WHAT TO DO DURING AND AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE
No matter how much, or how little, you’ve done to prepare, these lists will help you know what to expect and what to do during the earthquake and in the minutes and days afterward. Reading these lists before the earthquake, and keeping them handy in your emergency supplies, will help you focus on the most important actions to take and lessen the likelihood that you’ll forget critical tasks.
Drop, cover, and hold on. The best place is under a sturdy table or desk. In modern houses, doorways are not safer than other areas. If you can’t get under something, at least get down by an interior wall before you’re knocked down. Stay away from windows and anything that could fall on you. Most earthquake injuries are caused by flying or falling objects, not building collapse.
If you are in a wheelchair, lock your wheels. Cover your head with your arms if you can.
If you are in bed, stay there and hold on. Cover your head with your arms and pillows.
If you are in a car, stop where it is as safe as possible, away from anything that could fall on the car.
If you are inside a building, stay there. Many serious injuries in earthquakes are from things falling on people who try to get outside.
If you know a comforting prayer, chant, mantra, or song, repeat it to yourself until the earthquake ends. The Cascadia earthquake is expected to last from four to six minutes, which will feel endless.
Stop. You may feel an overwhelming urge to run outside, where you’ll feel safer. But many people are injured after an earthquake because they try to run. Stay until you have shoes on that protect you from broken glass. Grab a flashlight to help you avoid tripping; put on a dust mask if you have one. Even better, put on a hard hat or a bicycle, motorcycle, or sports helmet to protect your head.
Call out for others in your household to stay put until they have also taken care of protecting themselves.
Check for injuries—your own and others. Shock can mask pain. Slowly move each part of your body to see if you are hurt. If it is safe to stay in place, don’t move an injured person until a full assessment of the injury can be done. Treat shock as well as injuries.
Text your status to an out-of-state number if possible. It is unlikely that a phone call or local text will get through.
Cover your head with a hard hat, helmet, heavy book, or your arms as you walk outside. There may still be debris falling off buildings.
If you can, crate your pet before you leave the house. However, your pet may get out on its own. If so, take the crate outside with you and look for your pet there.
You are now on an island, defined by downed bridges or blocked roads. These temporary boundaries keep you in and others out. The people on the island with you and the skills, needs, and supplies they have will shape your life over the next few days.
There is no perfect way to list the actions you should take without knowing the date, time, and magnitude of the earthquake, the level of preparedness on your newly formed island, and the readiness of other “island” members to respond to problems. But the list below will remind you of important things to do. The situation around you will dictate urgent tasks to tackle.
Stop. You may feel an overwhelming urge to reunite with loved ones. You may want to rush off to try to meet them, risking travel to a different “island.” The most important thing you can do for your loved ones is to stay safe. Aftershocks will be worse now than later. Don’t let a bad decision lead to a greater injury than the earthquake did. Wouldn’t you want your loved ones to be careful and stay safe right now, rather than risk injury to get to you?
Do what it takes to slow yourself down. If you pray, now is the time. If you have a meditation practice, use your training. The explosion of adrenaline that shot through your body during the earthquake needs to dissipate for you to be able to think clearly and regain full use of your senses. You may experience nausea, headaches, or exhaustion as aftereffects of the adrenaline. If you don’t pray or meditate, just close your eyes and bring your attention to each area of your body from your feet to your head. Work to slow your breath. Doing any of this with others will increase the impact.
Secure doors in an open position to make sure you can get in and out of your home. Aftershocks could jam doors shut.
Text your status to an out-of-state contact number. A phone call or local text may not get through.
Use earplugs if you need to block the noise from car and building alarms that may blare for hours.
Leave light switches off and avoid anything else that could cause a spark. Fire risk will be high.
Treat injuries as much as possible. Identify people in the area with first-aid or medical training. Based on the level of road and building destruction that you see, weigh the dangers of getting an injured person to a medical facility—which may or may not be able to treat them—with the risks of treating them where they are.
Cooperate with others to survey the people in your neighborhood or immediate vicinity. Identify urgent needs. Join with others to see if the needs can be met.
Do whatever is possible to rescue others, while taking care to keep rescuers from becoming victims. More than 80 percent of people trapped in earthquakes are saved by ordinary people who happen to be nearby. Unfortunately, sometimes rescuers are hurt or killed in the effort to save others: help, but stay safe. Set up a bucket brigade with 5-gallon buckets to remove debris at a rescue site.
Plan actions and make decisions in a group. Several people working together will likely come up with better solutions than one person on their own.
Give older children and teenagers in the area an appropriate job to do. Action fights anxiety.
If you have small children, ask others for help to get important tasks done so that you can focus on your children’s needs. Take on jobs you can do near or with your children. The more you can calm your child right after the earthquake, the better able your family will be to weather the next two weeks.
If you smell an odor of rotten egg or hear hissing, turn off your gas. Otherwise, leave it on. (Once you turn it off, a technician needs to come to your house to turn it back on. The wait for this service will be long. Don’t take chances, but don’t turn it off “just in case” either.) Check again following aftershocks.
Assume any downed power line is live and dangerous, even if the power is out.
Put fire extinguishers on the curb in front of your house, condo, or apartment. Encourage others to do the same.
Turn off the water coming into the house to avoid contaminating the water in your water heater.
