Where should I keep that emergency kit?

I get asked this a lot, and it�s a great question.  Should it be by the front door so that you can grab it on your way out if you have to evacuate (AFTER the shaking stops)?  Should it be in the deepest depths of your home so that if you are physically stuck in there and can�t get out through doors or windows, you�ll have supplies while waiting to be freed?  Should it be scattered around all of the rooms in your home so that you won�t be without supplies no matter where you might get stuck?  Or how about outside your home, so that if you leave the building (again, AFTER the shaking stops) and are not allowed back inside, you�ll still be able to get your supplies?

Alas, there is no single perfect strategy.  The bottom line is that for any place someone puts a kit, I can come up with a scenario in which it was the wrong place.  For example, an outside kit doesn't help in the unlikely event that you are physically stuck inside your home for a while, and an inside kit doesn't help if it's inaccessible after something fell on it or you are away during the quake and are not allowed into your home.  Ours is in a closet; if we can't get the closet door open, it's not going to help; but it was the only place that made any sense in our condominium (more on this in a minute).

Since the most likely scenario for needing an emergency kit consists of you and your home being perfectly fine but the stores are closed for a while, I tend to go with whatever works best for the contents of the kit, while keeping access in mind.

I think if you have a free-standing house and a well-protected and secure storage place outside like a sturdy garbage bin, at least there's less of a chance that it will be inaccessible, assuming you are not stuck in your home.  However, it will be more exposed to the elements, so food supplies probably won't last as long after cumulative effects of hot days as they will last in a nice cool closet on the floor.  For that reason, I'd probably feel better with it indoors, but it's a personal choice.  Plus, you�d better take measures to ensure that your supplies don�t turn into a litter of baby raccoons.  And some people ARE stuck inside their homes after a damaging quake, although this is probably more of a problem for apartments and condos with only one door and perhaps windows that don�t lead anywhere except 7 stories down, so those people probably don�t have a good outside storage location anyway.  You may have a parking garage storage locker, and then you still have heat or mildew as potential problems.

The exception is water.  The recommended amount is a gallon of water per person per day for 3, 5, or 7 days depending on who�s talking (I shoot for 6-7 days).  In a couple of places I�ve lived, there was an outdoor storage locker in the parking garage and most of the water was stored there due to limited indoor storage space, with two gallons in the apartment stored in the closet.

Here�s an example of what I mean about nothing being perfect, which I like to pull out when people ask me this question.  In our previous apartment, we had a walk-in closet that was really the best place for our emergency kit from a practicality standpoint.  We have a rather large portable kit and another Xerox box full of MREs, cans, and other supplies; and it is pretty heavy (photos are at my main earthquake preparedness website; click on the first photo gallery called �Basic precautions�).  The only place that really worked out with our otherwise-jammed-to-the-brim organization was to put it on the floor right inside the closet near its door.  You can see in the floor plan figure that the box just cleared the moving edge of the door.  Well, one day I realized that if the heavy box slid over just a few inches in an earthquake, it would block the door from opening and I would not be able to get to the kit!  I�m embarrassed to tell you how long it took for me to notice that� but lesson learned. 

However, there was really no other place to put it that made sense, so I wedged a couple of door stops under the outer edge of the box so that if it started to shake, it would have less ability to move away from the wall.

By the way, this is also worth keeping in mind when deciding where to store a person.  My office at work is a windowless room with a door that opens outwardly.  There�s a desk in the outer room that is against the wall near my office doorway, and we realized that in the unlikely but possible event that the desk moved in a quake to block the door, I�d be trapped.  So we had the desk bolted down to the floor!

And don't forget a few supplies in your car and at work, since you might find yourself stranded at work with no way to get home after a quake, or stranded in your car in various other circumstances.   

At any rate, you could argue that at least the portable kit should be right next to the front door so that you can grab it as you evacuate in an emergency, but if you really think about it, it�s a pretty unlikely circumstance that an earthquake in a place like California will be reason to run out with urgency.  As this blog has discussed before, it is not recommended to run out of a modern building during an earthquake because you have more of a chance of being injured by things falling off the outer walls than if you simply take shelter under something sturdy (NOT next to something).  If you decide after a quake that the building is unsafe for continued occupancy, then you have that extra few minutes to get your kit from its storage place.  If there�s no earthquake but a fire is about to engulf your home, then at least in most such cases, you�ll be in a relatively small number of people affected and the emergency kit will not be all that crucial to you.  So in a large earthquake, my own take is to try to make the kit accommodate your home�s set-up rather than the other way around.

Basically I prefer to try to eliminate the 99% of the things that can go wrong, take steps to minimize the problems that could result from a remaining 0.9%, and not fret too much about the few things that could theoretically still go wrong.

