Ready to Shake?

Additional information gleaned from the Great Southern California ShakeOut

By Capt. Larry Collins, Los Angeles County Fire Department.

Note: The April issue of FireRescue magazine includes the Major Incident Readiness feature “Ready to Shake? Lessons from earthquake exercises can be applied to many regions,” p. 58. (Download the PDF here). Following is supplemental information, including passages from the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario, a list of activities from the Nov. 13 exercises and a synopsis of some of the recommendations from the earthquake task force.

Jump to...

• Bringing the ShakeOut to Life
• Search & Rescue Scenario
• Nov. 13 Exercises
• Multi-Agency Earthquake Task Force

BRINGING THE SHAKEOUT TO LIFE
As it has long been recognized that firefighters and rescue team members are often best (or at least more comfortable) reacting to actual incidents or concrete examples of actual incidents, the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario thoroughly detailed the science-based story of a San Andreas Fault quake, going far beyond the hypothetical situations that are sometimes used as the basis for disaster exercise. Following are some selected passages from the ShakeOut Earthquake Scenario:

Thursday, Nov. 13, 10:00 a.m.
The San Andreas Fault suddenly awakens at Bombay Beach, northeast of the Salton Sea (near the California/Mexico border), and the rupture shoots northwest along the fault at 2 miles per second, sending seismic energy waves out in all directions. In an instant, the ground on the two sides of the fault is offset nearly 44 feet, changing the political and geographic boundary between Imperial and Riverside counties.

10:00:30 a.m.
As the earthquake’s rupture front travels up the fault, it sends out seismic waves that shake the ground, shifting emergency generators, overturning computers, cracking airport runways and igniting fires. By now, the thick sediments of the Coachella Valley are resonating, with the earthquake waves bouncing between the rock walls of the valley’s edges. Strong shaking will continue here for nearly a minute (and overall shaking for nearly 3 minutes).

The life-safety provisions of California’s building codes have been improved over the years, and the many fairly new homes in the Coachella Valley suffer only minor damage. Yet every item inside these homes, if not secured, is heading to the floor. Shattered TVs and other home electronics create treacherous carpets of glass and cords. Many older buildings suffer structural damage. Many older concrete buildings quickly collapse, trapping occupants.

The rupture front continues its advance to San Gorgonio Pass and dismantles the ten miles of Interstate 10 freeway that straddles the San Andreas Fault. The eastern part of Riverside

County is now cut off from the western part.

10:01:00 a.m.
Most people in Los Angeles and Ventura counties are not yet aware of what is happening as the earthquake pounds the Coachella Valley and heads their way, by now bending rail lines and derailing a train. Roads, previously going across the fault, now end abruptly and pick up again 15 feet to the right. The strong shaking also sends landslides across the rails and roads. Pipelines snap and electrical transmission lines fail. Spraying fuel ignites, causing an explosion. Strong shaking begins to reverberate in the sediment-filled basins of the Inland Empire. Old warehouse districts and historic downtowns are crumbling, and many of their old, unretrofitted buildings have trapped or killed the people inside. Many older concrete buildings have collapsed, and many older wood-frame buildings have shifted off their foundations, breaking gas and water lines in the process. The Coachella Valley (including Palm Springs) is still shaking.

10:01:30 a.m.
Over geologic time, the motion of tectonic plates has pushed the mountains of Southern California up, while fire, rain and rivers have brought the mountains down, piece by piece, filling basins with sediments and creating low, flat areas. Like many cities, Los Angeles was built atop sediments. Some of the seismic waves now reach these sediments and find easy territory in which to move back and forth, shaking vigorously long after the waves fade elsewhere. Strong shaking will continue in Los Angeles for 55 seconds, to the shock of residents who remember the strong shaking during the 1994 Northridge earthquake, which lasted only 7 seconds. The seismic waves that reverberate in the sedimentary basins are big, long waves. Many buildings ride them like boats in choppy seas, but some are not so resistant. The prolonged, strong shaking heavily damages and sometimes collapses hundreds of old brick buildings, hundreds of older commercial and industrial concrete buildings, many wood-frame buildings, and even a few fairly new high-rise steel buildings.

