Emergency Preparedness

Superstorms that slammed the East Coast prompted many Southern Californians to take a hard look at their own emergency preparedness plans, including how to keep cellphones charged when the power goes out. With a flurry of battery-boosting devices landing on the market, I tested eight of the latest and most novel designs on a recent ski trip to Colorado, reasoning that besides a storm, earthquake or blackout, the last place you'd want to be stranded with...

In the seismic annals of California, Monday's magnitude 4.7 earthquake was little more than a footnote. It gave Southern California a small morning jolt but caused no damage and was largely shrugged off by noon. But in one important way, the quake was highly significant because it marked an advance in California's burgeoning earthquake early warning system. The quake struck in the desert town of Anza, about 35 miles south of Palm Springs, and hundreds of sensors embedded in the ground immediately sent an alert to seismologists at Caltech in Pasadena.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Thursday announced a restructuring of the city's emergency management operations, saying the city's blueprint for responding to disasters has not changed since the Northridge earthquake in 1994. Under one of the proposed changes, the city authority that handles emergency preparedness would be chaired by the general manager of the city's Emergency Management Department, instead of the Los Angeles police chief as is the case now. The changes would require approval by the City Council.

When a major earthquake strikes, seconds count. In the devastating 2011 Japan earthquake, a sensor embedded in the ground detected the first signs of movement and immediately sent out an alert at the speed of light. Within seconds, text messages warning of impending shaking went out to roughly 50 million people. Many people in Tokyo, 200 miles away from the epicenter, knew the quake was coming before they felt the shaking about 30 seconds later. Trains were able to slow down or stop, and not a single car derailed.

President Bush issued a formal national security directive Wednesday ordering agencies to prepare contingency plans for a surprise, "decapitating" attack on the federal government, and assigned responsibility for coordinating such plans to the White House. The prospect of a nuclear bomb being detonated in Washington without warning, whether smuggled in by terrorists or a foreign government, has been cited by many security analysts as a rising concern since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

A new analysis of the San Andreas fault that peers thousands of years into its turbulent past suggests that sections in the Inland Empire and Palm Springs area may be more primed for a major earthquake than previously believed. The new work -- already the subject of dispute -- also indicates that the San Francisco Bay Area could soon emerge from the relative seismic quiet that has lasted since the magnitude 7.1 Loma Prieta quake in 1989.

When Ellie Vargas of Woodland Hills feels anxious about earthquakes, she comforts herself with this image: thousands of rescue workers in pea-colored helmets and vests freeing trapped victims, fashioning splints out of newspapers for the injured and shutting off gas mains. The battalions are no fantasy, but Vargas' fellow graduates of a city-sponsored program that has trained 10,000 volunteers to respond to the next big disaster.

In the event of a major disaster resulting in massive injuries, ordinary citizens throughout Southern California could call the police or fire departments, hospitals or other agencies that would provide aid within any city.

An Orange County helicopter program, grounded during the Laguna Beach firestorms, is being recommended for takeoff, according to a county Fire Department review of local emergency preparedness. The report was completed after last week's catastrophic Northridge earthquake but provides few details about cost and operation of a firefighting air force. Nonetheless, the proposal is expected to get general support today when it is presented to the Board of Supervisors.

Ventura County firefighters and Cal State Channel Islands officials will meet today to discuss a grand jury report that questions whether the campus near Camarillo is adequately prepared for emergencies. The May 2 report found, among other things, that the nearest fire station to the new university is at least a 10-minute drive away -- three minutes longer than the National Fire Protection Assn. recommends for a safe response time.

Four southern Louisiana parishes were under a state of emergency Tuesday after heavy rains poured through the region, causing flash flooding. According to the governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness , a state of emergency was declared in Acadia, St. Landry, St. Martin and Lafayette parishes. No injuries were reported, but at least 77 residents had to be rescued from high water in Carencro , a town in Lafayette Parish, the state agency said.

Four major Los Angeles hospitals are expressing alarm over plans to shut down the 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass for 53 hours next month, saying transportation and law enforcement agencies have not adequately prepared for getting medical employees to work on time. The unprecedented closure, required to demolish a bridge as part of a widening of the 405, is expected to cause major delays. It has prompted some institutions in the area — including the Getty Center museum and the Skirball Cultural Center — to close during the July 15-18 weekend.

Preparing for disasters has always been part of the mission of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from hurricanes to flu pandemics. It was only a matter of time, then, before they decided to weigh in on another calamity of great concern to the public: the zombie apocalypse. "That's right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you'll be happy you read this," Dr. Ali S. Khan, an assistant surgeon general with the CDC and head of its office of Public Health Preparedness, wrote on the CDC's Public Health Matters blog.

Structural engineer Kit Miyamoto was giving a speech in Japan on earthquake safety when this month's record quake struck, giving him a front-row seat for the unfolding disaster and what steps might save lives next time. "This disaster basically paralyzed the whole country," said Miyamoto, president of West Sacramento-based Miyamoto International, standing amid the wreckage in this battered coastal city. "We can learn a lot of lessons for California. " What worked, and what didn't?

Officials tried to reassure Californians on Monday that the kind of nuclear crisis facing Japan was highly unlikely at the state's two nuclear power plants. Southern California Edison officials acknowledged that the San Onofre nuclear power plant was built to withstand a magnitude 7.0 quake ? not the 9.0 temblor that hit Japan. But quake experts said the chance of a similar-sized quake ?and a tsunami ? occurring in the southern half of California were highly unlikely. "There's no offshore fault in any of Southern California that's exactly like the one that broke in Japan," said Thomas H. Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center at USC. Photos: Scenes of earthquake destruction Steven Day, a seismology expert at San Diego State, said the highest magnitudes believed to be possible at the nearest significant fault lines to the two Central and Southern California plants ?

The threat level has never gone below yellow, once went to red and now may fade to black. The Homeland Security Department is poised to end its five-tiered, color-coded terrorism warning system, a post-Sept. 11 endeavor that has been called too vague to be useful and has been mostly ignored or mocked by the public. So forgotten is the system that the Homeland Security Department hasn't changed the alert level in four years, even after the attempted bombing of a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009.

Delivering an impact that knocked her pictures off walls and sent bookcases tumbling, the 1994 Northridge earthquake was pure trauma for Janine Perez. A block wall collapsed at the Santa Clarita house where she lived, the gas line broke and her boyfriend was almost trapped in a room because the door was blocked by fallen debris. "I was scared," said Perez, who is grateful that they escaped with no injuries.

A Community Emergency Response Team training is being scheduled. Residents, local businesses and civic groups interested in disaster and emergency preparedness training can contact the Emergency Services Office of the Police Department. Information: (714) 229-6625.

Dennis Walaker, the mayor of this flood-threatened city, closed a meeting Saturday by handing out celebratory cigars to officials -- to be smoked after the swollen Red River had crested. The city had spent an anxious week stacking 1 million sandbags to hold back the river, which was expected to near last year's record height of 40.8 feet. But on Saturday, with flood threats looming throughout the Upper Midwest, all signs seemed to indicate that the city would avoid calamity. The Red River, which flows north through tabletop-flat corn and beet fields, is projected to reach a high mark of 37 feet Sunday -- 19 feet above flood stage.

For all the attention generated by the massive earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, experts in California remain skeptical that residents of this quake-prone region are any better prepared for the inevitable Big One. California saw a rise in quake awareness and retrofitting after the state recorded a series of major temblors over seven years: Whittier in 1987, Loma Prieta in 1989 and Northridge in 1994. But there hasn't been a devastating temblor in the state since the Northridge quake, and experts are concerned that quake preparedness may have declined in recent years.