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	Photo: Julie Goonan

Statistically speaking, we're just about due for fires, floods and a really big earthquake. With some simple preparation, though, you can get yourself—and your family—through in one piece.

    The city of St. George lies in the hot southwestern corner of Utah, in an arid valley of red dirt. About 120 miles north of Las Vegas on Interstate 15, this town of 70,000 sprawls into the high desert, with gated communities making room for hundreds of retirees coming for the 100-degree summers, clean air and abundant golf courses. Founded in the 1860s by Brigham Young as a cotton-farming town, which has given the area the nickname “Utah’s Dixie,” St. George is now one the fastest-growing cities in the state. Crime is low, there hasn’t been an earthquake since a minor shaker knocked china off the shelf in 1902, and there aren’t any tornadoes, hurricanes or tidal waves. Nothing much happens in St. George to disrupt the hum of daily life. And that’s kind of the point. Statistically speaking, St. George is the safest place to live in the country.
    The Bay Area is not. Fifth on the list of U.S. Department of Homeland Security hot spots, the Feds know that if we don’t get shaken from one of the faults under our feet or immolated in the next wildfire, we just might take it in the bridge from a bicoastal terrorist nasty. Factor in a few perks that beachside urban areas have to deal with—pandemics, tsunamis, water contamination and oil spills—and it’s a wonder we’re not all moving to Utah. But I’m not planning on moving to the Utah desert. Are you?
    In the last 25 years, the president has declared Alameda County a disaster area 10 times, most of them related to rains and flooding. But the fact is, we have a short memory for disaster. When disasters do strike, we spring to action, donating money to aid agencies, lining up at blood banks, slinging indignation at our bumbling emergency management agencies. But in the aftermath, when everyday life creeps back in and the adrenaline wears off, we tend to forget the lesson and settle into the warm notion that nothing similar could ever happen to us. Here are two things that probably will. And sooner than you’d expect.

Earthquakes

    Look, you know that I know that you know that we all live on a series of enormous faults that are about to blow at any minute. And when one of them goes, it’s going to be big. Earth shaking, buildings falling down around us, fires burning in the rubble, smoke bringing rain, rain bringing mudslides. Freeways will be cut off, BART will be hobbled. The flatlands, which are mostly fill, will liquefy. Bridges and tunnels leading to the island of Alameda will be destroyed. People from Oklahoma to New Orleans to south Florida will be asking, “Why would anyone want to live in California?” The answer is that for the 140 years between major shakers, it’s actually a pretty nice place to live.
    The Hayward Fault, the 66-mile jugular of Bay Area seismic activity, runs northward from a dry hill in Milpitas, up Interstate 580 to the backside of Piedmont, through the Claremont Hotel’s backyard, down the middle of Cal stadium, ending in a hornlike jut in the Bay at Point Pinole. Ten miles or so upstream from its southern terminus, a team of researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey have been digging trenches in the soft ground of the fault near the Fremont BART station, searching for evidence of past tremblers. By examining the geologic strata and dating the layers from entombed woody materials, researchers can tell roughly when the fault went off, and with what kind of force, over the last 2,000 years.
    “Want the bad news?” says Mary Lou Zoback, the chief scientist on a three-year USGS working group that researched the probability of the next big one. “The Hayward fault has a major earthquake on average every 140 years. The last one was big enough to break the surface, minimum 6.5, probably a 6.9. That was in 1868.” Lessee, 1868, plus 140 years, carry the one, move the decimal point over—it seems 2008 could be a very auspicious year.
    And that’s just one fault. The result of Zoback’s three-year study was an ominous prediction: There is a 70 percent probability for one or more magnitude 6.7-or-greater earthquakes before 2030 (Loma Prieta was a 6.7). Zoback’s study also looked at the “repeat time” of faults, the period between shakes. The longer the period of a fault’s dormancy, the greater the probability it will be next. Statistically speaking, the next one will be the Rodgers Creek fault in Sonoma County, which has been quiet since records began being kept in 1776.
    But the real threat was just reported by the USGS in December: The Hayward fault is likely connected to the Calaveras fault south of it it, extending the team to well below Hollister. And when they go, they could go together with far worse results.
    Two things matter in an earthquake, according to Zoback: distance from the epicenter, and the type of ground you’re on. In certain types of soft soil, like sand, the water saturating the material begins to flow from the wave energy of an earthquake, turning it into a kind of quicksand, which amplifies the waveform, giving it more destructive force. This happens most commonly on landfill, and in the flat areas fronting the bay. Nearly half of the Bay Area’s developed urban land has at least a moderate level of susceptibility to liquefaction, and most of the city of Alameda is built on landfill.
    When a quake strikes, it begins moving along the fault, pushing focused wave energy in front of it, piling up the energy in a way similar to the Doppler effect you hear in the rising tone of an ambulance coming toward you. These waves travel through the ground like ripples on the surface of a pond, bouncing around in the basins formed by low hills. San Leandro and Livermore are settled into basins like these, making them more susceptible to earthquake energy.
    When it hits, the first wave is a hard, compressive 14,000 mph roller that strikes fast, straight in front of the quake. It’s followed shortly after by a slow, back and forth “S” wave that has more destructive shearing force. A building with a height that matches the wave’s wavelength sets up a harmonic vibration that destroys the building from the inside out. What do you do to survive one of these? “Duck and cover” has been replaced by “Duck, cover and hang on.”

