Category: Preparing for Earthquakes

Building Structures and Safety

If you live in a single family home, there are a number of things you can do to make your home safer. Of course, each home is different. The risks associated with YOUR home will depend, in part, on its age (which may determine what building codes were in effect when it was built), style (one or two story, big windows, overhangs, etc.) and quality of construction.

However, the safety of nearly every home can be improved.

Let’s start with a study of windows.

Large panes of glass can be the “weak point” of the home. If you have the chance, stay away from them!! during an earthquake, windstorm or tornado.

Improving your chances with windows.

When windows break, shards may all or be thrown across the room. You can mitigate flying shards by:

a. Installing tempered safety glass. It breaks or crumbles into small pieces. They may cut but probably won’t kill. Since 1977 Federal law has required that tub and shower enclosures be made of safety glass.

b. Installing solar/safety film (“window tinting”). When properly installed, this film is invisible and has double benefits: it saves energy AND keeps the windows from shattering. If you sleep under a window, installing solar film is the easiest and safest preventive measure.

c. Pulling drapes or shades. If you know danger is coming, pull down and close shutters or draw drapes. They will offer some protection against flying glass.

Look up from your computer right now.

Are you seated near a window that could blow out or break?  Is there a safer place in this room?  Action item:   take a tour of your whole house to identify the safest place in each room, away from breakable windows — and preferably under a sturdy piece of furniture.

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

P.S.  Windows are only one danger point. In an earthquake nearly every movable item could become a missile! For more ideas about improving the safety of your home, check out this recent Advisory: Secure Your Space.

Preparing Inside the Home

There is no guarantee that you’ll be home when the “big one” hits. But if your home has been prepared to withstand an earthquake or storm, you’ll find more there to appreciate when you DO get back.

I rode through the 1989 quake in the S.F. Bay Area in a restaurant. We came out shaken but unhurt. A couple of hours later I dropped off my colleague at her apartment. I went in with her. It was amazing.

The kitchen looked as though a whirling dervish had gone through every cabinet and cupboard and just tugged and thrown things out into the middle of the room. Broken glasses of relish and jam were mixed with dishes and pots and pans; fruit was mushed in with books and flour and, I remember, a broken bottle of vinegar. Broken flowerpots, broken fishbowl. (Who know where the fish was?) Plates and cups smashed, with a colander lying on top of them. Half the leftovers from the refrigerator, its door hanging open. Everything already starting to smell and spoil.

What a mess!

Step One — Take a Safety Inventory.

To start to prepare your house, simply do a walkthrough and take an inventory of WHAT WILL FALL OUT OR FALL OVER?

Step Two — Build Your Action List.

Now, systematically begin securing your home against this potential damage. Here are some ideas and some of the tools or equipment you’ll need.

* Rearrange storage. Put heavy things on lower shelves, precious things behind cabinet doors. Keep dangerous or toxic materials in low cabinets, too.

* Get latches for your cabinets. Easy, cheap to install.

* Use adhesive putty (“Museum putty”) to pin down collectibles or art work on shelves.

* Strap down computers, monitors and TV screens. (Over 300 people were killed from falling TVs last year, not even in earthquakes!) Strapping kits are available at home improvement stores.

* Fasten bookcases and wardrobes to the wall. Our recent purchase of bookcases at Ikea automatically included earthquake angle brackets.

* Keep books on the shelves, even if the bookcase doesn’t fall over. String a piece of fishing line across the shelf in front of the books, or use specially designed elastic cords.

* Wine bottles?  Take a good look at your wine collection. Figure a way to restrain the bottles by enclosing them.

* Your refrigerator or dish washer may creep or fall in an earthquake. You can fasten it to the wall (to the studs) using plumber’s tape (metal straps with holes) or Velcro fasteners. Get some expert advice here before you attach anything to the refrigerator back.

If you’ve read this far, you realize that each house is different.

Action item: Do the walk-through today! If you have children, enlist their help. Start taking steps to make your home safer. (You’ll sleep better as a result, too.)

Virginia
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team

P.S. You’ll find some specific recommendations for safety fasteners, straps, etc. right  here.

It could have been so much worse.

We had an emergency in our neighborhood this last week. Didn’t fall into the category of widespread disaster, but we are all still shaking our heads about “what could have been” if it had been a windy day…

One of our elderly neighbors called AAA because her car wouldn’t start. She hadn’t used it in months. Well, AAA came, started the car, and suggested that the owner let it run “for a while.”

An hour later, she had fallen asleep. And that car, parked right alongside the house, was beginning to smoke.

Quick action by observant neighbors.

When the mailman came by, the car and carport were engulfed in smoke, and flames were licking at the house itself. About that time neighbors saw the flames, too, and called the fire department. The mailman pounded on the door and pulled the shaky and confused resident right out into the street. She was safe.

Meanwhile, the house was burning.  Three different fire stations responded to the 911 calls, as did a number of police cars.

