On February 11th, I returned to San Francisco from Texas.  I spent five delightful days in College Station.  If you remember from the previous newsletter, I reported about my upcoming trip to Disaster City to train on the Incident Command System and in the article I referred back to the previous trip (2009) and lessons learned from that trip.

As part of my training this time around, I was challenged by our Executive Director Alessa Adamo to test our internal capabilities with using our social media resources such as Facebook and Twitter.  On day one, I began a strong effort at posting on our SF CARD Facebook page.  I felt the dissemination I was creating was informative, clear, concise, and stayed along the lines of reporting relevant issues. 

By day three, I was dreading the task of having to post.  Not because of the task itself or issues with using these tech platforms, but the energy it took to post - the time it took to post.  After spending 8 hours or so of working in a simulated but stressful and focused disaster exercise, I just did not have the ambition or the energy to continue posting entries.  During the day I did not have the time to post, so that meant at the hotel during the evening was really the only time available to collect my thoughts and write on the Facebook wall.  In addition to the work during the day, all of the participants took the opportunity to get to know one another.  We went to dinner and toured College Station together.  This meant getting back to the hotel after the exercise, around 5:00pm and spending 25 minutes to freshen up and then out to catch the shared van.  By day four, I was exhausted yet still thrilled over what I was learning and experiencing.

Now that I have had some time to reflect on the challenge, I still feel that using social media as part of an organization's disaster communication plan is extremely important and beneficial.  At the same token, I feel this task is much bigger and needs more attention then one person can give, especially if they are responding to an incident in specific role such as a Section Chief.  In addition, the amount of time to create and disseminate material can be lengthy.  Ideally this task would have fallen to the Public Information Officer Section Chief or I would schedule and dedicate some time during the day to this task in a real scenario.  The goal of this trip was to immerse oneself into ICS, not spend the time tweeting.    

The experience in Texas was wonderful and the disaster exercise was one of the best I have ever attended.  The people were fantastic to work with and to get to know.  This trip was a great reminder of how wonderful, smart, and dedicated all of the people from local government are.  I thoroughly enjoyed my trip and learned a lot about the Incident Command System, so much so, this task would certainly be delegated.

If you're interested in hearing more about my trip or about TEEX, please feel free to contact me at 415-955-8946 ext. 235.  

   

 

TEEX is set in Disaster City, complete with many simulated disasters like this train derailment. Those pictured from left to right are: Lucas Eckroad, SF DEM; Brian Whitlow, SF CARD; Carla Johnson, SF Mayor's Office on Disability; Captain Andy Zanoff (AKA "Camp Counselor"), SF Fire Dept.; PJ Redmond, SF DEM; Susan Christensen, SF DEM; Dr. Mary Mercer, SF DEM/EMSA; Diana Vanderburg, SF DEM; and, Kristin Hogan, SF DEM.  Photo Source: http://www.facebook.com/sfdem  

 

 

 Brian Whitlow, SF CARD working as Resources Unit Leader under Operations.  

 

Last Tuesday's Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake caused immediate devastation and loss of life. Individuals were trapped for extended periods; and the population continues to be traumatized by the aftershocks. What can we learn from it? Here in the Bay Area the news footage is watched with avid interest as we hope lessons learned will help us prepare for our "big one." A big commonality seems to be liquefaction. 

Dust cloud over Christchurch minutes after the earthquake.

Source: 

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/ 

 

"The February 21, 2011 Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake occurred as part of the aftershock sequence of the M 7.0 September 3, 2010 Darfield, NZ earthquake. The February 21st earthquake involved oblique-thrust faulting at the easternmost limit of previous aftershocks, and like the mainshock itself is broadly associated with regional plate boundary deformation as the Pacific and Australian plates interact in the central South Island, New Zealand."

USGS Summary   

 

What does this mean? 

The Christchurch M 6.3 earthquake was due to tectonic plate subduction not the right-lateral, strike-slip (horizontal motion) fault mechanism we have here along the San Andreas fault. What this means is that the New Zealand earthquake is due to a plate going under another plate, whereas the earthquakes we have here, are due to two plates sliding past each other horizontally. None-the-less, the results for a "big one" here may have similarities. Both earthquake zones share a similar liquefaction component. With all the landfills in the Marina, the financial district and all around the edge of the bay, it would not be difficult to envision similar liquefaction during a Bay Area earthquake.