Wildfires

    A major fire has happened every 10 to 15 years in the East Bay Hills, as the dry chaparral and brush grow to become tinder. But this is natural; fires should burn often in the dry coastal ranges where there is limited rainfall most of the year and the fog burns off quickly. Left alone, grasslands will burn every five years or so, pine forests every 10 and chaparral about every 25 years. But because we have active fire-suppression policies meant to protect property in these fire-prone areas, the fuel just builds until we have a conflagration. The last major fire, you may remember, was the 1991 Oakland Hills blaze, which burned 1,520 acres, destroyed 3,276 homes and killed 25 people. That was 17 years ago. We’re overdue.
    The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a report in 2007 on how climate change would alter the frequency and degree of natural disasters. It warned that fire season will come earlier and stay longer, and that because forests will be hotter and drier, they will be more vulnerable to invasive insect species that can kill plants and trees, creating more fuel for fires, which will then burn more intensely.
    Fires nearly always follow earthquakes, and Alameda will be hard-hit in the aftermath of the next quake not only because it’s built on such unsteady ground, but also because so many of its houses are of older, wood-frame construction. But if you seismically retrofit your house (see Tip No. 21, replace your shingles with a noncombustible roof, keep your yard watered, and know how to turn off your gas and electrical utilities after a disaster, you’ll have a much better chance of getting through with your house (and stuff) intact.
    Part of the joy of living in an over-civilized society is living without natural predators, but with an abundance of salt-and-vinegar potato chips, we get to grow a little soft. But that’s not an excuse to be unprepared. This issue is dedicated to exploring the various ways our zen-like composure can be disrupted, and the pretty simple, straightforward ways we can increase our chances for riding out the storm. Or fire. Or quake. By preparing our homes, finances and families, and learning a few tricks for dealing with the aftermath, we just might make it through with our skins and our stuff intact. What a story we’ll have for our friends in St. George.

AT HOME

    You think being stuck in traffic for a couple hours is hard? Try a week without TV. Or lights. Or running water. It’s not some hellish tough-love boot camp or the extreme edition of Outward Bound. In fact, you don’t even have to leave your house for this one. It’s a little thing called The Aftermath, and there’s that 70 percent chance it’s coming to a community exactly like yours within the next 22 years.
    So how can you make sure your family and a few shell-shocked neighbors survive the week before FEMA (and your insurance company) are able to get you back on your feet? Three things: Get Prepared, Make a Plan and Build a Kit.