By the time First Responders arrived…

By the time they arrived, CERT members had taken in the homeowner and called her relatives, and were clearing the streets of gawkers in order to allow ready access to the First Responders.  CERT training made it easy for these neighbors to act promptly and with authority!  The CERT team members didn’t save the house — even the fire department couldn’t do that — but the neighborhood was definitely safer as a result of their actions.

Action Item: Make sure all your cars are properly maintained, exercised on a regular basis, and always have at least a half-tank full of fresh gas in case you need to evacuate. This simple discipline will save your investment, and may well save your life.

 

If you are an employer looking for more guidance regarding workplace preparedness, and are ready to delve into the regulations surrounding this area, OSHA – Occupational Safety and Health Administration — has published a number of informational factsheets on workplace emergencies and workplace preparedness.

Among them:

Planning and Responding to Workplace Emergencies

This two-page overview lists requirements for companies with more than 10 employees. Sections of the report include:

o Planning
o Chain of Command
o Emergency Response Teams
o Response Activities
o Employee Training
o Personal Protection
o Medical Assistance

How to Plan for Workplace Emergencies and Evacuations (OSHA 3088)

A far more comprehensive document, this 25-page report is written for the employer, to make sure the employer is following all required and recommended procedures to protect the business. This document covers all the items listed in the fact sheet above, with particular attention to fires and evacuations. A comprehensive flowchart on page 11 determines just who is required to have a written Emergency Action Plan.

Both OSHA reports are available at www.osha.gov.

Simple Plans for Small Businesses

If you own or work in a small business, you may still require a plan.  In the absense of more formal arrangements, download the Emergency Plan Guide’s Seven Steps to Workplace Preparedness.  It will give you a place to start.

Follow up with other Advisories that deal with finding workplace leaders and assembling your workplace emergency response team.

In a collapsed building

I don’t know about you, but as I watched television the aftermath of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in San Francisco and again following the disaster in Haiti, one thing sent chills down my spine — the thought of people pinned alive and injured below fallen concrete, smashed cars and collapsed buildings, waiting for rescue, waiting, waiting . . .

By way of a side note here: My partner, Virginia Nicols, was lecturing in Silicon Valley the day the Loma Prieta quake struck.  She and two colleagues were discussing the subject of her evening lecture over dinner in a restaurant. 

The three of them went under the table and were uninjured, but damage to the restaurant was extensive with broken glass and fallen shelves throughout. They emerged onto streets with no traffic lights, no sound coming from the car radio.  This was before everyone had a car radio or a cell phone.  I set up an automatic re-dial and got through to her about 2 hours after the quake hit.

The day after she came home (we were living on the East Coast then) we went dining and dancing at a local club.  The fact that it was in an old, refurbished-brick building that would not likely withstand even a light jolt proved so distracting to her that we had to leave 10 minutes after we had arrived.  It took her more than a year to be able to spend time in what her whole being told her were potential death traps. 

And if it were you?

Imagine being buried alive, lying in the darkness, not knowing what the situation is above ground and wondering if anyone would find you before you die.  Imagine having no way of letting your family, co-workers or friends know that you are indeed alive and desperately in need of help.

How to let people know your whereabouts?!

You might immediately think of the emergency alert devices that are particularly marketed to senior citizens living alone. (“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”)

When you think further, you realize that all of these devices cost money (usually a monthly subscription), operate via cell phone transmission, have specific geographic or protocol limitations and all have fairly expensive price tags.

Cell phones certainly are among the most widely available devices for letting people know where you are and what your condition is in an emergency.  But whom do you notify?  What if your battery dies?  What if the cell phone towers in your area are damaged from the emergency, overloaded with phone traffic or simply inoperative?

The reality is that cell phones have limited reliability in an emergency and, depending on the carrier, they may or may not perform well inside of dwellings.  Without electricity, batteries cannot be recharged so the cell phone may only have a limited life.  And, where the best advice is to have out-of-the-area contacts to call (to avoid overloaded local phone lines), this only works if you even have the ability to call out on your cell phone.

And, I don’t know about you, but I would find it difficult to have the discipline to wait for several hours to make distress calls in the hope that cell phone service would be restored anytime soon.

Is there an answer? 

Well, maybe there are a couple . . .

First, the low-tech answer.  I don’t see a lot of people adopting it, but it makes some sense. What is it?  A simple noisemaking device called a “whistle.”  I’m not sure what kind of a fashion statement it makes to wear a whistle around your neck every day, but maybe an unobtrusive one on a key chain could avoid some of the potential snickering . . . especially in the work environment.

Something to think about, depending on your daily routine.

As for high-tech option, consider social media to contact people you are connected to.  Again, this depends on whether or not you have wireless access or even whether or not you run you life by your smart phone.  Using your cell phone requires, of course, that you know how to TEXT.  (Here’s an Advisory that explains how to text for those who don’t yet do it every day.)

This is definitely a subject that warrants more conversation and there is no one or easy solution.  For now, I am looking for some more low-tech solutions.

 

Joe Krueger
Your Emergency Plan Guide Team