10:02 a.m.
At last, the fault has stopped rupturing, but seismic waves continue to advance northward into Bakersfield, Oxnard and Santa Barbara, where the shaking is just beginning. Across Southern California, the power is out. Emergency generators that have been secured against earthquake shaking are still functional and now kick on. The shaking has finally stopped in the Coachella Valley, but the aftershocks are just beginning.

Throughout Southern California in the next few months, there will be tens of thousands of aftershocks large enough to feel. There will be dozens large enough to cause additional damage and to imperil victims and rescuers.

All over the region, a foreseeable tragedy unfolds. Buildings that engineers knew were going to perform badly have performed badly. These are older buildings, constructed with little earthquake resistance. The experts have names for them—non-ductile reinforced concrete, tilt-up concrete, unreinforced masonry, soft-stories—and hundreds of these buildings have now followed their reputations into the dust. Thousands of other structures are still standing but so gravely damaged that they can never be used again. While the earth still shakes in places far from the earthquake’s origin, people in the earliest hit areas are beginning to confront damaged buildings and to help those who are trapped or hurt. Lacking gloves, crowbars, and training, some people claw through debris with bare hands. Ultimately, 95 percent of those who are rescued will be rescued by bystanders, family members, and local responders.

Friday, Nov. 14, 03:17 a.m. (17+ hours after the quake began)
A 7.2-magnitude aftershock begins near San Bernardino and ruptures west along the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. This earthquake is considerably larger than 1994’s 6.7-magnitude Northridge earthquake, which killed 33 people and cost more than $40 billion. The rupture stops 18 miles east of Pasadena, near Monrovia. The location and size of this earthquake are devastating to the already-weakened infrastructure and overextended emergency response resources. The aftershock triggers damaging aftershocks of its own.

SEARCH & RESCUE
The ShakeOut Scenario also includes a detailed look at how search and rescue ops will unfold: “Most of the “live” rescues will be accomplished in the first few hours by the local fire departments and the system of local and regional USAR units and teams, augmented by spontaneous rescue groups who work with limited resources and skills but have the advantage of physical proximity to collapsed structures. Some of the larger state and federal USAR teams require time to mobilize and will be hampered by severe damage to transportation and communications lifelines as well as secondary effects of the earthquake including fire following and potential dam collapse.

Upon the cessation of shaking, people in the Southern California region who have experienced severe shaking will survey their surroundings; if at work, they will check on the well-being of their co-workers; if at home, they will check on the members of their household; and if in a public place, they will check on others who happen to be in the same vicinity. This basic “emergent” norm, calling for assistance to those who have become victims of the earthquake is highly salient during the immediate aftermath of the earthquake and provides the motivation for those who have survived the earthquake with minimal injury to devote themselves to those who are in need of assistance. This assistance is first expressed as a desire to help those who are trapped in debris and possibly injured. Most of these early rescues carried out by spontaneously assembled groups will be relatively uncomplicated, requiring few if any tools with first aid administered by those who happen to be present. If transportation is available and routes to local hospitals are unencumbered, the injured will be transported to nearby hospitals.

Once locally organized search and rescue teams arrive at the scenes of collapsed structures, they are likely to encounter ongoing search and rescue efforts by spontaneously formed groups who provide informal briefings to the organized teams and continue to work in cooperation with the organized responders, assume subordinate roles in the effort or redeploy to other collapse scenes where organized teams are not present. In most cases, spontaneous teams will have rescued many people trapped in the debris of badly damaged or collapsed buildings before organized teams appear on the scene. These rescues will be the less problematic ones that require minimal skills and simple tools. The remaining rescues that fall to the organized teams will be more difficult, requiring both training and more specialized rescue equipment. These rescues are also likely to involve more serious injuries and both greater on-site medical expertise and the need for close coordination with emergency vehicles available to transport the injured to hospitals.