Get Prepared

    It’s been said before, but don’t wait until your house is destroyed to find out what kind of coverage you have. Make sure that your home, cars and contents are fully covered—and that means at replacement value. Most homeowners and renters policies do not cover earthquakes, but they may cover fires (even ones that follow a quake). Make sure you know the details of your policy.
    Take a household inventory to make sure that there is a record of all your stuff. To ensure that it’s accurate, walk around and take digital photos of everything in every room. Open up closets and doors, pull out shelves, hit the garage and storage room. Take close-ups of items with particular historic or monetary value. Store these photos online, or burn them to a CD and send it out of the area.
    Keep your important documents safe by getting a fireproof household safe or a safe-deposit box at a bank. Keep your insurance information, passports, car titles, birth and wedding certificates, and bank and mortgage details together.
    To get ready for fires, make sure your roof is made of non-flammable material, like asphalt shingles. Exteriors made of stucco are naturally fire-resistant; and double-pane, tempered-glass windows don’t break as quickly in extreme heat. Make sure your plants outside are a high-moisture variety and you keep them watered. If you have trees, “up-limb” them by removing branches at least six feet up so sparks or a fire on the ground can’t climb up and out. This is crucial in wilderness areas, but important even in urban areas like Alameda, where fires can spread house to house.
    They don’t call them disasters for nothing. You may be given the chance to save someone’s life by performing CPR or first aid. Don’t rely on cloudy memories of your Lifesaving Merit Badge training; get trained by the local Red Cross Chapter—check out www.redcrossbayarea.com to find classes. It has trained more than 20,000 people in disaster preparedness so far, and is giving away disaster-preparedness kits to low-income folks after they take the course.
    You can also join a Citizen’s Emergency Response Team. The Alameda Fire Department and local Red Cross chapter train civilians as first responders after a disaster, teaching first aid, light search and rescue and lifesaving techniques. “[CERT members] are part of the solution, not part of the problem,” says Ricci Zombeck, Alameda’s disaster preparedness coordinator. “First, they’re self sufficient; then they are available to help in their neighborhood.” Once the 20-hour training is over, you can join your neighborhood’s team to stay part of the phalanx. Alameda’s program has been established for about five years and has trained more than 400 people. See www.ci.alameda.ca.us/fire/cert.html for more information.

Make a Plan

    It’s important that if your family has to leave the house quickly everyone knows where to go to meet back up. This means two places: right outside the house (in case of a sudden emergency, such as a fire) and outside the neighborhood (in case you’re asked to evacuate the area or you’re caught out). Even though picking a place to meet seems like a simple step, says Zombeck, many people are killed when they go back into a burning house looking for a family member, when that person has exited the house a different way.
    If the phones are down and your family isn’t all in one place, make sure you have an out-of-state contact for everyone to check in with—oftentimes long-distance calls can get through when local ones are overloaded.
    Make sure everyone knows how to shut off the gas, water and electricity, and have crescent wrenches nearby to turn them off. You’ll have to do this if you need to abandon the house. Calls to evacuate sometimes give residents as little as 10 minutes to pack up and go, not uncommon in cases of fires spreading house to house. Think now about what you’d be able to grab quickly. If a fire breaks out and you need to evacuate, pull the doors shut on your way out to slow the spread.

