, experts found.

An estimated 200 million square feet of property would be damaged in the blazes. The fires would cause more than 900 deaths -- about half of the total for the earthquake.

"To hear it quantified like that, it more than got my attention," said Los Angeles County Fire Chief Michael Freeman. "This was really the worst-case scenario for us. Today, if this were to happen, we would need outside assistance."

Unfortunately, Freeman said, they probably would not get help for quite some time because neighboring fire agencies would be fighting fires in their own districts and departments from Northern California would have to make their way around damaged highways. Because they can't afford to multiply their staffs, several fire agencies are looking into training more members of the community to be first responders, learning such skills as basic first aid and turning off gas lines.

Freeman said the county is also looking into ways to better draw water from other sources during a disaster, such as pools or storm drains that are collecting runoff from broken pipes.

Water supplies

But the drill also raised troubling questions about how much water would be available after a major quake. Of all utilities, water would take the longest time to restore, experts found. Some communities might have to wait six months for taps to flow again.

The Shakeout helped officials at East Valley Water District in San Bernardino County estimate that they would see about 1,000 leaks in their 450 miles of pipe because about 40% of their pipes are made from a material that is particularly brittle in earthquakes, said Gary Sturdivan, the district's safety and regulatory manager. All 78,000 of its customers would lose water for some period because all of the agency's reservoirs are on one side of the fault and all of its wells and distribution systems are on the other.

As a result, the district plans to stock more replacement pipe parts in repair sheds near those areas and store more bottled water for their employees, employees' families that might stay at their facilities and their customers who need water, Sturdivan said.

The water agencies are also retooling their mutual-aid agreements so they can figure out how to prioritize different agencies' needs and distribute replacement parts or water from other states fairly, he said.

"I think our agency, like a lot of water agencies, was pretty prepared, but it was glaring that we have a long way to go," Sturdivan said. "It was a little overwhelming."

Electrical supplies

The 7.8 temblor modeled by the test would leave large swaths of Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Riverside counties without power, according to estimates by a working group that included utility companies representatives. Breaks in natural gas pipelines could add delays because many plants use gas to generate electricity. It probably would take about 10 days to restore power to 90% of customers, the estimates found.

But Jim Kelly, senior vice president of transmission and distribution for Southern California Edison, said even that is an optimistic forecast.

"The problem is harder than people initially think," he said. Although Edison already uses equipment designed to be safer in earthquakes, such as transformers with low centers of gravity, Kelly worried about other utilities and parts vendors that would probably be having problems at the same time.

"If we lose bridges or roadways, how are we going to get people or materials to the job site," Kelly asked. "We don't know if rail transit will be available if we don't have roadways."

When Kelly added these potential problems together, he estimated it would take two to four weeks to restore power to the vast majority of Edison's 12 million customers.

"The scenario's value to us was in identifying that we have to look broader than just our stuff," he said.

Lucile Jones, the U.S. Geological Survey seismologist who served as the chief scientist for the Shakeout, said she hopes the drill gave agencies concrete data that will help them better prepare.

"People don't need to be convinced an earthquake can happen," she said. "They need concrete statements so they know what to do about it."

The effort to develop the scenario cost about $500,000, engaged some 300 experts and took two years to complete.

Geophysicists wanted to plot a plausible event, so they started the earthquake at a part of the San Andreas that has not moved for more than 300 years. They decided the energy stored in that part of the fault could cause a 200-mile rupture moving northwest from Bombay Beach, at the Salton Sea. Quakes of this size are possible, Jones explained, because they rocked San Francisco in 1906 and Fort Tejon in 1857.

Seismologists used the supercomputers to calculate the shaking, generating data for 25,000 points of a grid laid out over Southern California.

Geologists, engineers, utility managers and other experts used the data to estimate the damage, which included more than 10,000 landslides, more than 50 sewage spills and more than 100,000 addresses losing phone and Internet service for two or more days. Motorists would have to wait one to two weeks to use arterial roads in cities such as Los Angeles and seven months to use damaged highways.

Public health experts estimated some 1,800 people would die and 50,000 would be seriously injured. The economic costs of the disaster, including the business interruption, would total about $213 billion.

The scientists purposefully avoided a worst-case scenario but wanted to analyze an earthquake far more damaging than the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which had a magnitude of 6.7. "We wanted people to understand how bad it could be," Jones said. "Some people think, 'I've been through Northridge,' but getting through Northridge is not enough."

jia-rui.chong@latimes.com

Letter to the Editor, Los Angeles Times, re the Good Samaritan case

To the Editors:

I read the "Good Samaritans Get No Aid from the High Court" article on December 19th., and I was initially dismayed.