At the end of the first day, the overall extent of the disaster is known as well as the fact that there are hundreds of sites throughout the region that require rescues. At this point, spontaneous groups of responders continue to work (though fatigue is depleting their ranks), locally based search and rescue teams are fully deployed with EOCs seeking assistance through the fire mutual-aid system, and national teams are being mobilized by FEMA. While technologies such as ShakeMap and HAZUS, as well as traditional reconnaissance measures that include windshield surveys and media monitoring, have contributed to understanding the disaster, the situation continues to evolve.

Immediately after the earthquake, fires have ignited at hundreds of locations and more fires continue to be reported. Bridge closures, damage to freeways and surface streets and debris in roadways have frustrated the timely and efficient deployment of search and rescue teams to objectives. Difficulties communicating between field units and EOCs has also impaired the ability of teams to accomplish search and rescue activities and teams are frustrated that successful rescues are not accompanied by rapid transportation of the critically injured to hospitals due to road conditions and poor communications.

Fire is becoming a major impediment to rescue efforts. Within 24 hours of the earthquake, several large fires are burning in the cities of Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Ana and East Los Angeles. Though all local fire units and equipment, including units from adjacent areas mobilized through the fire mutual aid system are engaged in fighting these fires, they are yet uncontained, and there is danger that several individual large fires will merge into a major conflagration. These fires have occurred in areas where search and rescue is needed or already in progress. Some search and rescue teams as well as spontaneous volunteers have been forced to abandon efforts to rescue people trapped in the debris due to rapidly approaching fires. Though teams have accelerated their efforts in these fire endangered areas and are working under considerable stress, many have been ordered to leave by fire units despite the fact that those trapped in the debris will die if fire reaches the site of rescues.

Other secondary hazards have also hampered search and rescue efforts, including an evacuation below a San Bernardino County dam that has been compromised by damage from the earthquake, several sites of hazardous materials releases and a continuing series of large aftershocks. Approximately 17 hours after the earthquake, dam inspectors discover transverse cracking and muddy water emerging at the toe of the Lake Gregory Dam near Crestline, north of the City of San Bernardino. After lengthy discussions among the dam inspectors, city officials and the San Bernardino County EOC, it is decided that the population below the dam will be evacuated.

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services requested that members of the California Integrated Seismic Network deploy portable instruments to the epicentral area of the earthquake near the Salton Sea and provide warnings to search and rescue teams working in collapsed and partially collapsed buildings. For rescue sites in Palm Springs and desert cities, the warnings precede the arrival of strong ground motion by 8-10 seconds, but in San Bernardino and parts of Los Angeles, the warnings are up to 30 seconds. These aftershock warnings are communicated to rescue sites in real-time with sirens placed near rescues that sound when an aftershocks above magnitude 5.5 are detected. By the end of the search and rescue phase of this disaster, dozens of warnings have been broadcast to rescue workers, saving the lives of many.

Toward the end of the first week, thousands of people have been rescued, but search and rescue continues at hundreds of major collapse sites. Federally deployed USAR teams from throughout the country are working and some international teams have been deployed as well. Despite the large and dispersed nature of the rescue efforts, news media attention has focused on five collapsed high-rise buildings, three of which are in downtown Los Angeles, one in Costa Mesa and one in the City of San Bernardino. These buildings are believed to have been fully occupied at the time of the earthquake and their complete collapse has resulted in a convergence of rescue teams, equipment and journalists. Live rescues however have been few and, after an initial period in which a few survivors are located, the effort turns to recovery of the dead.