Build a Kit

    There are lots of lists out there to help you build the perfect disaster kit, and we’ve included a pretty comprehensive one here, but just think about what you’d need for everyone and your pets to survive for seven days. Canned or packaged food, water (a gallon a day per person and bleach to purify more), sleeping bags, clothes, flashlights, sturdy shoes, whistles and gloves for heavy lifting. Keep it all in a backpack for easy transport. Don’t forget whatever meds you’re taking, and include a pretty beefy first-aid kit.
    Other must-haves: Buckets for washing and transporting water. Plastic sheeting to keep the rain off and for patching holes in windows and roofs (and to cover the windows of your safe room in case of loose biohazards). A battery- (or crank-) powered radio, like the one the Red Cross sells, unless you want to spring for a household generator. Lots of cash in small bills so the stores don’t have to make change. Plastic bags with ties and kitty litter (for “going”). You’ll want a crowbar and a set of pliers. And duct tape, plenty of duct tape. Rope is good, and so are a notepad and pens for leaving “I’m with the Human Survival League. Back by dinner” notes to family members.
    Disaster coordinator Zombeck says some estimates put the number of people made homeless in Alameda by a major quake at 8,000. The truth is, if you’re home when the disaster hits, and you’ve got your kit prepared, you and your family have a good chance of getting through safely.

Caught Out

    When you bought your house, you made sure it was on bedrock. When you made your rendezvous plan, you printed it on laminated wallet cards. When you made your disaster kit, you included gold bullion in case paper money becomes worthless in the After Times. You’re totally prepared for when the disaster comes—unless you’re not home when it happens.
    One thing to remember about earthquakes is they’re murder on roads and bridges. If the Hayward fault goes, it could slice freeways and city streets down the middle, dividing the county into nearly impassable east and west sides, as well as knocking out Alameda’s bridges and tunnels—all of which are in moderate-to-very-high liquefaction susceptibility and shaking potential zones (remember, the Hayward fault is only 4 miles away). The Association of Bay Area Governments puts Alameda in the “red zone,” meaning that it shows “a potential of violent shaking that will produce heavy damage.” This means that if you work off the Island, you might not be able to get back for a day or two, and even then you might have to leave your car. So take care to be self-sufficient for at least a couple days, whether you’re in your car or at work, and make sure that if you have kids in school, they know someone will be by to pick them up.

At Work

    The fact is, you might be at work when Shaky M. Shaker gets to town, and your kids might be in school. So what do you do? Erroll Najee, the enthusiastic founder of Business Emergency Safety Training, an Oakland company that provides safety training for businesses in Northern California, recommends learning how to use a fire extinguisher, because the main threat will probably be from fire, which spreads rapidly.
    “We grew up with them, but we don’t know how to use them. People think they work like a grenade. You pull the pin and stand back.” Then he asks me, “How long do you think they last?” “I dunno. Five minutes? One?”
    “You’re pretty good!” he says. “There’s only 15 seconds worth of material. How far away do you have to stand?” It goes on like this for a while. Soon I find out that anything bigger than a small trashcan should be handled by the professionals, unless there aren’t any around, and that you need to aim at the base of the fire. But wait! There’s an acronym (the disaster preparedness industry, as you might expect, is filled to brimming with these little call-and-response chestnuts). “It’s P.A.S.S. Pull the pin, aim at the base of the fire, squeeze the trigger and sweep from side to side.” Just make sure you call 911 first if you’re the only one around battling the blazing bag of popcorn.
    Also make sure to keep a smaller version of the home disaster kit at work, in case you’re stuck in the building. Include sturdy shoes, if you wear ones that aren’t. A few energy bars, a big bottle of water and a blanket in case you spend the night (see tip No. 18 for a more complete list).

Kids at School

    If you have kids at school, your first response will be to call the office. In a real emergency, there may not be someone manning the phones, even if they’re still working. This is where having an out-of-state contact becomes crucial. Often local phone service is overwhelmed, but calls out of state can get through. If your kid has a cell phone, have them try you first, then your out-of-state contact (make sure that person’s phone number is somewhere your kid can find it). If he doesn’t have a cell phone, make sure he’s got a buck in quarters to use in an emergency.
    Jeanne Perkins, an earthquake and hazards program consultant at ABAG, recommends adding a long list of friends and relatives to the release form you sign at the beginning of each school year indicating who can pick up your kid, taking care to include people who work close to the school.
    “If you have a combination of messed-up roads and the phone system is overloaded, you’re not going to be able to get a hold of your cousin to go pick up your kid,” she says. “You have to have thought of that ahead of time. And so your kid’s going to be stuck at the school, unable to go home with a friend or relative, because you didn’t put that person on the emergency [release] form.” In the chaos that follows, use a password system with your kids to determine friend from foe. If a co-worker or friend of yours that they don’t recognize comes to pick them up, they can say the password so your kids know they’re on the good side.

