Two Down and One to Go: Are You Ready for the First 72?

by Dennis Evanosky

In 2001, Houston Chronicle science writer Eric Berger reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) named a devastating hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing the United States. The other two were a terrorist attack on New York and a major earthquake in San Francisco.

FEMA made this assessment as a cabinet-level agency. Two years later, the Bush administration downgraded the agency's position and folded it into the Department of Homeland Security.

With two of these three catastrophes on the books, are you ready for the third to hit home?

"The threat of a big Bay Area quake is not some sky-is-falling prediction," says Robert Gammon in a February East Bay Express article. "In 2002, a group of scientists led by the United States Geological Survey estimated that there is a 62 percent chance of a magnitude 6.7 or greater quake rupturing one of the Bay Area's faults in the next 30 years. There is a 27 percent chance of the same-size quake hitting the Hayward and Rodgers Creek faults, which connect beneath San Pablo Bay."

The Hayward fault extends from San Jose about 74 miles northward along the base of the East Bay hills and runs right through the hills above the Laurel and Dimond districts. If you ever drive down Highway 13, you're driving in one of the fault's rift valleys. The Rodgers Creek fault joins the Hayward Fault beneath San Pablo Bay and runs northwest past San Rafael to Santa Rosa.

Gammon says the real East Bay nightmare would be a 6.9-or-greater temblor that would rupture the entire Hayward Fault from Point Pinole to Milpitas. The working group put the odds of that quake at about 8.5 percent.

"And now for the really bad news," says Kara Platoni in a companion article in the East Bay Express. "We're coming out of the shadow."

The shadow that Platoni speaks of is the relaxation effect or stress shadow cast by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. United States Geological Survey geophysicist Tom Parsons estimates that the 1906 temblor reset the Bay Area's faults, delaying their next ruptures by 17 to 74 years, depending on the fault. Parsons believes this relaxation effect wore off around 1990. With the shadow now lifted, local faults are now busy accumulating the stress that will ultimately burst free in a deadly new barrage of seismic activity.

So how do we get ready?

"The first 72" is an oft-repeated mantra that should remind us to prepare to face the first 72 hours (three days) without running water, electricity, and all the other 21st-century luxuries we're accustomed to. The local solution to this dilemma may lie in an Oakland Fire Department organization Citizens of Oakland Respond to Emergencies (CORE).

"We must develop strategies to train all of our citizens in basic emergency preparedness and response skills," said Harriet Wright, who currently coordinates CORE. Wright and her organization hope to mobilize resources citywide to ensure that citizens can be self-sufficient in the event of a major disaster. "We are training Oaklanders to take care of their neighborhoods until professional emergency personnel arrive," she said.

Laurel activist John Frando is CORE certified, and Wright has asked him to help form a neighborhood preparedness network in the Laurel (see "Laurel Neighborhood News," page _).

If you'd like to see just how close the Hayward Fault is, take a walk along Monterey Boulevard near Guido Street and have a look at the curbs splitting there. Look at the way the City of Oakland has patched the street. Those who travel along Monterey remember that the city once had Monterey closed at Guido. Why? This road is shifting, and not of its own accord.

Monterey Boulevard straddles a rift valley that the Hayward Fault has formed. Montclair Village sits on the other side of this valley. In fact the fault runs through Montclair Village, the nearby park, and then toward Lake Temescal.

Two types of fault movement occur along faults.

One is the catastrophic rupture of the ground that generates large earthquakes. A large earthquake, estimated to have been about magnitude 7, last occurred on the Hayward fault 137 years ago, in 1868. Prior to 1906 this temblor was called the "Great San Francisco Earthquake."

The other type is a very slow movement of the fault, a few millimeters or a fraction of an inch a year that does not generate earthquakes. This is the slow movement, called fault, or tectonic, creep that you can experience along Monterey Boulevard.

And the rift valley? Well, Caltrans has seen fit to build a highway right down its middle. And for good measure they've given it that lucky number 13.

To paraphrase some advice my father gave me time and again: "Take care of yourself, because if you don't, no one else is going to.