Search and rescue operations will continue round the clock for weeks and coincide with recovery of the dead. After approximately 1 week, most are recoveries rather than rescues. Tens of thousands of firefighters, thousands of official search and rescue team members will have been deployed and tens of thousands of volunteers, some with CERT training will have contributed to the rescue and recovery effort. Thirteen rescuers have lost their lives due to the collapse of a high-rise building during a large aftershock. The Regional Emergency Operations Center at Los Alamitos reports that there have been approximately 45,000 live rescues in the eight counties impacted by the earthquake and the many large aftershocks. The extensive fires and large conflagration in central and eastern Los Angeles prevented the rescue of others who died before rescuers could free them from collapsed structures. Regional news media have documented the heroism of both volunteers and official search and rescue team members who defied an evacuation order following the discovery of severe damage to the Lake Gregory Dam and continued to rescue people trapped in the collapse of a senior citizens housing complex.”

NOV. 13 EXERCISES
Following are some of the key demonstration exercises conducted during the ShakeOut:

• The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) joined a host of other agencies in a mass-casualty simulation near Holy Cross Hospital in the north San Fernando Valley. This exercise involved hundreds of people acting as injured earthquake victims who had to be triaged, treated, transported to casualty collection points, sorted and sent to definitive care via ambulance, fire department and National Guard helicopters and other means.
• The Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD) responded to a simulated report from Miller/Coors of a hazmat problem and collapsed structures with many injuries. First-arriving Engine 48, conducting its simulated post-quake jurisdictional damage survey, established command and requested additional resources that included fire/rescue helicopters, a battalion chief, engine and ladder truck companies, paramedic squads, a USAR company, a hazmat task force and ambulances. And, with assistance from the Miller/Coors on-site emergency teams, they went to work cutting and tunneling their way into the collapses, with assistance by USAR Task Force 103, and began triaging, treating, rescuing and transporting victims to a casualty collection point, while Hazardous Materials Task Force 43 and the fire department’s Health Haz Mat unit dealt with a simulated chemical release.
• At Fire Station 88 in Sherman Oaks, the LAFD conducted a simulated structure collapse with multiple victims, as an Operation Golden Guardian demonstration project and also as a site viewed by participants in the Los Angeles International Earthquake Conference. Los Angeles Fire Department USAR task force members demonstrated cutting, lifting, breaching, technical search, canine search, heavy equipment selective debris removal and other tactics used to locate and remove victims trapped in collapsed structures.
• The LACoFD conducted a 10-hour multi-structure collapse demonstration featuring deployment of California’s new 29-member Regional USAR Task Forces, designed to provide faster “boots on the ground” USAR teams that can go operational within minutes to hours and augment the first-arriving fire and rescue units. This collapse simulation was conducted at the LACoFD’s “Del Valle Regional Training Center,” a 200-acre fire/USAR/hazmat/technical operations training facility in the western part of Los Angeles County. Under direction from USAR captain Derrick Chapman, dozens of volunteers acting as victims had been inserted inside a half dozen structure collapse simulations, requiring very extensive operations to locate and rescue them. The scenario began with LACoFD USAR Task Force 130 (a six-member USAR/rescue company) having been dispatched to check out reports of multiple collapses, finding (simulated) collapsed structures with people trapped and missing, and requesting response of one of the department’s Regional USAR Task Forces and other resources. The LACoFD Regional USAR task force then arrived incrementally (which would be a realistic assumption during a local disaster), and they were folded into the ongoing operation, with first responders, the USAR/rescue company and the Regional task force working together to locate and rescue victims from deep entrapments that lasted long after dark.
• The Glendale Fire Department and other Glendale and Verdugo-area agencies conducted a simulated structure collapse search and rescue operation with volunteers as trapped victims helped evaluate and test USAR capabilities, firefighting, law enforcement security, public works and the utility agencies working together under a unified command.
• The city of Azusa, the LACoFD and the Azusa Police Department simulated the imminent failure (and eventual simulated collapse of) Morris Dam in San Gabriel Canyon. This event required the city’s EOC to be relocated, and a mock emergency evacuation operation of the areas in the dam’s projected inundation zone.
• The city of Huntington Park conducted a large-scale simulation that included operation of the city EOC, evacuations, and triage and treatment of simulated victims by LACoFD firefighters and paramedics.
• The city of Sierra Madre simulated the collapse of a science lab with injuries and a hazardous materials release.
• The city of Whittier, with its own earthquake disaster experiences from the 1987 Whittier quake, conducted a broad-based earthquake simulation that included the following events: major collapse of a high-rise structure at the Lutheran Towers; irreparable damage at both the Whittier Presbyterian Hospital and Whittier Hospital (with both hospitals out of service due to damage, injured victims would have to be diverted or treated in the Casualty Collection Points and field hospitals); a jet fuel line rupture on Catalina Avenue; a sewer main rupture on Laurel Avenue; multiple water main breaks across the city; and major structure fire across the city.

