We’re living on borrowed time—quit procrastinating and make that earthquake survival plan today.

Forget about the 20th anniversary of the Loma Prieta earthquake this month. Worry about the 141st anniversary of the Hayward quake instead. After the next big one, cheerfully explains Berkeley Deputy Fire Chief Gil Dong, “We won’t be able to get to everyone.” In fact, Dong says, “There is an acronym we use called ‘YOYO:’ You’re On Your Own.”

We all know what happened in 1989, when 880’s Cypress freeway and part of the Bay Bridge collapsed. But only historians and seismologists are aware that an equally destructive 6.8 to 7 quake rocked the Hayward fault in 1868, destroying the second floor of the Alameda County Courthouse and causing widespread damage throughout the Bay Area. Geologists call the Hayward fault a “tectonic time bomb.”

When the Hayward fault snaps—or any other big earthquake hits—fire trucks, emergency vehicles, and federal assistance will not be at your door anytime soon. (Need we mention Hurricane Katrina?) “From water shortages, to loss of utilities, to the number of fires projected, to closures of freeway on-ramps, and old infrastructure—and that includes hospitals,” says Dong, “we cannot do it all in 72 hours.”

“Prepare to be able to survive . . . on your own,” cautions Rick McKenzie, a staff research associate at the U.C. Berkeley Seismological Laboratory. “If we have a large quake, people should be prepared to do without what they are used to for a couple of weeks. If there is no power, cash registers could be out. Roads could be out,” says McKenzie. “What do you think you will need for one to two weeks?”

Before your eyes glaze over and your highly efficient denial mechanisms switch on, take note of two reassuring facts. First, you are not alone. A highly unscientific survey of nearly three dozen Bay Area residents reveals only about three or four fully prepared respondents, among them local historian Gray Brechin, a self-described “seismophobe.” Brechin maintains earthquake kits in three locations (car, garage, and house), along with flashlights, batteries, stashed jugs of water, and canned food.

Bad example: The writer’s entire earthquake kit consists of this battery-powered radio. Period. Photo by SpiralA Photography.

Virtually everyone else surveyed offers various gems of evasion, hopefulness, willful ignorance, and ingenuity. Some are practical: “I have the shortcut kit recommended by a savvy outback Wyoming girl: duct tape, tin foil, reflective blanket, and a tent.” Most are less so. “I’m in denial that I’m in denial. I grew up in Tennessee where there are no earthquakes.” “C’mon, man, you’re asking the guy who had sex without a condom and is now dandling an eight-week-old baby girl as I try to type, and you think I’m going to prepare for an earthquake?” “My plan is to stock up on cigarettes beforehand and sell or barter them should the earthquake turn into Armageddon.”

Now that you feel less pathetic, or at least in good company, the second reassuring fact is that you can take some quick, cheap—even free—steps that could save your life.

Your survival strategy

“Think in terms of community, not individual households,” urges Amy Segal, a Richmond-based humanitarian aid worker with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) who has worked in Indonesia, Sierra Leone, and Uganda, and has a modicum of disaster relief training. “Working on the [2004] tsunami in Indonesia kicked me in the butt about what disasters really do,” Segal says. “Initially, no one is there. You have to be prepared to help each other.”

Better prepared than most cities around the Bay, Berkeley has spent over $350 million on emergency preparedness programs since 1992. Using government grants, the city’s Office of Emergency Services has trained college students in basic first aid and preliminary search and rescue, and stashed emergency equipment including goggles, fire extinguishers, two-way radios, and other essentials in student housing around the city. Even so, in the midst of post-quake chaos, you may have only yourself to rely on.

The most important thing to do is make a plan encompassing personal, family, and neighborhood safety, according to several local disaster response agencies, including the Bay Area Red Cross, the city of Berkeley’s Office of Emergency Services, and Citizens of Oakland Respond to Emergencies (C.O.R.E.). Make sure you and your loved ones agree on a couple of places to regroup, both close to home and farther away, in case your neighborhood is devastated. Segal also notes that bridges may be out, so arrange rendezvous points on both sides of the Bay.

