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San Mateo County supervisors on June 28 unanimously voted to approve the recommended budget for the next two years, with almost half a million dollars of it headed toward the hiring of two emergency managers with expertise in hazard mitigation focused on earthquake preparedness.
Board Supervisor Ray Mueller said the two new emergency staff would be working with San Mateo County to implement plans on how to respond to a large magnitude earthquake.
In the immediate aftermath of a large magnitude earthquake, San Mateo County residents must be adequately prepared and trained, Mueller said.
“The California National Guard would probably be brought out to help assist, but you really need to have community volunteers ready to help each other,” Mueller said. “So you list your different community assets, like where your doctors are, where all the different levels of expertise are in a community.”
Mueller cited recent environmental hazards that caused dangerous conditions throughout San Mateo County as the reason earthquake preparedness was included in this year’s budget.
“We had transportation infrastructure fail along Highway 92, and we saw that happen on multiple county roads,” he said. “We saw a boulder actually come down near the tunnel on Pacifica and block access to the route there. Now, that's just from rain. Imagine what happens in an earthquake.”
Dr. Anne Wein, a Stanford graduate and investigator for the United States Geological Survey, said much of her work involves interpreting data and giving detailed analyses of the consequences of earthquakes of various magnitudes.
One of the reports created by the USGS is the Haywired earthquake scenario. This report gives extensive information about the probability of a large earthquake and the societal consequences that would follow it.
According to the report, there is a 72% probability of one or more earthquakes occurring with a magnitude greater than or equal to 6.7 between 2014 and 2043 in the San Francisco Bay Region. Wein said that out of the many fault lines that run near the Bay Area, the Hayward Fault line is the most likely to cause one of these large earthquakes.
“The Hayward Fault usually ruptures every 100 to 220 years, and when scientists dig into the ground, they can see that,” Wein said. So, the last large earthquake on the Hayward Fault was in 1868. So you can do the math, and we are right in that area from 100 to 220 years later.”
Wein said that if there were to be a 6.7 magnitude earthquake in the Bay Area within the next 30 years, there is a 33% chance that it would come from the Hayward Fault line.
Even though the Hayward Fault line is not the closest fault in proximity to Redwood City, Wein said that a rupture of the fault would still be very hazardous for Redwood City residents due to a process called “liquefaction,” which is when the soil underneath a structure weakens, causing the structure to “sink.”
“During the Loma Prieta earthquake when the epicenter was down in the Santa Cruz mountains, there was liquefaction in San Francisco," Wein said. "That's 60 miles away, so that's definitely a consideration for Redwood City.”
To prepare for the next large earthquake, the USGS recommends a six-step plan: secure movable items within your household, create a plan with members of your family, organize disaster items such as food, water and first aid, minimize financial hardship by organizing important documents and buying insurance, find cover and hold on whenever the earthquake hits, and evacuate the area once safe.