MEDICINE

    Before Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency suggested that your home disaster kit have enough food, water and medicine to keep you going for three days. Now FEMA is recommending that you be able to survive off the grid for a week, and that means having a proper supply of medication on hand. The trouble is, medication has a limited shelf life, so you need to be diligent about keeping your supply fresh. That, and insurance companies generally don’t cover an extra emergency refill that you could sock away. What do you do?
    Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution. The easiest thing to do is get a supply of samples from your doctor, if your doctor is amenable. These freebies from pharmaceutical companies come in sealed packages, perfect for adding to a disaster kit. Just make sure you’ve noted their expiration date on your calendar. When that date gets close, take them out of your kit and swap with a week’s worth of your current supply, or go back to your doc and repeat with some fresh samples.
    One thing most insurance companies offer, including Blue Shield of California, is a vacation supply of medication. This is intended for people who are going on long trips to be able to stock up before they go, providing they have refills remaining. This could be tricky (and you didn’t hear it from us), but you may be able to refill your prescription before you’ve used up your vacation supply, giving you a little back stock. You can also get extra prescriptions if your doctor allows it, and pay for them outside of your insurance system.
    Another option for making sure that you always have meds on hand is difficult for us procrastinators, but it’s making sure you refill early, so that you always have at least a week’s worth to spare. Instead of waiting until you have that last pill rolling around in the bottle, call ahead of time.
    If you’re insulin dependent, you know that insulin has a short shelf life. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, even if insulin is kept in the refrigerator, you can’t really push the expiration date, which is usually one to two years. When the Big One hits, and the power goes out to your fridge, insulin can be kept unrefrigerated for up to 28 days.
    Don’t forget that you might not be able to get back home if you’re away when disaster hits, so keep a few days’ worth of medicine in your car and in your disaster kit at work.

COMMUNICATIONS

    In our cell phone/iPod/Wi-Fi age, we forget that sometimes the best methods of communication are the loudest ones. That’s why Alameda installed the Alerting & Warning System, five cochlea-busting sirens, each with a range of over a mile, that are intended to serve as a notice of a wide-ranging disaster or emergency.
    If you hear them (except for the first Wednesday of the month at noon), the message is: shelter, shut and listen. Shelter in your home or the nearest building, shut the doors and windows to seal yourself in as tightly as possible, and listen for instructions. Ostensibly this will come not from a roaming bank of speakers, but broadcast on 1280 AM, also known as Alameda Radio, which transmits from Franklin Park (you have your crank- or battery-powered radio, right?). Assuming the power is still on, or you’re managing to generate your own power from your teenager’s brooding angst, local Cable Channel 15—Alameda’s government access television station—will also be broadcasting the latest updates.
    In the event of a catastrophe, time becomes precious and short. To help get the word out quickly, the city can call residents using the county’s “Reverse 911” system. Also called CityWatch, the system uses a database of current home phone numbers and overlays it with geographic information so it can call the home phones in a specific geographic region or zip code over and over again until it gets through. It was used successfully in last year’s San Diego fires to notify people in the path of the blaze.
    The main drawback with the system is that it only works on landline phones, those curious antiques with the stuttering dial tone collecting dust on the downstairs end table. That’s one reason why it’s important to maintain one, even if the rest of your time is spent on your cell phone. Landlines usually work even when the electricity is out; just make sure it is corded (no wireless handsets). There’s always a fire-sale price on these at Radio Shack; $6.99 at last check.
    One of the great myths of our communications systems is that the cell system works independent of the landlines, so if you have both, you have a redundant system. Not true. A disaster that knocks out landlines will also knock out the cell system, says ABAG’s Perkins. “There is a myth on the part of the public that cell phones are independent from landlines. But they’re not. To somehow think that, ‘Well, I’ve got a landline in my house, and I’ve got a cell phone, therefore I have a duplicate system,’ [is wrong].”
    In all the confusion that follows a disaster, Perkins recommends staying off any phone unless you absolutely, positively need it, to clear up some bandwidth for rescue workers. And yes, that means no calls to your friends asking, “Hey, did you feel that?”
    Every disaster we’ve had teaches fire departments and police how to better communicate between themselves and the outside agencies that can get called in to assist. Most often the difficulties are around the hardware—the radios used by police and fire departments statewide are on different frequencies and bands, in part because there has never been an interoperability requirement. But this is changing—the state is funding new communications systems that will allow agencies to finally be able talk to one another when reinforcements get called in to help.