It is essential that everyone have a single contact number to call outside the 510, 415, and 925 area codes. Memorize the contact number, and also keep it with you in written form, not in your cell phone—batteries die. In a disaster it is often possible to make calls, but not to receive them. Once you’ve briefly checked in with your contact, stay off the phone to keep lines open for emergency services.

Once everyone is accounted for, take care of essentials—food, water, and shelter. Know where the gas shut-off is and have a tool available to turn it off. Know the location of the nearest emergency shelter. There is a good chance that the local school or church has an arrangement with the Red Cross. Find out about that now, not after the quake. Dong also suggests carrying an encrypted memory stick with critical home and personal information.

“Self-preparedness is the key,” says Kathleen Crawford, Oakland’s assistant emergency services manager, who cites the mantra, “Make a Plan, Build an Emergency Kit, and Get Involved.” The city of Oakland offers a series of emergency response classes beginning in September, January, and April. Neighborhood groups preparing group disaster plans can also arrange to have C.O.R.E. training in their neighborhoods at convenient locations—a participant’s living room, perhaps, or the local elementary school. Berkeley, too, offers year-round emergency-preparedness classes that can be found on the city’s website.

In addition to classes specifically focused on earthquake preparedness, more general instruction in first aid, CPR, and EMT is a good idea. But while disaster training is important, be realistic. “The biggest mistake people make is that they have taken one course and think they know everything,” warns Segal. “Even with all the training I have had, I am scared that I know just enough to get in the way.”

Oddly enough, Segal’s most memorable lesson was gleaned from a U.S. State Department self-defense class: imagine what could happen, mentally run through it, and plan ways to deal. “When disaster first strikes, everyone is in shock,” says Segal, “but the more you have thought about it, the quicker you get out of shock and can start doing things.”

Personal disaster kit

Once you have the glimmerings of a plan, then, and only then, think about earthquake supplies. Kits run from $12.99 to upwards of $500 at REI, the Red Cross, and Orchard Supply and ACE hardware stores. Online purveyors include Early Bird Safety and the Dublin-based Your Safety Place.

But think before you grab that credit card. You can make your own kit more cheaply—and you will actually know what’s in it. For the basic DIY model, Brandon Jensen, a supervisor at Any Mountain in Berkeley, suggests buying individual items at his store, REI, Big 5 Sporting Goods, or Sports Authority. It’s not necessary, he says, to purchase expensive ready-to-eat meals or upscale camping food. Instead, just stock up on easy-to-prepare meals like Trader Joe’s “Tasty Bite” Indian dinners. They have a long shelf life and can be eaten hot or cold.

If you have a backyard, do what Dong does: stock a shed or large garbage can with water, first aid supplies, basic medications for burns and bleeding, energy bars, canned food, can openers, flashlight, camping stove, clothes, crank-powered radio, and water. If you don’t have a backyard, do what Jensen does and make sure your stash is easily accessible and not buried in a closet somewhere. “My earthquake kit is my backpack, sleeping bag, sleeping pad, a stove, one-liter pot, headlamp, and water filter,” he says. Since filters do not deal with viruses, Jensen notes, you’ll also need iodine and chlorine dioxide tablets for purification.

On the brighter side, Jensen says that every home has two significant water storage sources: the hot water heater and toilet cistern, containing a combined 15 or 20 gallons of water—if, that is, the house is still standing.

Regardless of whether you purchase a ready-made kit or make one yourself, don’t just buy and forget. It’s crucial, experts agree, to check food expiration dates and monitor your supplies. “A couple of years ago,” says one local journalist, “I got together a full earthquake kit, a big plastic bin of supplies of all kinds—food, water, a book to read, a change of clothes, first aid—everything. Then a year later, when I went to check on it, I discovered that one of the jugs of water had cracked and spilled into the box. The whole thing was solid mold.” Two years later, she says, “I’ve never replaced it.”

Both Dong and Jensen suggest rotating food and water annually. A good time to swap in new supplies is during local food banks’ annual fall food drives. “Every time you go grocery shopping, put a little aside for the disaster kit,” suggests Madelyn Mackie, manager of preparedness and youth services for the American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter. “If you buy eight rolls of toilet paper, take one aside. If you get a two-for-one peanut butter, put one aside.” And once you’ve invested all that time and money in assembling a kit, don’t raid it for munchies. One snackaholic admits that he kept sneaking into his stockpile for energy bars, as well as batteries and toilet paper. Pretty soon that cupboard was bare!

