Cold Snap, Wildfires, Earthquakes: How Prepared Is San Diego?

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Our top story on Midday Edition today, parts of the US are currently in. A weather emergency. Extreme cold and heavy snowfall are causing potential life-threatening conditions in several areas. Locally we do not have to worry about frostbite and frozen roads, but we have our own emergency to prepare for the earthquakes and wildfires. This week San Diego County launched an upgraded mobile app to get San Diego prepared for the next emergency. My guests are Holly Crawford and Jeff Murdock. The county already had an emergency app, but makes us an upgrade? HOLLY CRAWFORD: It is available to far more android devices so if you tried to download the app previously and could not, try again. There are several more features available to users, we now have the ability to share family emergency plans, so he complete the disaster plan in the app you can share that with your family. Data is also now stored in the cloud. It will also send you a reminder when items in your disaster kits expire. We also added recovery information, we had preparedness and emergency and responsive information available, but we lacked a recovery section that would tell residents how to rebuild and recovery in the wake of the disaster. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Isn't it better in telling you where you are in relationship to where the emergency or disaster is? HOLLY CRAWFORD: We did upgrade the map section of the app, and during a disaster you can go to the map and see disaster perimeter. You also see the evacuation perimeter in the area that we have contacted via our alert system. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Do you expect a lot of downloads? HOLLY CRAWFORD: I hope so, and hope everyone who listens to this downloads it. It's free and can help us give out life-saving information during a disaster. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Is there a surprise along with this app? HOLLY CRAWFORD: There is an incentive, Target has donated 3,000 tents to us, for every person who downloads the app, if you don't have a smart phone or a tablet, and the ability to download the app, you can fill out a paper disaster plan instead of downloading the app and then we ask people to also register for Alert San Diego. When you do those two things, one of those two things, you receive a two-person tent donated from Target. All of the details about that are available at our website. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: There have been no big emergencies in San Diego last year, have we become complacent when it comes to being prepared for emergencies? HOLLY CRAWFORD: It's easy to do that. The vast majority of emergencies we face in San Diego have very little notice before they occur. There's very little time to get the word out and it's best to have your family prepared now. You can take some very simple actions. Help your family be safe. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Jeff Murdock, you are with the Community Emergency Response Team, tell us about this program. JEFF MURDOCK: This is a FEMA sponsored program. It is designed to be a neighbor helping neighbor program, and when the big one hits a lot of our emergency responders will not be available to us right away. Who want to teach people how to not get themselves hurt. We don't want people to get into it welding that is too dangerous and get injured and have two victims instead of one. We want to train people on how to help their neighbors until first responders arrive. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: So this is a volunteer group of citizens and not necessarily first responders. What CERT volunteers be trained to do? JEFF MURDOCK: We have PTA moms, business people and engineers. The variety of skills already. We try to teach them which kinds of fires they can put out, they do not have the equipment or training to put a large fires. We do teach them how to use a fire extinguisher. We will teach you how to do light search rescues and what kind of buildings that are safe to enter in which buildings are unsafe venture. We'll also talk to them about disaster psychology and how people react to disasters. Different people have different grieving processes. We'll talk about terrorism and we do not do anything with that but we want them to appeal to recognize and be able to respond to public service that this condition exists rather than do something with it. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Some of the training is basic but so crucial. Like how to turn off your gas in an emergency, turn off utilities or know where they are. JEFF MURDOCK: What is more important is to know when to turn them off. You'll be surprised what you can do just with someone who is bleeding, or splinting a broken bone. This is very basic and will keep people stable for a time until first responders can arrive. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Should everyone have some basic emergency preparedness skills like this? HOLLY CRAWFORD: I think it's absolutely wonderful, there are thirty-two different CERT programs throughout the County of San Diego and if anyone is interested in taking that step, to me that is going beyond preparing your family. You are making a commitment that in the event of a disaster you will be helping your family and neighbors and the skills that are provided through the CERT training are invaluable. When you think about less than 1% of our total population are first responders, if your disaster plan is to call 911 it's not good enough. If you Google CERT San Diego County, you'll find the county webpage that lists the thirty-two teams throughout San Diego County. If anyone is interested in going to the training, they can find the information there. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: And that is CERT, C-E-R-T. Jeff, what have these volunteers signed up for? Are they on call? JEFF MURDOCK: It's a volunteer program and we look at it and number of different ways, when we look at a number of volunteers we asked him first to take care of the family and then take care of their neighbors. Once those are done we asked them to respond to the community to assist. It is important that their family and neighbors are taken care of, because if they help in the community and they are still worried about what is happening at home, they will not be good volunteers in the community. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: I also want to talk about the reverse 911 emergency call system that we have heard about being set up. How is that improved? HOLLY CRAWFORD: For a bit of background, our reverse 911 system is called Alert San Diego. We get a list of phone numbers from the phone companies, but we do not have individuals cell phone or mobile phone numbers. Or people are moving away from landline and going strictly to mobile phones. Because you have to take the proactive step to register your number, please go on to the website and register your mobile number is that is the only way to reach if you do not have landline. They have improved in the ability to target well, and the interface that we use that has been improved over the years, but is critical that everyone listening as their mobile phone number into the system so they can reach them. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Going back to the wildfire that we had 2007, a half-million people in San Diego were asked to leave their homes that find shelter, is that still the basic emergency plan for a wildfire to get people out of an area? HOLLY CRAWFORD: 515,000 people were evacuated, massive evacuations. Our ability to reach people with a critical life-saving information and telling them to get out of harms way is depended upon these systems. It used to be that we went door to door telling people to leave, and now we have these great technologies available to us like the app and alert San Diego. But yes, if there is a major wildfire will use all of the systems available to us to communicate with the public. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What kinds of plans have been put in place to make that transition smoother than it was in 2007, there were a lot of people that did not know where to go or what to bring or what to they would find if they were directed towards the place of shelter. What kind of equipment they would find or necessities that they would find their. HOLLY CRAWFORD: 211 is an excellent resource. In the county actually contracts with two online so that during disaster a resident has the question, they can call 211 and talk to an operator. Our mobile app is another great way, you can clip on the map feature and it will show you where the nearest shelters are located in that information will also be available on our website. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What is your experience, people who come to you are very proactive, but with your expertise are they prepared? JEFF MURDOCK: It's unfortunate that a lot of people do not. When there is a blackout we have a lot of people at her house because we have our lights on, some people have small kids and first aid kits, and when the blackout occurred we had in September 2011, a lot of people had flashlights. Having these kits and being prepared and be able to do this regularly. We are fortunate in San Diego as we do not have major fires or incidents that we forget to do that. Unfortunately people who come to our program are very interested and want to help neighbors but the majority of people still forget to change the water or have some time of food available. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Can you give us a basic of what people should have when it comes to an emergency? HOLLY CRAWFORD: There is an exhaustive list our website. I think what is really important is to give people simple things that they can do that are inexpensive. We all spend money over the holidays, we can give them a few simple things to do tonight that do not take much time. Go home and talk with the family about where you will meet in the event of a disaster. One place directly outside of your home and one location that your family agrees upon if they can't get home. That is another thing you can do. You can also designate an out-of-state contact. During local disasters, local phone lines will likely be jammed, but you might have better luck getting a circuit outside of our area. Designate someone like a relative in Florida, and everyone calls that relatives and says that they are okay because chances are you might be separated from your family during a disaster. Think of multiple ways to get home, if major thoroughfares are blocked, and you're not able to take your normal route home, know two or three ways to get to work or home. Those are three simple and quick things that you can do today to make a move towards being prepared. Go to the website and look at the list of items to put in your disaster preparedness kit, then many of them your behalf and can gather. And download the app and get a free tent. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You've given our listeners their assignment for this evening. I would like to thank my guests Holly Crawford and Jeff Murdock. Thank you both very much.