This is why we don�t take parachutes with us when we fly a commercial airline.  We take precautions, like flying on reputable carriers, perhaps knowing where the nearest emergency exit is, and knowing that if we see a guy in the seat next to us attempting to light his shoe on fire, tackle him first and ask questions later.  But we are resigned to the fact that if the 0.001% (or whatever) chance comes true that the airplane is going down, then oh well.

Notice that I managed to get away without actually telling you where to keep your emergency kit.  But the main point is hopefully clear: make it a place that it will be safe and well-preserved, accessible in the context of your own home, somewhere that you will remember, and I might also add that if it is too inconvenient to access, then you will be less likely to check it every year or two and replace things that have expired.  Based on all of these considerations and your own personal situations, you should be able to come up with something reasonable.

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My earthquake preparedness website is moving!

I really do plan on doing a new real post soon, but I want to send a quick note to people who follow this blog that my companion earthquake preparedness website, which contains information like the schedule of presentations and streaming video of an older presentation, is moving to a new URL.  Apple's web hosting service is closing down in June 2012, and the old site will go away.  I have already reconstituted it at:

http://earthquake.matthewlspringer.com

...and I recommend it as an additional set of informational resources.

Coming soon, one of the most common questions that I get asked: just where are you supposed to keep your emergency kit?

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Small quakes: Good or bad for geology and psychology?

On Thursday, 10/20/11, 8.6 million people in California participated in the annual Great California ShakeOut, according to the organizers.  They pretended there was a large theoretical earthquake and then ducked under desks and other furniture and held on, and hopefully had discussions or at least thought a bit about what they would do in a quake (and hopefully none of them just got next to something, waiting to be hit in their theoretical head by theoretical flying rubble). 

Then, a couple of hours later, there was a real one, a 4.0 on the Hayward Fault!  Then a few hours after that, there was another real one, a 3.8 on the Hayward Fault!  The first one, at least, was unusually noticeable considering its small size (I can�t comment about the second quake because I didn�t notice it).  Then there were a couple of smaller quakes in the same place the following day.  These bring to 7 the number of small quakes on the Hayward fault this year, also known as the predicted spot of the next very large Bay Area earthquake; and they continue a line of small �feel-able� quakes in the Bay Area that have been occurring for several years.  

This invariably raises the question of whether small earthquakes are desirable or not.

And typically, when someone raises that question, they are referring to whether the small earthquakes are slowly releasing pressure on a fault (perhaps desirable) or are foreshocks of a larger event to come.  And I�m not qualified to say one way or another; I understand that the energy released in the small quakes is small compared to what has been built up and one could argue it either way.  Besides, if I were to venture a guess, the Italian authorities would probably have me arrested.

More of interest to me: are the small earthquakes good for promoting earthquake preparedness?  Most people would say yes; they are constant reminders that earthquakes occur, and each time we feel them, we get a reminder to check the expiration dates on our supplies, to see if there are precautions we�ve been meaning to take that still need to be finished, and so on.  However, I must admit that these small earthquakes make me nervous, because the more 3�s and 4�s that we experience, the more people are likely to think to themselves that �I�ve been through earthquakes and they are no big deal.�

I usually like to be very positive and upbeat about earthquakes to those around me, to reassure people that they are not taking undue risks simply by living in the San Francisco Bay Area (or other moving cities).  However, I�m concerned that as the population continues to become more post-Loma Prieta (1989) residents whose experience with earthquakes are limited to these little things, the more likely they are to not care, so I�d like to come at you from the other side in the name of real preparedness and do this little exercise if you live in this region and felt the small shakes this week:

Take the 4.0 afternoon quake, which, at least at UCSF Medical Center on bedrock, lifted us, dropped us, and shoved us over the side.  Make it 10 TIMES LARGER in terms of motion (I�m not going to get into motion vs. energy right now), and you have�something smaller than the moderate 5.4 jolt in 2007 that got our attention and didn�t do much else. 

Make it ANOTHER 10 TIMES LARGER and you have a 6.0 that is capable of doing some damage.

Now make it YET ANOTHER 10 TIMES LARGER and you have the ~7.0 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake that disrupted everyday life but was not �The Big One.�  In case you�re not counting, we�re at 1000 times larger than this week�s little things. 

And sure, why not, now make that EVEN YET ANOTHER 10 TIMES LARGER and you get the ~8.0 (estimated) 1906 earthquake that I hear is about the largest size that this region is capable of experiencing.