Given that post-earthquake life might be on the tedious side (once the drama dies down, that is), providing a little entertainment for yourself is not a bad idea. “As sick and overly organized as it might sound, yes, indeed, I have an earthquake kit with food, clothes, radio, the whole bit,” says one information technology professional. “It’s kept in a backpack in my car trunk, along with six gallons of water and a copy of John McPhee’s 680-odd page book on geography and geology, Annals of the Former World. This seems like appropriate reading while waiting (in vain?) for the rescuers to arrive! I also keep a soccer ball in the kit in case I get bored with the book.”

Shoring up at home

The last thing a disaster-stricken homeowner needs is a balloon payment due on a condemned property. (At least this is one thing renters don’t have to worry about.) Many homeowner’s insurance plans do not include earthquake insurance. Residential earthquake insurance is available through insurers that participate in California Earthquake Authority (CEA) insurance programs, but it is expensive and currently covers only about 860,000 (in other words, 12 percent of) homeowners statewide.

On the upside, there are a number of local firms in the residential earthquake retrofit business. Wayne Harrison, cofounder of Earthquake Safety Incorporated in Berkeley, says the field was kicked off by a couple of “seminal” articles from U.C. Berkeley’s School of Environmental Design in the early 1980s. “It was clear to us there was an enormous need for old houses to be upgraded and made safer,” says Harrison.

In the past 25 years, Earthquake Safety Incorporated has retrofitted 6,500 Bay Area homes, mostly in the East Bay. Among other local firms doing similar work are Quake Busters and Karl MacRae Consulting in Oakland, Bay Area Retrofit in Berkeley, LST Construction in El Cerrito, and Alameda Structural.

According to Karl MacRae, 90 percent of earthquake damage to homes comes from sideways movement of the earth. Essentially, the rug gets pulled out from underneath the house. While large buildings such as Oakland City Hall are designed to move independently from the ground in an earthquake, smaller structures sustain less damage if they are firmly attached to the ground. Most East Bay homes that have not been retrofitted, MacRae says, resemble a brick (the house) supported by a mass of vertical sticks (the so-called cripple or pony walls), with the whole precarious structure resting on top of a movable table (the earth). “Shake the table and you get a bunch of sticks under a brick,” he says. “You don’t want to be in the sticks.”

Assuming a home’s underpinnings are in decent shape, retrofitting involves bolting a large piece of hardware—frequently a solid chunk of wood—to the foundation. Sheets of plywood are then attached to both the hardware and the load-bearing cripple walls. The hoped-for result is that the house doesn’t fall down on top of you in a quake, although you and your furniture may get bounced around inside like a Ping-Pong ball. Bolting bookcases, furniture, and water heaters to the walls and foundation is also an excellent idea.

Retrofitting expenses are all over the map—depending on the home’s location, the state of the structure, its height, the wood’s condition, or the presence of dry rot—ranging from $3,000 on the low end to as much as $50,000. “A good way to look at it is that it is really a small fraction of what the property is worth,” MacRae notes.

But the fact is, this next quake is going to be a doozy. Whether or not you, your home, or your possessions survive depends in part on how well prepared you are, but some factors are—let’s face it—entirely out of your control. Not to harp on Hurricane Katrina, but if that disaster is any indication, the people who will suffer most are apt to be those who are already having a tough time. One Oakland resident says that he, like others of his race, is more likely to be targeted than saved by rescue teams. “As a person of color,” he notes, “I won’t have the luxury of foraging for water at Walgreen’s. I’ll be branded a looter and probably shot on sight by the National Guard or a rent-a-cop.”

Then there is the issue of chance. Being in the wrong or right place can make all the difference. One former REI worker says, “We sometimes joked that we hoped we were on shift if any natural disaster happened. We had everything right there. Heck, we were even ready for a zombie invasion: we had axes for taking off their heads.”

Be realistic about your resources, and do what you can. If you can’t retrofit your home, get insurance. If you can’t do that, get a quake kit, or make one. But no matter what, make sure that you and your family have a solid survival plan in place so you know what to do when the earth starts moving in a bad way.

