GELFAND’S WORLD-Most of us have heard of Dr Lucy Jones, (photo) and many of us have seen her on television right after an earthquake. In her new role advising the City of Los Angeles, she has been making the rounds of community groups, lecturing about what it would be like after a major earthquake on the San Andreas Fault. This is actually a hopeful sign.
I suspect that most of us have been thinking about The Big One, to the extent that we think about it at all, as something equivalent to a sudden nuclear attack. We leave it to our fevered imaginations to conjure up scenarios of burning chaos, the pavement littered with bodies, and no help in sight. Hearing the lecture by Lucy Jones the other night, I got the sense that we can apply reason and a certain amount of foresight to the prospect of a major quake.
But there are issues that go beyond what most of us have been imagining.
A memory: It was January 17, 1994, at 4:31 AM. Suddenly everything was going up and down. When I turned on the television a few minutes later, I saw the person who later became known as "seismo-mom," because Jones arrived at the Cal Tech seismology lab carrying her infant. When a major earthquake has just hit LA, and you are part of the crew, you go to the lab right then.
It's twenty years later, and Dr Jones is now collaborating with the administration of the city of Los Angeles to try to make some sense out of earthquake preparedness. It seems like we've been talking about the big one for a lot of years now, but it's not clear that we've been making a lot of progress in preparing our population. Under the new mayor, there is a push to put the facts together and to try to take some precautionary measures.
The first prediction is the hopeful part: Most of us will survive even a major quake on the San Andreas Fault. Let's consider a few of the other points that Jones made in her talk.
The first point is the real chiller. Building code rules are only designed to keep you alive. They are not really designed to preserve your apartment building or your house from severe damage. Still, you will probably come through the shaker with all of your fingers and toes still attached. That's the plus.
The minus is that we may have hundreds or even thousands of buildings that have suddenly been rendered uninhabitable. We might think about how the British dealt with thousands of refugees from bombed out buildings during the Blitz. Or we might think about how New Orleans and our various levels of government dealt with the problem of sudden homelessness after hurricane Katrina.
Another issue: We can expect that the ground along the opposite sides of the San Andreas Fault will be laterally offset by about 20 feet, give or take a yard or so. Jones showed a photo of the major water tunnel that runs directly across that fault. In its current form, the structure simply won't survive the offset. I imagined the ground movement as being like a giant pair of scissors that would slice the water tunnel into two sides that no longer line up.
There are a lot of us here in LA, and we need that water.
It gets worse. Even if we reengineer that part of the water system to survive the offset -- which we surely will do, now that someone has figured out that there is a problem -- there are all those pipes that run underneath the city to bring water to our homes.
Jones explained that you can think of a modern city as starting with a collection of underground pipes, above which we put up buildings and homes. Land movements and shaking will break a lot of the pipes, rendering large parts of the municipal water system at least temporarily out of service. What isn't broken outright may be rendered leaky, and subject to contamination by whatever else is in the ground. There are sewer pipes that run close by the water pipes, so when they break, the whole underground will become a slimy, polluted, infectious mess.
In other words, in the advent of a major quake, either you are going to be without water pressure, or if you have some, you might not be able to trust that what comes out of your tap will be drinkable.
Water is the biggest issue, because we can't live without it for more than a couple of days. But there is also the issue of food. As Jones explained to us, the introduction of the internet has made it easier for grocery chains to restock their markets on what has become known as "just in time" inventory control. That means that Vons and Ralphs don't have to keep huge stocks in the city, because they can bring whatever they want from their warehouses, and they only have to bring the items that need to be resupplied. The result is that your local supermarket is not necessarily a super-warehouse.
What complicates things is that the major food supply depots are on the other side of the San Andreas Fault. We should expect that the roads will be broken in the places where they cross the fault. Another major problem to consider and to solve.
Then there is electricity. It's really weird when there is absolutely no electric light coming from outside, when all the streetlights are out, and all the surrounding buildings and hallways and interior rooms have gone dark. It will be dangerous to try to get around using candles, because there will be the danger of gas leaks. Flashlight batteries run down after a while. Imagine this problem extended over days or weeks.
So that's the scenario we could be facing. No running water, probably no electricity or natural gas, and very possibly nowhere to live. Your refrigerator won't work, nor will your stove.
Those problems can be survived, and those of you who do a little advance preparation by stockpiling water, canned food, your prescription medications, and a little extra pet food will get through the first week just fine. Those who don't take these precautions will be dependent on the government, such as it is, and on the charity of strangers. Think about stockpiling 7 gallons of water for each person in your household. Then think about other items you may need. Hint: The Fire Department has a pamphlet you can download. There are lists of things that will help you through any kind of natural disaster.
The long term scenario after a major earthquake is actually the bigger concern. If the situation is too difficult, people will eventually just give up on the region and go elsewhere. That was one of the problems that plagued New Orleans after Katrina. The outcome, well understood by economists, is that the loss of people results in damage to the local economy, which in turn causes businesses to fail, and the whole thing becomes a vicious downward spiral.
It has been an economic disaster for New Orleans that has far outlasted the immediate suffering brought on by the hurricane itself. As Lucy Jones explained, the long term damage from a major earthquake is more likely to be bankruptcy than mass casualties.
This may also be preventable, if we are lucky and if we take the right precautions. Jones pointed out that after the Northridge quake of 1994, our area actually recovered pretty quickly. There was a quick influx of money from FEMA, and the actual area brought down by the quake was limited. She compared the quick recovery out here, and the recovery in Nashville following Katrina, to the long term damage to the New Orleans economy. It is an object lesson for Los Angeles.
(Bob Gelfand writes on culture and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 49
Pub: June 17, 2014