If you have a rain barrel, check to see if it is upright. Secure it as best you can to avoid losing water in the aftershocks to come. Drain rain-barrel water into clean containers with lids. If your roof is asphalt or composition shingles, the water could have heavy metals or chemicals in it, so the water should not be used for drinking.
Empty the ice cubes in your refrigerator into a clean container with a lid. While you have the freezer open, remove any food that you can eat in the next few hours.
Empty the water from your toilet tank—not the bowl—into a clean container with a lid. Purify before using.
Decide where you are going to shelter. Open space without anything that could fall on you is a good choice—a yard, a park, a stadium, a soccer field, a parking lot, an empty lot.
Build a makeshift shelter, pitch a tent, or decide on a vehicle that will house you for a while. If you can safely do so, bring water, sleeping bags or blankets, a flashlight, dust masks, and other essentials for your first night into the shelter.
Decide what you will do about going to the bathroom. If you have two 5-gallon buckets and garbage bags, make a pee bucket and a poo bucket (see Chapter Eight, this page).
Look for your pet. Crate the pet if possible. Provide water. Give tranquilizers if you have them. Decide how you’ll deal with pet waste.
Be careful of how much you are moving, lifting, and walking. Heart attacks and stroke can be a real danger after an earthquake, as people do more than they are physically used to.
Make sure you drink water and eat something. Dehydration is dangerous. Going without food too long can cloud your thinking and strain your emotions. Pay attention to what your body needs.
Stop. As the reality of the disaster sets in, it will be easy for your mind to race with unanswered questions and terrible possibilities. You will find out what you need to know, but it will take much longer than you are used to waiting.
Protect your water supply in containers with lids, so that aftershocks don’t spill it. Most of your supply should be for drinking and cooking, so pay attention and make sure you drink enough.
Don’t act on information you aren’t sure of. Bad information can lead to bad decisions. Expect unfounded rumors as people try to make sense of what is happening. Much of the information you hear will have passed through many people after originating from an official source—and, as in the children’s game of Telephone, may have gotten garbled.
Focus on only what is important to do next to stay safe and well. You need shelter. You need to drink water and have something to eat. You need to care for your loved ones or for people around you who need help. You will waste energy if you allow your focus to shift to future “what-ifs.”
Don’t feed extreme emotions—your own or others’. Emotions are contagious, and people will feel sad, scared, angry, or confused after the earthquake. This becomes a problem only when those feelings get out of control—others can be swept into a vortex of feeling that can spread.
Work to create a shelter that will keep you dry and warm for at least two weeks. Upgrade your shelter as you can.
Don’t go to a police or fire station just to get information. Official responders will be overwhelmed with critical tasks. Remember, their communications will be limited at first too.
Work with others to set up a twin-bucket toilet system or latrine—or something as close to it as possible.
Give priority for food to children, elderly people, and those who have special needs or illnesses, since the impacts of going without may be more dangerous for them. Food is important because hunger interferes with clear thinking, but less important when it comes to survival. Most healthy adults can live for up to three weeks with little or no food.
Eat what is in your refrigerator and freezer first, before it can go bad. The food in your freezer should be safe to consume if there are ice crystals present and the food is cold. If in any doubt as to whether food is safe, don’t eat it (see Chapter Eleven, this page). A food-borne illness is dangerous when you don’t have access to medical care, extra fluids, and working toilets.
Continue to work with others to survey your “island” and identify skills, supplies, needs, concerns, and problems that need to be solved quickly. Remember that every aftershock may mean that an earlier assessment is no longer valid.
If you and others on your “island” were somewhat prepared for the earthquake, you’ll have sorted out some of your basic needs by now: water, sanitation, shelter, food. Being less prepared means you’ll still be coming up with ways to meet those basic needs. Aftershocks will be fewer and less intense. Continue to survey what others need and can offer.
Establish a routine to help weather the chaos.
Get enough sleep so that you can make good decisions. Nap if you need to.
Inventory your supplies, including medications, based on your own household and the other people who have become part of your “island” community. You may have supplies that were forgotten in the stress of the first day or two. Sort out what you have, compare it to what you need, and get creative about closing any gaps.
Continue to work together to check on others, meet urgent needs, tackle jobs requiring several people, make decisions, and determine which information you receive is likely to be accurate.
If you are thinking of using a barbecue grill, campfire, or portable stove to cook food, consider that aftershocks will be frequent and strong in the first few days following the earthquake. Keep a fire extinguisher close by when using anything flammable.
Do what you can to keep yourself safe, and assume that loved ones whom you haven’t been reunited with are safe as well. It may help to write them letters, to be delivered when you see them again, to feel a sense of connection.
After the first three days, you’ll have a better idea of the challenges you’re facing and the help you will have from the people nearby. Even so, the situation could change frequently so it may help to go back through the lists above to remind yourself of actions you should take if you find yourself having to move to a new location or joining a new group of people.
As you wait for outside responders, review the advice in this book about how to stay safe and well. Even if your preparations fall far short of being two-weeks-ready, you’ll find some things you can do to help yourself and your family. Expect a roller coaster of emotions and try to keep your focus on the basics: water, shelter, hygiene and sanitation, food, sleep, routine. Now is not the time to worry about what the situation will be six months or a year down the road.
Aftershocks will be strong and frequent over the first two weeks; don’t let your guard down! It may seem impossible to believe but there will come a time when aftershocks are no longer alarming to you. Take comfort in that.