Sorry, I am not trying to be Mr. Doom-and-Gloom here; the dangers of even the larger quakes are substantially mitigated by taking proper in-home precautions and making sure that your home is on a quake-resistant foundation.  But if you find yourself asking why you should brace your bookcase and file cabinet when you�ve already been through a bunch of earthquakes where nothing fell down, just start multiplying by 10.


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�Be sure to bolt your furniture bracing straps to a wall stud��ok, now for the other 95% of the population who doesn�t know how to find a wall stud:

I have been meaning to post for the last few days and kept getting too busy, so then Colorado had its largest earthquake in 40 years, then the east coast of the US had its largest quake in 67 years*, and then that evening I myself felt a small tremor in San Francisco that was centered on the Hayward fault in the East Bay�ok, ok, I�m posting already!

*The last quake that large on the East Coast was�New York, 1944!  (See my earlier post, �Why the heck do you live in that place with earthquakes�)  Please remind your East Coast friends: DON�T run out of the building, DON�T believe that �Triangle of Life� e-mail spam, and DO drop, cover, and hold on.  Better yet, direct them to this blog!

In my talks, I always feel like my description of how to brace tall furniture to the wall is incomplete, because I say that you need to bolt straps to the wall studs, rather than drywall or plaster, but that I don�t have time to describe how to find wall studs and work with them.  That just gets too far away from the topic and there isn�t enough time in the talk; but really, if you want to brace your furniture safely, you need to know about the wall studs.  So, today let�s get around to that topic.

Most walls aren�t as solid as they feel.  In fact, in a modern building, you can probably get from one room to another without using the door (if you are so inclined) if armed with a reasonable sledgehammer.  Plaster and drywall (sheetrock) crumble and powderize, as you know if you have ever tried putting a short screw into a wall without a wall anchor. 

If you brace your tall furniture to the wall with straps or brackets and put the bolts directly into the drywall, then it won�t take much motion for the furniture to want to fall away from the wall hard enough to simply pull the screws right out of it.  There are various anchors and toggles that expand within the drywall or open up on the other side of it, but a heavy object like a book case or file cabinet pulling away from the wall still runs the risk of defeating the structural integrity of that drywall and turning it into dust (giving the term �anchors away!� another meaning).

Fortunately, every 16 or 24 inches (center to center) in decently modern buildings, and at various intervals in some older buildings, there are vertical structural supports called wall studs that are an integral part of the main structure of the building; they will not simply disintegrate under most imaginable circumstances.  They are typically wood beams (left photo below from www.woodaware.com) in shorter buildings, and metal struts (middle photo below from www.cdcbgreenhome.com) in taller buildings.  (In older buildings with lath and plaster walls, thin wooden slats called laths are nailed across the studs to support the plaster, shown in the right photo below from wikipedia.org, but these laths are not structurally sound.)  If you bolt something through the drywall or plaster and into the studs, it isn�t going anywhere.

This means you have to be able to do two things: find a wall stud, and bolt something into it.

Find your wall studs

The old-fashioned method that I used in college to find wall studs was to tap the wall with my finger or the butt end of a rubber-handled hammer.   Most often the sound will be hollow, and as you move sideways, the tapping sound will get less resonant and tighter until you reach the stud, where it sounds less like tapping a drum and more like tapping a brick; then will get more hollow again as you keep moving.  The least resonant part is where the wall stud is located.  If you find a few of these and they are at regular intervals, you are probably in good shape (note that some older buildings may not have a spacing of 16 or 24 inches, so assuming is dangerous).  This method of finding studs sometimes works, but frequently it is difficult to actually tell the difference between the sounds. 

A technological step up from this is to use a stud-finder consisting of a swinging rod magnet.  You can buy these cheaply in hardware stores.  The rod magnet will be flopping around as you slide the stud finder along the wall, but if you slide it past a metal nail in a wooden stud, or past a metal stud, the magnet jumps toward the wall and the other end of the rod sticks straight out as a result, showing you where the nail or metal stud is located.  This can work well but can also be frustrating, especially in wooden studs, because there are only nails in specific locations up and down the stud, and if you aren�t sliding the stud finder in the correct plane that contains the nails, you�ll sail right by that stud without noticing it.  The baseboard is a good place to start, but if it is not accessible, then you basically have to keep sliding the stud finder around at different vertical levels until you find a nail, then mark the horizontal location and search for others.  If you know your stud spacing, you can use it as a default, but it�s nice to confirm by actually finding a nail somewhere in the other studs.

After my last move, I found myself in a place with metal studs and decided that it was time to go high-tech.  Even though the magnetic stud finder works a bit better with metal studs,  I dropped a few more bucks on a better, electronic stud finder that somehow senses when an object is behind the wall and beeps when it is nearby.  It isn�t foolproof, and you cannot use it with lath and plaster walls, but it is way better than the magnetic kind if you have drywall.