TRANSPORTATION

    The reason you stock your disaster kit with food and water isn’t because there won’t be any at the stores. A Hayward-fault quake will slice Interstate 680 freeway into three sections near Fremont, with the sides of the fault moving up to 10 feet. It will sever highways 262 and 84 in San Jose. It will cut through a dozen major roads on its way through the monster I-580 interchange in Castro Valley. It will take out I-580 again near Golf Links Road, again at the intersection with highways 13 and 24. It will neatly bisect the Berkeley Hills, roughly following the Arlington and the base of the foothills to cut through Interstate 80 on its way out to the Bay.
    This is why in a big one, the most important thing isn’t what kind of car you drive, but what side of the fault line you’re on. When the Northridge earthquake hit, people just assumed they could get in their SUV and bulldoze across the backroads to get home, avoiding the freeways. But they ran into problems, according to ABAG’s Perkins. “The problem is that underneath the buckled backroads ... there are going to be other problems where that fault crosses. You’re going to have sewer and water lines broken; you may have a natural gas line that’s broken. And you’ve got repair vehicles that are trying to get up there—and you’re going to be in a mess. You’re contributing to the problem by preventing utility repair trucks from doing their job.”
    In Alameda, the Red Cross and city disaster planners know that the Island could be cut off in a quake, which during the middle of the workday could mean a lot of Islanders stranded away from their homes. “We know that in the case of the big one, it’s a ‘when’ not an ‘if’ situation,” says Jim Franz, a 17-year veteran of the Red Cross and current director of community services for Red Cross Bay Area in Alameda. “If it is a major quake of the scale of what happened in 1906, we know that we’ll be isolated. That we’ll lose the bridges. In the event of a natural disaster there won’t be any mutual aid. Folks are going to be on their own. And with their busy lives, people keep putting planning off.”
    With roads and bridges out, chances are the neglected ferry system will be leaned on heavily to provide transportation around the region. That’s the reasoning behind SB 976, a state measure passed in October 2007 that creates a new transportation authority to oversee and consolidate the different ferry systems currently operating on the Bay, including the Alameda/Oakland Ferry, the Vallejo Baylink Ferry and the Harbor Bay Ferry. Called the Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority, the agency’s mission is to organize a centralized water transportation system that will be able to shoulder the demand in the case of a major disaster. It will initially be funded with $250 million from a statewide infrastructure bond passed in November.
    When disaster planners look for a good example of what could happen when the big one hits, they don’t look at the Northridge earthquake, but to Kobe, Japan. In 1995, Kobe suffered a 6.9 earthquake, about the size of the one the USGS is predicting for the Bay Area. It hit early in the morning with no foreshocks, and it was devastating. Natural gas lines broke, igniting fires that firefighters couldn’t put out because the water mains broke, too. Like the Bay Area, Kobe had many unreinforced masonry buildings—brick mostly—that toppled, and much of its land was fill, which liquefied into quicksand. Local officials were criticized for not providing proper traffic control, and the roads quickly turned into gridlock, stranding emergency vehicles and keeping the injured from getting to the hospitals.
    This is the part we often forget—that even if hospitals and airports and ferry terminals survive the quake (the airports and the port of Oakland are on stronger engineered fill), they aren’t much good if the roads are impassable. It could take days for the Feds to arrive and take over recovery efforts, so in a real emergency, we have to be self-
sufficient. “Citizen preparedness—that’s the first line of defense in the case of a disaster,” says Zombeck. “We expect that citizens have to fend for themselves in the first three to five days.” There are going to be delays in getting any kind of state or federal aid, both because the roads could be impassable and because our neighbors will all be in the same trouble. “There’s mutual aid agreement between areas in California. But that becomes moot in the case of a region-wide disaster,” he says.
    What about BART? The system is undergoing an Earthquake Safety Program, a seismic upgrade that’s the result of 2004’s Measure AA, a 10-year, $980 million bond measure meant to strengthen vulnerable parts of the system, including elevated tracks and the transbay tube, in order to make sure it gets back in shape quickly. The tube is especially vulnerable because it’s reinforced with fill that could liquefy in a quake. In the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, BART was running again within hours, according to BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, but that quake was 50 miles away.
    The next one could be anywhere, which is why the BART seismic plan is girding against the “maximum credible earthquake,” a scenario that could conceivably happen. And that might be along the Hayward fault, which runs across both the Dublin/Pleasanton and Pittsburg/Bay Point lines. “Over the years we’ve gotten more knowledge about how earthquakes happen, and how to strengthen our [infrastructure],” says Johnson. “But there’s always a possibility that an earthquake does more damage than we anticipated.”

