The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Western Regional Director told me point blank, one month ago, after me peppering him with San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station (SONGS) post-reactor meltdown scenarios:
"That's why they call it Disaster."
Disaster: the past-present tense of our here and now, when we're not careful. Disaster can be avoided, if you just don't go there. Yet our human nature is to go, to build, to deny the omnipotent laws of nature, then suffer that all too familiar consequence - Disaster.
That's what Mr. FEMA / Mr. Disaster was getting at. FEMA and First-Responders, don't prevent Disaster. They mop up after. But Disaster can be preempted, or avoided entirely just by doing the right thing: utilize good common sense.
• The CDP's Rules Committee is going to be having a meeting to discuss, primarily, the CDP's Endorsement Process on August 17. It's a system that truly needs reform.
• Some funny stuff from the Prop 8 Donor roll. For months there have been no donations from Chino Hills, and then on July 24, there were 3 donations of $5,000+. Then on July 28, 2 more $5K+ donations. Guess what else happened the next day? Yup, an earthquake centered in Chino Hills. If you follow your typical right-wing logic, isn't this the deities being enraged with Prop 8? Just sayin'
Anything else?
[UPDATE] by Robert - I will be on KRXA 540 AM tomorrow morning at 8 to discuss California politics, including Arnold's latest act of right-wing desperation.
Sara Robinson, one of my favorite bloggers, had a really fantastic post at the CAF blog about why we have responsible government to thank for the relative lack of damage to the 5.4 earthquake that hit Southern California yesterday.
The fact that Los Angeles returned to normal (as if anything in Los Angeles can ever be considered normal) within just a few hours is one of those invisible but important lessons in the collective power of a functioning government -- the kind of non-controvertible, essential fact that conservatives tend to gloss right over when they talk about shrinking government until they can drown it in a bathtub.
California's seismic codes are serious, strict, and effective. The state has been working on them for 80 years now, refining them through the years after every major quake to incorporate new knowledge and engineering practices. (A major revision this year has recently sent all the state's architects, engineers, and contractors back to school yet again.) To see the results of this ongoing effort, consider the 1931 Long Beach quake, a 6.4 shaker that damn near flattened Long Beach, killed 120 people, and caused over $40 million (in 1931 dollars) in property damage. And then reflect on the fact that in 1989, it took a quake eleven times bigger -- the 7.1 Loma Prieta quake -- to create a comparable amount of damage.
That's how effective the improvements have been. These days, most new structures are hardened to the point that you'd need at least a 7.0 (well over 10 times the size of today's quake) before things seriously started shaking apart. In many parts of the planet, a 5.8 quake would be enough to level towns, collapse bridges, and take out decades' worth of infrastructure. In LA and SF, all that happens is a few people lose their phones and power for a few hours.
It really is remarkable what serious attention to building codes has done. Not too long ago yesterday's earthquake would have been a disaster - today it's a blip. California has recognized the problem, taken steps to constantly improve and innovate, and made sure that the regulations stayed stringent, so that developers would just have to find other means to reduce costs. The fact that the epicenter was around Chino Hills and Diamond Bar, relatively new areas with new buildings that were constructed according to the strictest building codes, was only a further testament to that. The after-action reports from the 1989 San Francisco quake and the 1994 Northridge quake were taken seriously and applied in this case.
There was a mid-sized quake in the Bay Area just a couple of hours ago, measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale, on the Calaveras fault just east of San Jose. Apparently some people felt it as far as Marin County and Stockton, but I felt nothing out here in Davis. Here's the USGS's report:
