ML20151H272
| ML20151H272 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Trojan File:Portland General Electric icon.png |
| Issue date: | 04/12/1988 |
| From: | Mattingly S LOS ANGELES, CA |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20151H012 | List:
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| References | |
| NUDOCS 8808010209 | |
| Download: ML20151H272 (5) | |
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THE POLICY OPTIONS:
THE LOS ANGELES EXPERIENCE by Shirley Mattingly Director of Emergency Management City of Los Angeles, California The headline on the front page of the Las Anceles Herald Examiner on March 1, 1988 proclaimed "The Big One:
Next major quake may hit East, not California, geologists warn."
At a recent confer-ence on earthquake engineering in New York City, it was reported l
that many geologists now believe that the next catastrophic Amer-ican earthquake could well strike not in California but in the densely populated, highly industrialized and poorly prepared eastern United States.
It was front page news in California but I don't know if it was noted in the papers in the East.
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Similarly, two years ago USGS Seismologist Bill Bakun told Canadian television viewers:
i It's possible you might have an earthquake along the B.C.-Washington-Oregon coast as big as that which broke the southern coast of Chile in the 1960s.
We i
have to take seriously the possibility of a great I
earthquake, a very great earthquake, as big an carthquake as has occurred in recorded history.
Evidently the Pacific Northwest, like the eastern United States, is not immune from earthquake.
The quake would be, Dr. Bakun surmised, OFF the Richter scale.
In the article "The Prediction No One Wants to Hear:
the great Earthquake," author Fred Cooper states:
Canadian and U.S. Scientists are predicting a mammoth earthquake along the B.C.-Washington-i Oregon coast, but no one is paying much atten-tion because it might not happen for another 200 i
years - but then again it might be a lot sooner.
Those who think it might happen sooner want to prepare for the disaster, but they've got a big i
selling job to do first.
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Like the eastern United States and like California as well, the i
British Columbia-Washington-Oregon coastal area apparently is no more immune from earthquake apathy than it is from earthquakos.
Marketing and selling earthquake awareness and pushing people to take preparedness actions is a TOUGH SELL.
Actually getting through to elected officials, bureaucrats, community groups, businesses, schools and families is a never-ending struggle.
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Public officials can be an especially tough nut to crack,
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particularly elected officials if their concerns for their community's good tend to relate to four-year periods of time.
Programs are often more likely to get funded if they can produce visible, demonstrable results within four years.
It is no easy task to win over the City Hall power structure.
It requires some top level commitment.
Interest and active participation by key influential people such as the mayor, a city councilmember or county supervisor, a key legislator or respected corporate leader are absolutely essential in order to gain budgetary, bureaucratic, and community support for facing up to a most unpleasant task.
In my experience, this is evident both within the Los Angeles basin, where you'd expect at least lip service to be paid to the need for earthquake plan-ning and preparedness, and in communities across the country which have tried to enhance their local commitment to emergency preparedness.
1 In Los Angeles we live with the knowledge that Los Angeles is earthquake country.
Most of us are convinced that someday we will be faced with an earthquake of magnitude 8.c or greater.
4 Some day people will get up expecting to go about their business, but it won't be business as usual any more.
Because the earth will convulse and rupture, and parts of Los Angeles will never be the same again.
l Perhaps we will have some sort of warning in the days, hours, minutes or seconds preceding the great shock.
Perhaps we won't.
So we're taking actions in LA to prepare for earthquakes, so we can save lives and property during a predicted or unpredicted event.
And we're planning 3.nd setting policy for response to a short-term earthquake prediction or advisory, whether it culminatos in an actual earthquake or not.
L Just to make sure that the populace at large takes seriously both I
the earthquake threat and the need to prepare, we make certain that there are reminders every once in a while.
Small to moderate earthquakes rock the LA busin almost daily.
In fact, they occur so often that instead of spurring us to action they l
often lull us into complacency.
And complacency and apathy are mighty deter-rents to action.
Neverthelean there exists in LA what has been called an "earthquake subculture."
There are "earthquake groupies."
We are not laughed at much, though, i
because our ranks include a number of our most prominent political, corporate and community leaders who are willing to put their money where their mouth is and support and fund earuhquake preparedness efforts.
4 In the Los Angeles basin we had on october 1st one of those reminders which the earth sends us periodically to shake us out of our earthquake apathy.
It was a 5.9 magnitude earthquake
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which caused $358 million in damage.
It also did at least
$1.6 million of good, because it instantly elevated uho priority 3
of earthquake preparedness and mitigation and it created the 9
i impetus for the Mayor and Council to authorize and fund a new
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$1.6 million preparedness program.
The City of Los Angeles certainly isn't unique in taking the aarthquake threat seriously.
However, the City takes it very seriously.
And it is unique in having taken seriously the science and the art of earthquake prediction with all its policy implications.
What successes Los Angeles has hr.d are probably attributable, more than anything, to three basic strategies we employ:
1.
The demonstrated commitment of prominent persons 2.
The team approach, and 3.
Persistence and tenacity.
We do not make one shot attempts to educate, to influence, to make an impact; we just keep hammering away.
There is really i
nothing new or unusual about our tactics, our approach, or even most of our specific programs.
But we have enjoyed a consider-able degree of success because of teamwork, leadership, and persistence.
Los Angeles has a dynanic organization for emergency planning and response which involves participation by all agencies of City government.
Our first source of strength is the support of top officials:
the Mcyor, who is the director of the organization, i
the City Council, and the heads of the City's major departments, such as Police and Fire, nine of whom form the organization's Emergency operations Board.
