To Be A Survivor You Must Prepare To Be A Survivor

Hi All. The city of Lake Elsinore is caught between a rock and a hard spot. An inspection shows the city has identified 54 commercial buildings on or adjacent to Main Street that were built with unenforced masonry. These are bricks piled on top of each other and held together by just mortar, with no structural reinforcement. Buildings like that can come down from a quake with a magnitude of less then 7.0M.

Lake Elsinore sits on top of the Elsinore Fault, which crosses under the lake in a southeasterly direction, then runs parallel to the Interstate 15. It crosses the freeway south of where the I-15 and Interstate 215 merge and stretches through San Diego County into Mexico.

The Elsinore fault resulted in sizable temblors in 1890, 1892, 1899, 1910, 1918, 1923, 1937, 1954, 1968 and 1982, a regional earthquake expert said recently. A magnitude-6 quake occurred in May 1910 along the fault line without causing significant damage.

However, the Elsinore Fault is capable of yielding a magnitude-7 earthquake, something that occurs once every 400 to 600 years, said Tom Rockwell, a San Diego State University geologist and leader of the Southern California Earthquake Center's geology group. The last one of that magnitude happened on the Elsinore Fault, between Lake Elsinore and Pala, 300 to 400 years ago, he added.

Snip: North County Times

A Category 4 hurricane may never pummel Riverside County. That's hardly reason to take comfort, however, because plenty of other hazards have potential to injure and kill droves of people and cause widespread property damage in this sprawling, rapidly growing region, said Mary Moreland, the county's emergency services director.

Earthquakes on the San Andreas, Elsinore and San Jacinto faults, wind-driven wildfires in the Cleveland and San Bernardino national forests, dam breaks at Diamond Valley Lake, Lake Perris and Lake Skinner, flooding from winter downpours and an accident at the San Onofre nuclear power plant all pose ominous threats, Moreland said in a recent interview.

Disaster response officials fear a major quake most, she said, because not only would it exact widespread destruction on its own, it could unleash other threats such as forest fires and collapsing dams.

"An earthquake would be our Katrina," Moreland said.

Lucy Jones, lead Southern California scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, said the extent of damage from the Big One that so many people fear will depend largely on where it strikes and when.

"If it happens during the middle of the night, we are going to be much better off than if it happens during the rush-hour or during the day when people are at work in their offices," Jones said. "If it happens during a Santa Ana, we are going to be much, much worse off than we will be if it happens during a more benign weather condition. That's the real nightmare."

The Santa Ana scenario is scariest of all because a quake could spark fires and hurricane-force winds could fan flames into unstoppable firestorms, Jones said. Battling wind-driven blazes is tough under any circumstance, she said, let alone with roads knocked out and air tankers snapped in pieces like toy airplanes.

While the Elsinore fault has more potential to kill and injure people and destroy property locally, the feared Big One on the San Andreas fault could knock out highways, railroads, natural gas lines and water lines that serve all of Southern California, Jones said. Southwest Riverside County —— like the rest of the region —— would be cut off from critical life-sustaining supplies for potentially many days, she said.

This is one of the reason residents of certain areas should stock up on water to last at least 15 days. You will be surprised how long you can go without food, but the lack of water is another story. You don't last very long without water. Buy bottled water that is already sealed. It will last indefinitely. Once you break the seal and you have no refrigeration everyone should use that water until it's gone.

Here is something to think on. The longer your area goes without outside help the more animal like some people will become in your area. It's a hell of a thing to think about. Your next door neighbor a week ago was your best friend and a week from now he could try to kill you to get the supplies you stocked up on. Survival makes people do things that not even they, themselves can see themselves doing something like that. Keep what you have hidden as well as you can and don't flaunt it. Find a person who lives well outside your area and ask them if they will take calls from any member of you family and that they will pass messages on to the other members of you family. You will be surprised at how well that works. Within an hours times everyone in our family knew everyone was okay with the exception of my mother. She was trying to figure out how the butter dish inside the refrigerator got turned upside down and nothing else was disturbed.

Make a plan as to where you are going to meet if you are at work and the areas are quite a distance from one another. The best way to do this is to meet at the area furthest from where the quake centered.

If you have children in school learn what the school plans on doing after a major quake.

Plan ahead before the quake occurs. In order to be a survivor you have to plan to be a survivor. Take Care...Don

(THIS STORY ORIGINALLY RAN ON APRIL 4, AFTER THE STRONG EASTER EARTHQUAKE. IN LIGHT OF THE RECENT QUAKE THAT RATTLED SAN DIEGANS' NERVES, IT'S WORTH RE-READING.)

It was written By Dave Good.

