Deadly Venezuela earthquakes raise concern in tremor-prone California
Experts recommend that residents in quake-prone areas forge bonds with their neighbors, who are often the first lifeline in the midst of disaster.
In the aftermath of back-to-back earthquakes in northern Venezuela, which by Friday had killed more than 500 people and left thousands injured, experts in resilience planning have emphasized the increasing importance of disaster preparedness in earthquake-prone California.
Devastating quakes such as the double hit that struck Venezuela on June 24 remind Californians of their own history with the seismic phenomenon, stoking ever-present fears that the “big one” is just on the horizon. The West Coast state has been struck by 15 earthquakes with a magnitude of 7.0 or above since 1769, and weathered a 5.6-magnitude one on the same day as Venezuela’s quakes, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey.
“Along the whole San Andreas Fault, especially in northern and southern California, seismologists certainly remain concerned that a large earthquake can occur,” said Jerome Hajjar, distinguished professor at Northeastern and director of the Laboratory for Structural Testing of Resilient and Sustainable Systems.
Northeastern experts in resilience studies say preparing for a major tremor means considering vulnerabilities in both the statewide web of interconnected infrastructure and the relationships between neighbors, who are often the first lifeline in the midst of disaster.
On the national and global stage, states like California, Massachusetts and Colorado have been leaders in the field of disaster planning even in the absence of meaningful federal-level preparedness, according to Serena Alexander, associate professor in civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern and former visiting scholar of climate policy and resilience at the U.S. Department of Transportation.
City leaders in places like San Francisco, for instance, are actively planning for an uptick in earthquakes, directing funds toward areas of emergency preparedness they identify as particularly vulnerable, local officials have said.
“The city planners and government officials are prioritizing it, perhaps because of San Francisco’s location to earthquake fault lines, and also due to previous losses incurred by the city,” said Aayushi Mishra, a doctoral candidate in civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern. “I think they’re trying to get ahead of it.”
Earlier this month, the city and county of San Francisco proposed a $535 million Earthquake Safety and Emergency Response bond aimed at seismic upgrades and improvements to aging first responder facilities.The funds would ensure San Francisco “responds promptly and has the capacity to launch an effective, safe recovery,” the city said in a statement.
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Auroop Ganguly, distinguished professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern and a chief scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, described California as an experimental “playground” for managing disaster-related extremes.
But notable gaps in disaster planning persist, Alexander says, particularly on the state and federal level, which in times of disaster can prove too slow to respond effectively.
In Venezuela, for instance, residents speaking to The Associated Press this week described an absence of state rescue teams even as authorities touted a comprehensive emergency response.
A resident in La Guaira, located north of the capital of Caracas, watched as her neighbors instead took it upon themselves to dig through the rubble in search of missing people, AP reported.
But those kinds of neighborly actions may also be crucial to disaster planning, experts say. Daniel Aldrich, a Northeastern professor, director of Northeastern’s Resilience Studies Program and co-director at the Global Resilience Institute, said building social capital with one’s neighbors before a disaster takes place could determine the fate of their lives.
“It’s never the intensity of the shock that drives things like fatalities, casualties and recovery,” he said, referring to his research on the 1923 Tokyo earthquake and 1995 Kobe earthquake, which centered on the ways social capital can aid in post-crisis recovery. “It’s almost always about connections, to what degree a community engages with each other.”
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That’s why Aldrich recommends communities in disaster-prone areas like California view resilience as a culture, not just a plan. “Recurring drills, mutual aid societies, dense neighborhood associations. Those are the things that really work,” he said.
This type of community building is most essential to protect residents with vulnerabilities, such as the elderly or ailing, Aldrich said. He suggested neighbors ensure they have phone numbers and know how many people live in the homes next to theirs in case a quick rescue is needed.
The sad thing, Aldrich said, is that it typically takes an actual shock for communities to test the degree to which they are prepared for one. Simulations, drills and census numbers do little to account for the social capital, or lack thereof, built between neighbors.
“Those things we often don’t know well enough until afterwards,” he said.
In California, Aldrich also has discovered significant differences between the state’s large Spanish-speaking populations and non Spanish-speaking populations in terms of preparation for disasters and engagement with community organizations. “If there were some kind of earthquake, I would predict, unfortunately, that among the more vulnerable communities might be the Spanish-speaking communities,” he said.
At the same time, engineering quake-resistant infrastructure will always be important, Aldrich said, but if residents don’t trust authorities to provide fast and robust aid, “it doesn’t really matter what levels of construction you’ve been doing.”
Unlike tropical cyclones or wildfires, for which atmospheric conditions and seasonal trends can serve as predictable indicators of future events, earthquakes are tougher to plan for, Ganguly said.
“You can do some broad-level prediction that an earthquake is more likely in the coming few years than it has been in the last few years,” he said. “But it’s hard to predict immediately that this is going to happen here.”
