At 13:50 hours, the City of Malibu experienced a 7.0 magnitude earthquake, lasting 15 seconds, on the Santa Monica Fault. Calls coming into the Emergency Operation Center indicate severe damage throughout the city. Malibu Canyon Road tunnel has collapsed and a slide has closed the southern portion of the road. All utilities, including phone and cable lines, are down. Calls for help come pouring in over ham radios and some cell phones for everything from cars buried under slides, fires, injuries, to leaning light poles.
The above scenario, which may be all too familiar to some people who lived through the 1994 Northridge earthquake, was simulated in a Nov. 9 exercise by Malibu city staff to prepare for such a disaster, should one occur in the near or distant future.
The exercise, titled “It’s Santa Monica’s Fault,” was set up and orchestrated by Harlan “Hap” Holmwood, emergency services coordinator for the city. The real time exercise was conducted simultaneously with the County of Los Angeles. The purpose of the exercise is to help “determine the city’s ability to function and provide aid to residents under the most dire circumstances,” according a press release by Holmwood.
As staff set up an EOC (Emergency Operation Center) at City Hall, volunteers, including Holmwood, phoned in the scripted scenarios from Bluffs Park via ham radio, Arson Watch transceivers, simulated cell phone calls and Nextel.
Lost Hills Sheriff’s Department staff, as well as Disaster Communication System, Arson Watch and Malibu Volunteer Patrol members participated in the preparedness scenario.
The City of Malibu adopted a Standard Emergency Management System (SEMS) in 1996 to prepare for the needs of the community in times of emergencies and disasters. The four-part Emergency Preparedness Program, of which the exercise is one part, also includes an Emergency Communication System, which would use an AM station, coupled with a telephone line for advisory reports, as a means to alert and pass on information to the public. A citywide alert system will be in place using sirens or air horns to announce an emergency. The final part includes enlistment and training of the city’s residents and business community in the overall emergency plan so residents are able to care for themselves for at least 3 – 7 days during a disaster or emergency situation.
“After we get everything done on the city’s part, we look to the public to do their part,” said Holmwood. “We can only do so much in a disaster or emergency. They [residents] must step on board and prepare to do what they can.”
Holmwood said city staff will go out to homeowners associations to speak about emergency preparedness to try and “interest them and excite them into doing it.”
“I don’t use fear as a tool,” said Holmwood about his approach in educating residents. “I don’t think that’s appropriate.”
As staff, wearing color-coded vests delineating positions to which they are assigned in case of a disaster, received the simulated emergency phone calls, they wrote up scenarios on boards, tagging downed roads, slides, emergency shelters and even a morgue that was hypothetically set up at the Malibu High School Gym. A mock press conference was set up, with questions fired to Nancy Steiner, city administrative secretary, as to where residents could find shelter, place their horses or other animals, and whether there have been reports about tsunamis.
Observing the exercise was John E. Watson, Pepperdine Public Safety Department risk manager, Jeanne Taylor from the State Office of Emergency Services, and Mary Lou Blackwood, outgoing executive vice president of the Malibu Chamber of Commerce.
Holmwood said he has a two-inch stack of critiques to go through from the three observers.
“I think they did real well,” said Holmwood. “No exercise is anything but a success. It’s a learning process.
“I want to apply a more thorough standard, as far as paperwork, for reimbursement,” he said, in addition to combining a number of positions in the EOC, and standardizing the flow of information and response in requests for help.