On Easter Sunday, an earthquake south of the U.S.-Mexico border shook high-rises in downtown San Diego and was felt across Southern California and Arizona. The U.S. Geological Survey says the 7.2 magnitude quake struck in Baja California, about 108 miles east-southeast of Tijuana.

There seems to have been an abundance of earthquakes of late. Which prompts experts to utter this warming: Three days.

It doesn’t sound like very much time, but could you survive for three days without water, food or power? Add to that short list cell phones, communication, news, medical attention, shelter anda change of clothes. Three days. Could you do it? Are you prepared to live without any of the aforementioned items?

Jose Restrepo: Prepare for the Big One.

Most of us aren’t. But that’s how long one might expect to go without the basics for survival and communication in the event of a major earthquake, says Jose Restrepo. The UCSD Professor of structural engineering has just returned to San Diego from Chile, where an 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck on February 27. In 90 seconds, the earthquake caused enough damage for President Michelle Bachelet to declare a state of catastrophe.

“In Chile,” says Restrepo, “the population itself, even the country itself was not prepared to cope with a large magnitude earthquake. They can’t cope with this size tragedy. People have not been educated, or if they have been educated, they have not taken notice that everyone needs to be able to survive for 72 hours without help.”

He says that people expect that if California is hit by a large shaker the National Guard will be at the scene immediately.

“That’s a myth,” says Restrepo.

Instead, Restrepo says be prepared. “You must have water,” he says, “Water is the most vital element. It’s not likely that water service will be restored for the first several days.” He suggests storing three gallons per person per day. He also suggests stockpiling dried foods, like pastas, that can be boiled on a gas barbecue.

“Know your environment,” he says. “Have a plan.” He recalls the duck-and-cover drills of old and recommends that in an earthquake the safest place to be is under a desk or table. “You need to protect yourself from falling objects.”

But he acknowledges that sometimes the earth is shaking so hard that you can’t even stand. “In that case,” he says, “you have to do whatever you can to protect yourself.”

Can scientists predict earthquakes? “Yes,” says Debi Kilb, a seismologist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. But the science of prediction is not very precise. “Our uncertainties are within plus or minus 50 years.”

During the actual earthquake, things happen fast. Kilb contrasts the speed of an earthquake traveling along a fault line such as the nearby San Andreas fault (“A lot of people think that might be the place for it in Southern California,” she says) with the time it takes to drive from San Diego to Disneyland: 50 seconds, as opposed to two hours.

“So, what could you do in a minute?” A lot, she says, if you actively think about the possibility of an earthquake occurring and consider your surroundings throughout the day. But it’s not something we do naturally, she says.

Why?

“Nobody’s been in a large and devastating earthquake lately," she says. Northridge [he biggest earthquake in Southern California of the past several years] was in 1994.”

Kilb says that earthquake preparedness centers on common sense. “If you’re going to be at a desk job for eight hours a day, do you have a bookshelf that’s not bolted to the wall and that has tons of books that could hit you?” she asks.

In addition to situational awareness, Kilb suggests stockpiling items like water, dried and canned foods, pet foods, medical supplies, money, flashlights, and walking shoes.

“In San Diego,” says Restrepo, “sometimes we take earthquakes lightly. The San Andreas fault is not far away from us. It’s only 30 miles. I must say that 200 miles away from the earthquake in Chile, there were bridges and buildings that collapsed.”

For more information on earthquake safety and preparedness, visit the Red Cross Web site.

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/05/doomsday-number-california-earthquake-zone/

http://www.ambilacuk.com/safesurvival/earthquakes.html

http://showme.net/~fkeller/quake/lib/andreas1.htm

People in California and else where ARE NOT PREPARID for a major and never will be. They don't think it will happen to them, that it will happen to someone else. Think about this. With everyone thinking that, you are that someone else.

I always have to laugh at the person who says a 7.5M to 8.0M quake is going to hit Southern California next week. That's a lot of territory. It would be nice if we could be a little more precise as to where that quake is going to occur. Okay, lets say the quake occurs at 35.974N/116.053W. That is in California just across the Nevada/California border. Not much of anything in that area in California, but Las Vegas is about 50 miles from the epicenter of the quake. The prediction was for Southern California and that is where it occurred but it sure didn't do the people of Las Vegas any good. Most if not all of the predictions being made are a joke. Some of the people predicting earthquakes couldn't predict one if it woke them up.

I'm beginning to wonder why predict earthquakes in the first place. No body or almost no body is preparing for them. 6 million people live in the Bay Area and only 17% of them say they are ready. I have to wonder how many of that 17% were telling the truth? Take Care...Don