Quake and other disasters have spurred major progress
If there is ever any good that comes out of disasters such as
the Loma Prieta earthquake, Sept. 11 or Hurricane Katrina, it’s
that we as a country and we as a county have improved greatly in
the way responders and families prepare for the worst.
Quake and other disasters have spurred major progress
If there is ever any good that comes out of disasters such as the Loma Prieta earthquake, Sept. 11 or Hurricane Katrina, it’s that we as a country and we as a county have improved greatly in the way responders and families prepare for the worst.
As the Pinnacle remembers the natural disaster that crumbled downtown buildings and shook the county’s collective soul, the most important lesson we have learned is that our community and others are exponentially ahead of where we were just two decades ago and, yet, there is a constant challenge to keep up with the ever-changing landscape of emergency preparedness.
Some of the highlights of those improvements include a far more structured and cooperative plan for all levels of responders, advances in the ways geologists can monitor activity and vulnerability of specific fault zones, vast upgrades to standards for retrofitting structures and even a grass-roots band of ham radio enthusiasts who have expressed interest in helping out if worst comes to worst.
From a broad-scope view, it is especially encouraging to see work being conducted by the Bay Area Urban Area Security Initiative, a group seeking answers to which places are most in danger of collapsing. Through a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant, the group expects to review a mass transit evacuation plan, a mass fatality plan, a debris removal plan, a mass sheltering plan and a volunteer management plan.
It’s a heavy slate of goals, but it also shows the kind of proactive, thorough foresight on a regional level that just didn’t exist before the 7.1-magnitude quake in October 1989, the 20-year anniversary of which is around the corner.
At the most basic level, though, there is far more education and awareness where it matters most to be prepared – in the home. Detailed literature on how to prepare and react is available at the touch of a finger, while there is some movement locally to kick-start a group of volunteers trained to respond in moments of need.
Still, as leaders and other experts have realized once again with the H1N1 flu, we can never be fully prepared because, inevitably, the worst disasters are those that reinforce vulnerabilities.
As we have learned time and time again, and which we are sure to learn again, we can never be over-prepared. In our thinking and anticipation, we can never be too creative.
