Cities' 2-Day Earthquake Preparedness Exercise Starts Friday

It’s not a question of if a major earthquake will hit the Bay Area; it’s a question of when.

Thursday’s 4.2 and 3.9 magnitude earthquakes in Berkeley serves as a reminder that all Californians need to be prepared for the next big disaster, said Miguel Grey, Santa Clara County Fire Department senior emergency services coordinator. 

Even the teensy 1.7 magnitude quake mid-morning Friday near Los Altos won't let us rest easy.

Los Altos Hills, Cupertino, Campbell, Saratoga, Los Gatos, Monte Sereno are spending two days testing their earthquake emergency response systems. 

Four cities activated their Emergency Operations Centers (EOC) Friday and Saturday, Grey said. Even Los Altos Police participated by opening the city's center near the and simulating responses.

During the two-day exercise, for example Cupertino is asking residents “to voluntarily simulate loss of electricity, water, and Internet for two hours,” and go visit their local area resource center, according to an exercise press release.

Residents are also encouraged to prepare an emergency kit for their pets, as first responders have reported the tendency of some residents to overlook their animals in emergency situations.  

A combination of volunteer and official city emergency response teams will also randomly simulate various emergency scenarios and role-play how to respond.

“An earthquake could happen at any second,” said Capt. Carl Neusel, chief of the West Valley Division of the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office.

The in-the-field volunteer response teams make up one of two major components of the exercise, Grey said. The second is the interaction between city EOCs.

In the event of a real disaster communities would rely on their EOCs to communicate information and share resources. These systems were activated Friday and used to coordinate several tasks to test their capabilities.

Los Altos Police used the opportunity to put a dispatcher and several police supervisors in the city's EOC and simulate responses as they monitored the other agencies' radio traffic, said Los Altos Police Capt. Andy Galea.

Fires, road obstructions and other calls for help presented a fresh chances to respond, even if only simulated for a few hours Friday, he said. Last month, they did a similar simulation with the Los Altos School District, Los Altos-Mountain View High School District and all city staff, Galea added.

Neusel stressed the importance of random simulations because it forces response teams to think quickly and to adapt. “The more practice we get,” he said, “the better we will operate together in a real emergency.”  

- Los Altos Patch Editor L.A. Chung contributed to this report