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Statewide ShakeOut, Thursday, Oct. 15 at 10:15 a.m. Register to participate in the largest “Drop, Cover, and Hold On” earthquake drill in history at www.shakeout.org. Then catch the free emergency prepardeness class on Saturday, Oct. 17, 3 to 5:30 p.m., at the Cypress Freeway Memorial Park (on Mandela Parkway between 12th and 14th streets).

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Tim Kingston is a widely published freelance writer and investigator who now thinks he really needs an earthquake plan, and will do something about that. Soon. Really soon.

Shake, Rattle, and Roll Resources

CITY PROGRAMS

Alameda
Alameda Disaster Preparedness Office, 950 West Mall Square, Alameda, (510) 337-2130; www.ci.alameda.ca.us/fire/earthquake_preparedness.html.
Alameda Fire Department, 1300 Park St., Alameda, (510) 337-2100.

Berkeley
City Emergency Notification Service, (510) 981-5506.
Community Emergency Response Team (CERT); www.cityofberkeley.info/ContentDisplay.aspx?id=30566.
Fire Department, 2100 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Berkeley, (510) 981-3473; www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/fire.
Office of Emergency Services; www.getreadyberkeley.org.

El Cerrito
El Cerrito-Kensington CERT, 10900 San Pablo Ave., El Cerrito, (510) 215-4450; www.elcerritokensingtoncert.org.

Oakland
Citizens of Oakland Respond to Emergencies (C.O.R.E.), 1605 Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Oakland, (510) 238-6351; www.oaklandcore.org.
Collaborating Agencies Responding to Disasters (CARD), 1736 Franklin St., Ste. 450, Oakland, (510) 451-3140; www.cardcanhelp.org.

OTHER LOCAL RESOURCES
American Red Cross Bay Area Chapter, 85 Second St., 8th Floor, San Francisco, (888) 443-5722; www.redcrossbayarea.org.
Association of Bay Area Governments, earthquake maps and information; www.abag.ca.gov/bayarea/eqmaps/pickcity.html.

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
Community Emergency Response Team (CERT); www.citizencorps.gov/cert.
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA); www.fema.gov/hazard/earthquake/index.shtm.

COMMERCIAL
ACE Hardware, 1221 Grand Ave., Piedmont, (510) 652-1936, and other locations; www.acehardware.com.
Any Mountain, 2777 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, (510) 665-3939; http://anymountain.net.
Early Bird Safety, 2930 Domingo Ave., Ste. 120, Berkeley, 510-432-0189; www.earlybirdsafety.com.
Orchard Supply Hardware, 1025 Ashby Ave., Berkeley, (510) 540-6638, and other locations; www.osh.com.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company; www.pge.com/myhome/edusafety/gaselectricsafety/turngasoff.
REI, 1338 San Pablo Ave., Berkeley, (510) 527-4140; www.rei.com.
Your Safety Place, 7197 Village Parkway, Dublin, (925) 829-0350; www.yoursafetyplace.com.

COMMERCIAL RESIDENTIAL RETROFITS
Alameda Structural, 1620 Clinton Ave., Alameda, (510) 523-1610; www.alamedastructural.com.
Bay Area Retrofit, 2619 7th St., Berkeley, (510) 548-1111; www.bayarearetrofit.com.
Bay Area Structural, 1185 Ocean Ave., Oakland, (510) 547-8250; www.bayareastructural.net.
Earthquake Safety Incorporated, 1103 Tenth St., Berkeley, (510) 528-6165; www.earthquakesafety.com.
Karl MacRae Consulting, 217 Monte Vista Ave., Oakland, (510) 852-1671; karl@karlmacraeconsulting.com.
Quake Busters, 675 37th St., #13, Oakland, (510) 763-6933; www.qbusters.com.

EARTHQUAKE INFORMATION
The Hayward Fault; http://seismo.berkeley.edu/hayward/hayward_fault.html.
Local Earthquake Information; http://earthquake.usgs.gov.
Map of recent earthquakes in California and Nevada; http://quake.wr.usgs.gov/recenteqs.
U.S. Geological Survey; www.usgs.gov.
USGS Earthquake Hazards Program for Northern California; http://quake.usgs.gov.