A number of other fire departments across Southern California conducted a wide range of other physical exercises.

MULTI-AGENCY EARTHQUAKE TASK FORCE
In July 2008, three months before the Shakeout and GG08, Los Angeles County Fire Department Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman (who also is the California Region I Mutual Aid Director, and whose shared vision of a fire service-based, multi-tiered USAR response system in the state and the nation are now reality) initiated a new multi-agency earthquake task force to evaluate the likely effects of the ShakeOut’s magnitude 7.8 San Andreas earthquake on fire department service delivery, and on firefighters and their families. The mission of the earthquake task force was to develop a list of recommended solutions for the likely consequences of a catastrophic-level quake. Not surprisingly, many of the recommendations have seen been correlated to the Lessons Learned from the actual GG08 and Shakeout exercises.

Following is a brief synopsis of some of the recommendations that came from the earthquake task force, submitted in October 2008. Many of them are applicable to any region where damaging earthquakes are a strong possibility:

• Revise respective fire department earthquake policies, practices, & protocols based on the GG08 and Shakeout Earthquake Scenario, and the after-action reports from each.
• Consider development of Catastrophic Earthquake Pre-Event Incident Action Plans (IAP) that also serves as a Preplan for anticipated response to a catastrophic-level earthquake. This can be accomplished in any place where strong earthquakes are a significant possibility. Within such an IAP would be provisions for the following:
• Establishing effective Unified Area Command
• Using the new National Response Framework (including the International Assistance Annex)
• Establishing alternate communications plans when all or most normal communications have been damaged or interrupted.
• Developing a catastrophic event traffic plan (to facilitate mutual aid ingress and egress, transportation of materials and victims, etc)
• Anticipate the need for specialized resources (haz mat, EMS, USAR, etc.)
• Anticipated logistics needs for long-term operations
• Develop department-specific Business Continuity Plans to maintain fire and rescue agency operations following a catastrophic-level disaster.
• Conduct department-specific fire station and administrative site earthquake resistance surveys to determine immediate personnel hazards that may not be evident           , the need for capital improvement planning and funding, whether temporary measures can be implemented
• Integrate CERT (Community Emergency Response Teams) and Convergent Responders in Post-Quake Operations

II.        Control of Fire and Urban Conflagrations

• Test and evaluate current post-quake urban conflagration strategies during the Golden Guardian exercise and other future simulations.
• Clarify post-earthquake operational priorities and strategies.
• Assume widespread water supply interruption and limited resources.
• Test use of alternative water supplies including blue water sources
• Revise department-specific post-quake fire control plans, protocols, and practices based on GG08 and a study of “best practices” for ground-based and aerial fire attack on post-quake urban conflagrations.
• Train firefighters in “best practice” strategies and tactics for control of urban conflagrations following earthquakes and other disasters that knock out normal fire suppression systems.
• Research and consider development of protocols for urban aerial attack (rotary and fixed-wing) to slow or confine urban conflagrations
• Include protocols for Direct vs. Indirect (i.e. creating wide fire breaks in the city without the use of incendiary materials like black powder, which have in the past created more fire problems) urban firefighting
• Improve Identification of Alternate Fire Suppression Water Sources
• Additional Water Supplies
• Strategically Position Portable Water Tanks (Pumpkins)
• Investigate whether a plan for controlled release of water into selected waterways and spreading grounds (where it can be drafted for fire suppression) is feasible.

