Shenanigans on the Boulevard

by Ready or Not, It Will Come

By Dennis Evanosky

The United States Coast and Geodesic Survey recently updated its 14-year-old map of the Hayward Fault. The latest version allows you to take a virtual helicopter tour. "Flying" over the Laurel District and Redwood Heights offers a frightening view of just how close to home this powerful fault lies.

To take the tour, you'll need Google Earth. Download it from earth.google.com. Then go to www.usgs.gov and download the tour, which you'll find in the site's newsroom.

Once you've downloaded the tour, hit F10 and tour the entire fault. When you stop in our neighborhood, you'll see that the fault lies not "just along the hills" (as many like to say). The map illustrates specifically that the Hayward Fault runs right through homes and yards in Redwood Heights and out Jordan Road toward Montclair. The map also shows two smaller fault lines on the hill near Carson and Fair streets, as well as the fault line that prompted the reconstruction of Redwood Elementary School.

This new map speaks volumes, but are we listening?

After you've seen how close to home an earthquake on the Hayward Fault will be, take the next step without even getting up from your chair. When you've finished your tour, go to www.oaklandcore.org.

"What's the City of Oakland going to do when the Big One hits?" a neighbor asked recently. I told him that the city is already doing something by training its citizens through a program called CORE.

Since it began in 1990, Citizens of Oakland Respond to Emergencies (CORE) has provided free, community-based training to more than 10,000 residents. As one of the first community emergency-response team curricula ever developed, CORE set a new standard for emergency preparedness and residential hazard reduction. The governor's Office of Emergency Services honored the program in 1991 with an Outstanding Services award.

A growing number of residents (including myself, I'm proud to say) are becoming CORE-trained. On Saturday, March 11, with the help and blessing of Albertsons and its store manager, Greg Ross, our local CORE group set up a trial "Incident Command Center" in the Laurel Albertsons parking lot.

"We had several shoppers and passers-by stop to ask questions. Some seemed seriously interested in getting their neighborhoods organized," one participant said.

"We hope to see more and more neighborhoods organize with CORE-trained personnel," said Harriet Wright, the city's Emergency Planning Coordinator.

On Saturday, April 29, the city will put its CORE volunteers to the test.

"From 9 a.m. to noon we will conduct a citywide emergency response exercise," said Wright. "We will base this exercise on a simulated earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 on the Richter scale, centered on the northern segment of the Hayward Fault."

The incident will involve active CORE groups, ham radio operators from the Oakland Radio Communications Association (ORCA), Oakland firefighters, and other organized groups.

"These groups will participate in the exercise and respond to incidents in their neighborhood,"said Wright. "We will be testing, among other things, the ability of CORE neighborhood communications teams to gather, document, and transmit information about incidents in their neighborhoods."

"Albertsons was a good location to be visible for our March 11 exercise and is probably good for the April 29 event," a local CORE leader said. "Stop by on the 29th and see."

You can do something even better call the CORE coordinator, at 238-6351, or visit their Web site and sign up for CORE I.

When the Hayward moves violently for the first time in almost 140 years, it won't be up to the city to take care of your neighborhood; it will be up to you. Get involved now.