SECURITY

    One of the most unnerving aspects of natural disasters is the aftermath. When the fire swept through the Oakland Hills in October 1991, teacher Molly Coffey-Smith was living in Piedmont, an area that just skirted the blaze. She was home when a police car rolled up the street with speakers telling everyone to evacuate. The news channels were soon showing a map of the fire’s progress through her neighborhood. When the residents evacuated, the looters moved in. “There was looting all around the Oakland Hills,” she says. “People got wind of the disaster, and knew that everyone was evacuated.”
    After the confusion that accompanied the blaze, it was apparent that what was needed among the dozens of responding government agencies was a standardized command structure, a familiar, unified form that could be conjured when multiple departments convened on the scene. So in 1993 California created the Standardized Emergency Management System, a system that all responding agencies are trained to be a part of when necessary. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security created a similar national system in 2004 called the National Incident Management System. What it trains police officers and other departments to do, according to Oakland Sergeant Michael Poirier of the police chief’s office, is use a standard set of doctrines and procedures that everyone can understand, including forming an interim agency complete with departments—command, operations, planning, logistics and finance. Captains take charge of each unit and integrate members of other agencies (like fire and public works) into units when they arrive.
    Alameda’s version is called the Emergency Operations Center. When the big one hits, department heads from police, fire, public works and elsewhere report and work together as management staff. The city manager heads the EOC, with the others serving as the executive staff. Depending on the type of event, another staffer might take over—the police in case of civil unrest, for example, or the fire department in case of a spreading conflagration.