Our second source of strength lies in our multi-agency approach, the active participation of mid-management and staff from both City and non-city agencies who work together with us, such as the Red Cross and volunteer groups, and the utilities-We use a team approach.
This multi-agency team approach is applied to emergency respor.so as well as emergency planning.
Our plans assign responsibilities I
and authority to various agencies prior to catantrophic events, because we believe that a time of crisis is not a good time to i
il get to know people and to decide who is going to be responsible 1
for what.
So our emergency plans define and distribute responsi-bilities widely, among all departments, and we exercise and practice our response.
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An example of how we have incorporated nontraditional providers of emergency survices is the Department of Recreation and parha, l
which manages and controls the Public Welfare and Shelter Divi-l sion during a local emergency.
The American Red Cross, the Lon Angeles Unified School District, and other volunteer and govern-mental agencies assist in providing services and support.
This 1
division arranges for housing and assistance for persons rendered j
homeless as a result of a disaster.
Services provided includes food, clothing, shelter, registration, information on available i (
assistance programs, and rehabilitation.
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We use this multi-agency approach consistently throughout k
planning, exercising, and actual earthquake response.
Of course it doesn't always workt some people do not like to take on additional, unwanted responsibilities.
However, the Mayor's involvement coupled with persistent peer group pressure work wonders.
Los Angeles' methodology is that we have found that if we want decision-makers to think BIG POLICY instead of day-to-day oper0tional requirements, we take them out of their day-to-day setting, saquester them along with the chief executive in pleasant surroundings and create an environment in which the managers themselves bring up policy questions and dellbarate over them.
We did this first in 1984 at the National Emergency Training Center in Emmitsburg, Maryland, in preparation for the.
1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
In the fall of 1986 we held our first Earthquake Prediction Workshop at Monterey, CA; and then in December 1987 we followed up with a second Earthquake Prediction Workshop and Exercise at Lake Arrowhead, CA.
This approach works very well for us because it ensuros a participa-tive planning process and encourages team building.
How we have approached what to do with the emerging science of earthquake prediction clearly reflects our approach to amcrgency planning and response.
It is a team project (which means it has taken ten years to accomplish what one person could have comple-ted in four months).
Earthquake Prediction Planning is old hat in Los Angeles.
A landmark report was published in 1978, the Consensus Report of Mayor Bradley's Blue Ribbon Task Force.
So truly, it has taken 10 years (so far) and it has been a real team effort.
B The challenge of earthquake prediction is one which most local jurisdictions have ignored.
A few in California have had to respond to a prediction or advisory unprepared.
But Los Angeles is not ecmfortable with the implications of inaction, of ignoring a challenge which has been issued by both the scientific communi-ty and our state government.
When confronted with disaster or the potential for disaster, local government's responsibility, it i
l seems to us, is clears to protect lives and property.
Local i
officials must be prepared to save the community from any cala-nity which could strike.
Local gcVernment is where the buck stops.
Local government's responsibility for earthquake preparedness and prediction preparedness is considerable.
We are responsible for translating theory into practice, and having the guts to imple-ment costly seinmic risk reduction strategies developed by engi-neers and others who don't have to be reelected to stay in their jobs.
We are the ones who have to convince skeptical reporters and constituents that we're doing a good job. We are the ones who l(
will have to answer for our actions or inactions based on earth-quake predictions or forecasts which may or may not be scientifi-cally based, properly evaluated, or communicated to us offi-cially.
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A direct result of the City's work on its Earthquake Prediction Response Plan was the realization that we had a long way to go to be prepared for the actual earthquake event, and that there were response and prediction response issues requiring interdepartmen-tal attention.
We discarded the obsolete Civil Defense and Disaster Ordinance and created an Emergency Opera.tions Organiza-tion in the City, which is now the framework for all our emer-gency planning efforts.
In the years since 1978 we have worked on and off on various revisions of a draf t Earthquake Prediction Response Plan.
We had a plan, but we knew it did not address many important policy issues, so we scheduled a policy workshop for October 1986 at Monterey, California.
We went to a nice place, fed ev,aryone good food, and took three days to develop a policy which could have been written in two hours.
There were 65 participants, including a dozen major department heads.
The Policy was developed through a group process, so every participant "bought into it."
There was considerable feeling that the workshop was invaluable in team-building and development of interpersonal relationships i
i among top level City administrators and managers.
That was probably more important than the actual Policy which was developed.
Having plans is fine but they are not much good unless they are tested, so we planned another Workshop for last October.
The october 1 earthquake caused postponement and diversion from practicing our prediction response to practicing our response to the real thing.
When we finally made it to Lake Arrowhead last December, we held a slow motion exercise designed to raise and resolve policy issues rather than test the participants.
The Mayor actively i
participated, setting the tone for the three days.
Time was i
included for socializing and team building.
At the end of the workshop, presentations and commitments were made by each department head regarding areas they will address in upcoming months.
And we found again that our somewhat esoteric or obscure efforts in earthquake prediction planning helped tremondously in identifying and facing major problems in our overall disastor preparedness.
Earthquake prediction response planning is only ono example of several major projects on which our interdepartmental committees i
ere working.
For instance, the City's Planning Director chairs a planning team which is preparing a policy-level workshop on the recovery and reconstruction issues we will face after our projected devastating earthquake.
We will work on policies related to rebuilding and land use and economic recovery.
The key to these kinds of efforts is that they are an ongoing process in which the City's policymakers are taking part.
They are true
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team efforts.
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