I'm a General Volunteer for the City of Los Angeles and I've been thinking about this a lot...

The Court is questioning what were apparently inappropriate, unnecessary, and potentially damaging actions by the defendant Ms. Torti -- however well intentioned they may have been. And I see their point. The line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior is properly left to the courts to decide and it's correct, though unsettling, for them to examine this one.

My wife and I know what to do and what not to do to to care for an injured or ill person until the professionals arrive because we took Advanced First Aid classes a few years ago. Does this make our emergency response care 'medical' and therefore covered? I certainly hope so.

The real question here is not why the Good Samaritan laws are in jeopardy, it's why First Aid classes aren't readily available to the public and why more good citizens don't train themselves to help their families, friends, and neighbors in an emergency.

If we took emergency response training seriously, lives would be saved and these kind of injuries prevented.

If Ms. Torti had ever received even rudimentary First Aid training -- as a mandatory class in High School perhaps, she too would have known how to provide appropriate emergency care.


Jonathan Zimmerman

Questions about the 'Good Samaritan' case

I have several questions regarding this case, only one of which was answered by the California Supreme Court brief.

Were alcohol or drugs a factor here? Was Ms. Torti's judgment chemically impaired? According to the brief, Ms. Van Horn and Ms. Torti had smoked marijuana and consumed at least several drinks prior to to the accident. This point, though mentioned in the brief, was apparently not part of the legal arguments.

Had Ms. Torti ever had a First Aid class, or Driver's Ed, or any other class that could have taught her what to do in a situation like this. Had she ever been offered one?

What other outside pressures have been brought to bear here? Is Ms. Van Horn's insurance company behind this? Is she being forced to pursue this, win or lose, in order to obtain the care she needs?

Moderator

"Good Samaritan" gets sued

Here's the text of the California Supreme Court brief in the "Good Samaritan" suit from

"ORAL ARGUMENT CALENDAR
SPECIAL SESSION — RIVERSIDE COUNTY OCTOBER 7 & 8, 2008" available at

http://www.courtinfo.ca.gov/courts/supreme/documents/rivallexpsum.pdf

Van Horn v. Watson (Torti, Respondent) (consolidated cases) (S152360)

On Halloween night in 2004, plaintiff Alexandra Van Horn, defendant Lisa Torti,and some other friends were relaxing at Torti’s home, where both Van Horn and Torti smoked some marijuana. The friends went to a bar at 10:00 p.m., where they consumed several drinks before leaving at 1:30 in the morning. On the way home, Van Horn and Torti were passengers in two different cars. The driver of the car carrying Van Horn lost control and crashed into a curb and light pole at about 45 miles per hour, causing the vehicle’s front air bags to deploy. The car carrying Torti pulled over and the occupants got out to help.

Torti removed Van Horn from the car. There is a dispute about how she did so. Torti testified that she placed one arm under Van Horn’s legs and the other behind Van Horn’s back and lifted her out of the vehicle. Torti also testified that she believed the car might catch fire or “blow up.” In contrast, Van Horn testified that Torti pulled her from the vehicle by grabbing her arm and yanking her out “like a rag doll.” Other witnesses testified that there was no smoke or any other indication that the car might explode.

Emergency personnel arrived moments later. Plaintiff suffered various injuries, including injury to her vertebrae, and was permanently paralyzed.

Van Horn sued Torti, alleging that she had not been in need of assistance from Torti after the accident and that she sustained injury to her vertebrae only after Torti negligently dragged her out of the vehicle, causing permanent damage to her spinal cord and rendering her a paraplegic. Torti argued that she was immune from suit under Health and Safety Code section 1799.102, which provides “No person who in good faith, and not for compensation, renders emergency care at the scene of an emergency shall be liable
for any civil damages resulting from any act or omission.” The trial court ruled for Torti.

The Court of Appeal disagreed, concluding that section 1799.102 applies only to the provision of medical care and that Torti had provided non-medical care.

The outcome of the case turns on the meaning of “emergency care” in section 1799.102. Van Horn argues that the Legislature intended to immunize only those persons who render emergency medical care at the scene of a medical emergency. Torti, on the other hand, argues that the phrase should be interpreted broadly to include both medical and non-medical care. The parties discuss the meaning of the statute’s language, the way the same or similar words are defined in other statutes, and the legislative history leading to the enactment of the statute and subsequent amendments.