Securing the Port

    The biggest security concern in the area is the Port of Oakland. As the fourth-biggest container port in the country, the port received nearly 2,000 container ships in 2006. “If they wanted to hit us economically,” says a port official, “they could hit the port. It would have a $2 billion-a-day ripple effect throughout the region.”
    Mike O’Brien, a former Coast Guard officer, is the port facilities security officer. Because the port doesn’t have its own security force, his job is to provide day-to-day coordination between the many agencies that patrol the 900-acre area—the U.S. Coast Guard (which handles the waterways), Sheriff’s Office, Oakland Police Department, California Highway Patrol (which watches the bridges), U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Before 9/11, he says, port security’s aim was to not slow down the flow of commerce. But now they make sure that nothing dangerous enters (or leaves) the port area or any of the waterways.
    O’Brien and the Coast Guard understand their job doesn’t end at the port. “We concentrate on overall regional risk reduction, not just in one area, like the port. The waterways are connected, and an accident will affect every port in the region,” he says. The port’s strategy
is a preventative one—tight security, constantly.
    Besides cameras watching the fences, and ID checks for traffic coming in, the containers bound for the port are monitored as well. Twenty-four hours before containers are loaded onto ships bound for Oakland, a manifest must be sent to the port, which then approves each container. When the containers are offloaded, they are scanned to make sure their contents match the manifest. They are also checked for radiation—the containers are loaded onto trucks, which are then driven through a large yellow horseshoe-shaped detector before leaving the port. The Coast Guard also checks the backgrounds of the ships’ crews, the last five ports of call, and safety and compliance issues.
    But in the event something slips through, O’Brien has a top-secret manual under lock and key called the Maritime Security Plan, the master plan for the region maintained by the Coast Guard. “It outlines the likely threat and what the response is. It organizes the chaos,” says O’Brien. And while he wouldn’t share any details of the plan, he did say there are full-scale trainings four times a year. So if you happen to be caught in a swarm of armed, black-clad soldier types while shopping at Jack London Square sometime in April, don’t worry—it’s just your tax dollars at work.

PETS

    The dictionary might define “snowball” as a ball of packed snow, especially one made for throwing at other people for fun, but for pet lovers the world over who watched the little white puffball get wrenched from a crying boy’s hands in the aftermath of Katrina, the word is as dear as Alamo is to a Texan. That’s because the Pets Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act, otherwise known as the Snowball Bill, was born in California Congressman Tom Lantos’ heart the moment the boy’s cries were broadcast from Louisiana station WWL-TV.
    Passed in 2006, the PETS act requires local and state disaster plans to include household animals in the event of a major disaster or emergency. The Oakland Police Department’s Animal Services department has developed a Pet Preparedness Packet (available at www.oaklandnet.com/fire/core/pets.html) to help get your animal ready to brave the aftermath. The suggestions include getting enough food and water ready to keep Miss Kitty in kibble for at least a few days, making sure that even indoor animals are chipped and have ID tags on collars, and having an understanding with your neighbors that in the event one of you is stranded off the Island, the animals should be taken care of. Have a few hard-copy photos of your pets in your disaster kits—in case the pets get away, you can ask around if anyone’s seen them. Make sure to have pet carriers to confine pets and to keep them from bolting. Don’t forget to have enough litter around to last for a week, and use common sense about what other supplies—first-aid kits, medicine, leashes, bowls, etc.—you’d be smart to keep in a centralized location so your animal can weather a disaster.
    Most disaster shelters will not be able to take your pet, because of health regulations, so you’ll need to find a hotel, friend or relative, or out-of-area boarding veterinarian that can take you all in.
    Finally, get a Rescue Alert Sticker from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals to put in your window. It lists the number and kind of pets you have in the house, and when you leave with them you can write “evacuated” across the front of it, letting everyone know you got Mr. Chips and Miss Piggles out safely. Other organizations, such as local humane societies, also produce material with disaster-planning tips to help you ensure the safety of your animals, so check those options as well.

Together We Prepare

    Produced by the Bay Area chapter of the American Red Cross, the Alameda Fire Department and Alameda Power and Telecom, Together We Prepare is a special film that can help Island residents prepare for natural disasters. It is part of an initiative that seeks to train 20,000 Alameda residents in potentially life-saving skills. The 30-minute film includes the steps you can take before and after an emergency. Watch the film with your family on most Tuesday nights at 6:30 p.m. on cable channel 31 or pick up a copy at the Alameda locations listed below. For more information, visit www.alamedatv.org/programs/twp.html.

• Disaster Preparedness Office
950 West Mall Square
Building One, Ste. 150
(510) 337-2130

• Alameda Power and Telecom
Service Center
2000 Grand St.

• American Red Cross Bay Area
Alameda Service Center
451 Stardust Place
(510) 814-4209


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