Earthquakes: Asking around

I did write to my company's disaster management person this week. It is reasonable to as your employer about their plans for the big one, and to have a talk about disaster planning in general.

It is not only your employer. If you have children in school or daycare, you should ask about that. If you have elderly parents in an assisted care facility, you should ask about that. It is highly possible that they will not have answers. In light of the article from The New Yorker, more people may be thinking about it, but not sure what to do. That would be a good time to offer to help.

In one of the pieces I have been reading recently, someone was talking about parents wondering if they should be homeschooling to avoid having their children squished in an earthquake. That's an overreaction. First, see if the school has a plan. If they don't, offer to help with that project. If the school is really resistant to making any plans, then maybe you think about transferring or going to the district. There's lots of steps before deciding on retreating from society.

Backing up a little, in my message, I put that while I was interested it would probably be more beneficial to write an article that everyone in the company would see, and that's what they are focusing on. That means me getting my answer may take a little longer, but I still feel it was the right way to go about it. This is something that concerns everyone.

Your company may not have a specific person over disaster preparedness. It is necessary for a larger company because there is so much more to look out for - more employees, more property, more processes - but even a single proprietor should know that there are risks and have a plan for them.

Even if you are only responsible for yourself as an employee, preparing for the "big one" is not a single person activity. The restoration of utilities matters. The rebuilding of infrastructure matters.

Here is a tool to get an idea of recovery time from a 9 magnitude earthquake:

http://www.opb.org/aftershock/

I will use the results for Aloha, but I have also run through Portland and Lake Oswego and they were all pretty close.

Water will be available at distribution centers within about 2 weeks.
Natural gas will be back up within about 2 months.
Electricity will take closer to 3 or 4 months.
Police and fire response could take about 7 months to recover.
Water and sewer will take over a year to get operational again.
The restoration of top priority highways will take about a year and a half.
Getting health care facilities back to normal will take about three years.

Those estimates sound dire, but here is something else to consider.

After the earthquake an tsunami in Japan, most hospitals were operational again within a month.

Not all of these wait times are inevitable. With preparedness, both to withstand better and recover faster, it can be a lot better.

But that won't happen solely through the efforts of a bunch of rugged individualists. Retrofitting hospitals and relocating schools takes cooperation and commitment, because it takes money. Corporations and governments and utilities need to be working together, as well as individuals.

I will be asking some more questions this week. One question may get other people thinking and planning, but it can also be rather easily ignored. It's better if more people are asking.

Talk to neighbors. Talk to local leaders. And talk to you boss.

http://www.redcross.org/prepare/location/workplace