III.       Conducting Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Operations       

• Test and evaluate current structure collapse search and rescue ops awareness and capabilities (as well as plans to request additional USAR resources appropriate to your department’s likely collapse problems) during the Golden Guardian exercise.
• Revise and implement new USAR strategies based on lessons learned in Golden Guardian and the various After Action Report(s).
• Update and Conduct “USAR First Responder” Training for all firefighters
• Conduct Chief Officer Training for Structure Collapse Operations and Catastrophic Rescue Operations
• Implement the standard USAR Search Marking System and use the new Search Marking Sticker System being developed by FEMA.

IV.       Conducting EMS Operations

• Establish protocols and training for Casualty/Community Collection Points (CCP)

• Identify pre-designated CCP’s in your agency’s jurisdiction by station/region
• Pre-assemble a Medical Supply Cache for Casualty/Community Collection Points
• Pre-assembled medical supply caches
• Identify Ambulance Service Expectations at Large-Scale Emergencies

V.        Receiving Mutual Aid

• Understand the importance of a rapid and accurate post-earthquake assessment and report from your Department to the Area or Region.
• Being prepared to request significant resources to assist in catastrophic-damage situations.
• Prepare for a delay of responding resources from out of region/state

VI.       Logistical Challenges

• Develop regional public safety emergency fueling sites and fuel tender directory
• Identify emergency private fuel sites
• Develop a sustainable agency-specific (Battalion level?) Support Caches to include food, water, and sanitation supplies for continuous emergency operations
• Identify alternate housing of personnel and apparatus due to unstable or collapsed fire stations.

VII.     Communications Challenges

• Consider Inter-Agency/Inter-Departmental Communication and Coordination deficiencies identified during the Golden Guardian exercise.
• Ensure mobile and portable radios are capable of communicating in conventional, simplex (direct) mode. This allows for first responders with like-band radios to communicate tactically. (Local unit-to-unit)
• Educate personnel about Local, State, and Federal interoperability frequencies that are available for use. Train with these frequencies to establish familiarity.
• Consider installing Satellite Radios/Phones in all Field Commander vehicles.
• Increase the use of Disaster Communication Services personnel (HAM) at Incidents and during drills. Install the Amateur Radio equipment that they use in key sites and in Command, and Communications, and Command Post vehicles.

VIII.    Care for Personnel and Families

• On-duty Personnel
• Develop agency-specific policy to immediately release on-duty personnel in the event of the death of a family member.
• Develop agency-specific policy to allow personnel an opportunity to contact family members via personal cell phones or landlines or other means
• Consider establishing a toll-free emergency 800 number (out-of-state) that personnel and family members can report or retrieve status information.
• Consider establishing an agreement with an out of state “sister department” for communication and accountability purposes.
• Define an alternative work schedule.
• Off-duty Personnel
• Consider agency-specific plans whereby in the event employees are unable to reach their normally assigned work site, they will report to their nearest battalion headquarters, fire station, or other fire department or designated staging
• Consider providing firefighter “Go Kit’s (Home/vehicle) to allow them to go directly to work in emergency operations
• Basic PPE’s: wildland helmet, brush jacket, gloves and goggles.
• First Aid bag with basic supplies
• Consider the development of a Family Support Network
• Establish a data bank of personnel residences into geographical areas where families are able to communicate and assist one another.
• Develop a program to train family members in Earthquake Survival and family disaster planning.

Larry Collins is a 28-year member of the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACoFD), serving as a captain, USAR Specialist and paramedic assigned to USAR Task Force 103, which responds to technical rescues and multi-alarm fires. He is a Search Team Manager for the LACoFD’s FEMA/OFDA US&R Task Force for domestic and international response, and he serves as an US&R Specialist on the “Red” FEMA US&R Incident Support Team, with deployments to the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 Pentagon collapse, hurricanes Frances, Ivan, Dennis, Katrina, Rita and Wilma, and several National Security Events. He wrote the textbook series titled Technical Rescue Operations (www.technicalrescueops.com).