 

What is liquefaction?

Liquefaction (pronounced "lick-wi-fack-shin") usually happens during a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake but there are exceptions. The ground shaking that occurs during an earthquake can cause some soils to liquefy. This means that during an earthquake these soils will behave more like a liquid than a solid . . .

 

Great description on liquefaction 

How liquefaction works!

Source: 

http://www.ecan.govt.nz/publications/General/solid-facts-christchurch-liquefaction.pdf 

 

There are five main factors used to assess the likelihood that soils will liquefy - 1. strength of ground shaking, 2. duration of shaking, 3. the depth of the water table, 4. soil properties (grain size and density), and 5. confining pressures.  Both earthquake zones have shallow water tables beneath the ground surface which makes them susceptible to liquefaction. What does liquefaction do to buildings? See the description below on how buildings are affected. 

Damage caused by liquefaction

Source: 

http://www.ecan.govt.nz/publications/General/solid-facts-christchurch-liquefaction.pdf 

 

What can be done to minimize liquefaction? There are three main ways to reduce the effects of liquefaction - by stabilizing the ground, by specific foundation design or by strengthening structures to resist predicted ground movements.  

 

To find out more about liquefaction for your area, you may view the United States Geologic Survey liquefaction susceptibility maps for the Bay Area USGS Liquefaction map of Bay Area.  

 

However, not everything was grim; there were some uplifting things which occurred too. So, I leave you with a truly heart warming rescue video from the Christchurch earthquake. Anne's rescue 

 

 

Just white noise is how I feel every time I sit down to begin writing for the SF CARD monthly newsletter.  All of us at SF CARD, strive each month to create a newsletter that is interesting, hopefully enjoyable to read, and most importantly contributes to the discourse around disaster preparedness and response.  We scour the Internet for interesting articles; talk with colleagues and friends on topics, and develop several first drafts before anything makes it to the newsletter.

 

For me the struggle is to come up with a couple of articles each month that are different from the typical blog post or general news coverage around disasters.  We debate on whether we should write about this ABC disaster that just took place or are we just adding unnecessary articles and coverage that already exists and is out there.  We strive to stay away from personal preparedness articles because there is already so much great information out there for one to consume.  Furthermore, we strive to maintain a balance between having our messages present facts all the while not trying to have those facts appear as fearful.  We aim for calm and unbiased information to be disseminated and we only work with experts when drafting an article or an announcement.

 

What brought this sudden interest in writing about our internal preparations for disseminating a newsletter each month and an examination of our literary contribution was a story presented on the HBO TV show "Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel."  The story the news magazine covered was about a blog that has become a reference for many professional sports journalists and was responsible for exposing the recent NFL great Brett Favre scandal.  In the interview with the Editor of the blog, the Editor was asked where the ethical line resides.  The question was asked because his source for the story asked to be off the record. He published it anyway.  His response basically was that they aim to publish whatever and rarely are ethical questions part of the discussion when considering what to post.

 

Not only is ethics, in my humble opinion, about disseminating information you know to be true, supported, and factual as to best of your ability.  This is a given.  What is the more important question to me is "why are we publishing"?  Are we publishing an article to fill a newsletter or popularize our blog? Or are we creating material that contributes to the overall conversation around disasters and community?

 

There are hundreds, dare I say thousands of blogs, news-sites, and video resources such as YouTube that distribute and inform us with disaster news.  This is a very good thing because the main stream media has a short attention span, and rarely, if ever, examine the recovery period of disaster from all spectrums. Often, just the act of disseminating information is done foolishly with little thought about the consequences.  There are even times when a disaster does not even make the lead in a local newscast.  In this day and age of individual journalism, those blogs and the overall contribution from all of us is really important, and I think we all should continue to write, reference, and create content. 

 

To end this discussion, my hope for our community of disaster journalists, from the blogger to serious news journalist, is that we strive to continue to ask "why are we publishing this article or presenting this video?" and how professional is the message in-terms of presentation?       

 

In great thievery of Jon Stewart, I leave you with my moment of zen -  http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-april-20-2010/moment-of-zen---iceland-is-too-cold-for-volcanoes