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Old September 6th 05, 09:19 PM
Kevin Karplus
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Claire Petersky wrote:
In any case, considering Katrina's aftermath, I was wondering what people's
disaster preparation plans were, and if they've been changed.


In Santa Cruz, the most likely natural disaster is an earthquake, and
it is not likely to cause much destruction---most of the old brick
buildings collapsed in the 1989 quake and the building code is pretty
strictly enforced. We are high enough up (elevation 50 feet) that
tsunamis are not likely to get to us, and our house is on heavy clay
that did not liquefy or shake much in the last quake (most of the
damage was concentrated downtown, which was built on silt and fill).

We should stockpile food and water, but we don't. It is hard to keep
emergency supplies ready when you use them about once or twice a
century. We do have emergency lights and some wood for the fireplace,
since power failures are pretty common (due to inadequate investment
in infrastructure by PG&E). We also have camping water filters
(somewhere) and a shallow well of non-potable water that could be used
in an emergency. (By shallow, I mean about six feet to the bottom of
the well---the water table is typically about an inch below the surface.
We would not need electic pumps to get water out of the well.)

We could expect to be without power or natural gas for a few days,
which would be uncomfortable, but not particularly dangerous in this
climate. Most likely, the biggest problem would be getting food, as we
shop for fresh food almost daily and don't have a stockpile of canned
goods or other nonperishables.

Medical emergencies may be a bigger problem, since all the hospitals
and most of the bigger clinics are clustered together on the other
side of the San Lorenzo River. Losing the few bridges across the
river could result in serious difficulties in getting treatment for
seriously injured people west of the river.

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Kevin Karplus http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~karplus
Professor of Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Santa Cruz
Undergraduate and Graduate Director, Bioinformatics
(Senior member, IEEE) (Board of Directors, ISCB)
life member (LAB, Adventure Cycling, American Youth Hostels)
Effective Cycling Instructor #218-ck (lapsed)
Affiliations for identification only.