At approximately 4:30pm on Saturday, January 9 we had a 6.5 earthquake in which the epicenter was too darned close to our house on Humboldt Hill in the shadow of Eureka, California. I had just finished packing for a business trip to teach an ICM Managing Technology and Technology Projects course for which I planned to fly out at 6am the next day.

There were no injuries or structural damage to our home, although there was considerable breakage despite being pretty earthquake savvy and strapping or otherwise securing most of the items in the house. We lost a lot of wine and spirits that we thought were securely stored in the garage, a flat screen TV took a five foot swan dive despite being strapped to the wall, and one of our tropical fish escaped our attention until it was too late to discover it had sloshed out of the tank along with a lot of water.

In all, we have no complaints and thank the powers that watch over us. As a former Los Angeles County Marshal’s office executive buddy of ours once noted, enjoy your good health … the rest you can buy. We cleaned up the major stuff that night despite a power outage that lasted several hours and I left the next day. My wife had the unpleasant task of handling the rest of the cleanup in my absence. To say I owe her big time is gross understatement.

During the course in Ohio, one segment for which I was responsible covered disaster preparedness and continuity of operations (also known as COOP). I ran out of time to cover the prepared material and instead related my tale of woe, leaving the participants with two important points … first, disaster can and will happen to anyone at any time, so preparing is not an option. Second, the National Center for State Courts website has a wealth of information, publications, checklists and frequently-asked-questions on disaster preparedness and COOP, so there is no need to make this stuff up on your own.

One of the class participants noted that as a court technologist she was keenly aware of the need to prepare, and insisted after any major disruption that her staff prepare a Post Event Analysis Report that she calls PEAR. I jotted a note to myself to add this to the class materials to include for future courses, and when I returned home I received a template of a similar report that our local fire agency put together to gauge the effectiveness of the City’s response. For a copy CLICK HERE.

The bottom line is that there was not a single fatality in our community, and injuries were minimal. Sure, there was damage to selected properties, but they were mostly unreinforced masonry buildings whose days were numbered anyway because of their notable failure rate during seismic episodes. Nearly everyone close to this situation attributes the limited effect to preparedness. Since the community has had a long history of being cut off from ingress and egress when severe winter storms and earthquakes strike, people listen when they are warned to take precautionary steps.

Contrast our outcome with the tragic situation in Haiti that suffered a devastating 7.0 temblor days afterward. Obviously, a 0.5 point spread in the Richter Scale is a big difference, as is the lack of appropriate building standards; but the death, injury and damage count is beyond belief. I urge you to consider donating to help Haiti reduce their suffering and hasten their recovery.

A tale of two cities and a PEAR are two important lessons for us all.

Photo credit = Microsoft clip art

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