In January of 1994, the Northridge area of California was shaken by a level 6.7 earthquake, which devastated the area, including California State University at Northridge. See Susan Curzon’s story of the destruction of her library at CSU, and how they responded by getting services back up and running in temporary shelters and with limited staffing. (This story and more are available from the “Library Disaster Stories” page here on the toolkit.)

Earthquake damage to the rear side of the Oviatt Library. Image from Susan Curzon's story.

Today, in the “Emergency Preparedness News” section in the left column of the toolkit, you can see a story about the earthquake drill that is scheduled for Stanford University in early February. It is interesting to see how well their preparedness planners have used the lessons learned from previous incidents in their area and have planned the drill to deal with issues they know they will face when the next quake occurs.

The toolkit has two additional resources for preparedness and risk assessment related specifically to earthquakes. (1) See the “Earthquakes” RSS feed available in the list of RSS feeds on the left, and (2) under “Risk Assessment Maps and Charts” on the right, see the Earthquake map produced by the USGS showing earthquake probability for all of the U.S. The USGS says that over 75 million people live in earthquake-prone zones in the U.S., which affect 39 states.

Boston University’s online newspaper contains an article today about how the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, TX weathered Hurricane Ike with flying colors, despite the beating taken by the island as a result of the storm. There is a really interesting account from their associate director of research, who said that “the positive outcome was no stroke of luck, but the result of wise engineering and a comprehensive emergency plan that includes a long-term weather-tracking strategy.” She also noted that “preparedness is attainable, and it works.”

At the University of Hawaii, roof repair work led to some major water leaking into their library. The account in the “Star Bulletin” today underlines how a quick response, based on excellent preparedness activities, can minimize damage and speed recovery. Based on their experiences with major flooding in 2004, the library has a well-developed disaster response team, who was actively watching for damage from the heavy rains, had the needed supplies on hand, knew what to do with wet materials and where to put them, and had a salvage company on site quickly to restore air quality and help with cleanup.

News reports of flooding:

KHON TV

KHNL TV

It’s nice to hear that preparedness efforts really do pay off–a huge return on a relatively small investment!

Many thanks to Heidi Sandstrom, Associate Director, Pacific Southwest Region of NN/LM for information about how she and her staff and neighboring hospitals fared during the earthquake in Southern California yesterday.  Congratulations to Heidi’s staff members, who knew the appropriate response and followed it!  Heidi and her staff are fine, and she has spoken with the hospital librarian whose hospital is closest to the epicenter, and everything is fine there, too.  Heidi sent links to the story in the Los Angeles Times, as well as from the California HealthCare Foundation.  Note that the injuries reported happened when people “stampeded” out of a building, as opposed to following the procedure, which is to stay inside and get under a table or desk.  And in this case, the communication outages were caused by “network congestion” rather than damage to the systems.  Good lessons to add to the preparedness list!

Also see Heidi’s posts on emergency preparedness on their region’s newsletter, Latitudes.   Thanks, Heidi for the follow-up.  Even though no one had to call 1-800-DEV-ROKS this time, we appreciate your report.  Another good use for the Toolkit–we can let the whole Network know at once that you and your members are okay!