Before we go on, here are some little hints.  You want the object into which you screw or drill to really be a wall stud, NOT a wire conduit, water pipe, or some random metal box put behind the wall for who-knows-what reason.  This is why it is nice to find a few studs and confirm that these objects are showing up at regular intervals.  If there�s an object where you would not expect to find a stud, better not drill into it!  Also, know what is on the other side of the wall from you.  I found a strange extra �stud� running vertically all the way up the wall where it shouldn't be, and then realized that the bathroom was on the other side of the wall and the shower head was right there, meaning that there were water pipes!  Lastly, rather than find the studs near the floor when planning to put bolts in higher up on the wall, it�s safest to confirm that the stud pattern is how you think it is on the approximate level where you want to put your bolts.

Bolt things to your wall studs

Now let�s say you know where your studs are.  Better know WHAT your studs are, as well, because there are different rules for bolting into wood or metal studs.

For wood studs, a nice long woodscrew or lag bolt of the sort normally supplied with earthquake bracing straps is just fine.  These are thick, sharp, and long (like 2 inches) so that they reach through the drywall and into the wooden stud for about an inch.  The threads of a screw may not seem like much, but all those threads carved into the wood and compressing it in the process hold extremely well when pulled upon.  Use a drill bit that is just slightly smaller than the solid part of the screw, so that the core of the screw will not need to displace very much wood but the threads will tightly cut spirally into the wood.  WHILE WEARING GLASSES OR GOGGLES, and preferably with work gloves, drill into the wall in front of the stud.  The drill will go through the drywall quite easily (proving why you shouldn�t just put your bolt into the drywall) and then will hit the stud and encounter more resistance; drill in all the way.  Then pull out the drill bit and screw in the screw.  A little resistance is good, but if it is too hard to screw in, you may have to take a larger drill bit and widen the hole a tiny bit.  A power screwdriver is nice here.

(Hint: it�s wise to have newspaper on the ground to catch the crumbled drywall and the wood sawdust.  What?  You read your newspaper on your iPad?  Well, I GUESS the iPad will catch the sawdust but probably not the best idea�  Actually, I also like to tape a small piece of foil sticking out from the wall under where I�m drilling to catch most of the dust.)

For metal studs, some sources say that you can just drill an appropriately sized hole in the metal stud and screw directly into that, but I would not suggest it; not for something heavy that may want to pull away from the wall.  Instead, you should really use a toggle bolt.  This is the metal contraption on a bolt that is spring loaded so that you can shove it through the hole in the metal and its two wings spring open on the other side, leaving the screw part of the bolt sticking out of the wall.  When you screw a nut onto that bolt, trapping the furniture bracing strap or anything else, you can tighten the nut so that it and the expanded wings squeeze together on the front and back of the metal stud.  Now your bolt is literally part of the main structure of the building and will be very sturdy. 

I�ve included a photo here of various anchors that you should NOT use for this purpose.  The three on the right are anchors designed to work directly with drywall and won�t work with metal studs.  The all-metal device 2nd from the left is a molly bolt, which works by the flexible part of the metal sleeve collapsing and spreading outwards on the far side of the wall as the bolt is tightened.  Theoretically this would work just fine with the metal stud, but I recommend against it unless you have experience with molly bolts because there is no obvious event that tells you that it has spread, unlike the toggle bolt that snaps into place with an obvious click.  The plastic blue variant on the far left also works by collapsing and spreading as the bolt is tightened but is meant for drywall; I fear that the sharp edges of the hole in the metal stud might gradually cut through the plastic.

The unavoidable disadvantages of doing this are that, first, the hole in the wall must be much larger than the bolt because the spring-loaded part is large when compressed.  So instead of using, say, a 1/8 inch drill bit to make the hole for a screw into a wooden stud, you might be making a 1/2 inch hole or more in the metal and, unfortunately, the wall.  The larger the toggle bolt needed, the wider the hole will need to be.  If you are not sure what size toggle bolt to use, tell the sales associate at your hardware store what kind of furniture you are trying to brace, and they�ll tell you which toggle bolt to use.  The second disadvantage is that once a toggle bolt expands on the far side of the stud, you�ll never get it back again.  If you later abandon that site and want to patch the hole in the wall, you won�t be able to pull it out but you can simply push it further in until it falls into the hollow part of the wall, never to be seen again.

Drilling into the metal stud is similar to drilling into wood, except that the metal stud is thin so you will encounter resistance for a while but then will punch through to the other side, unlike a wooden stud, in which case you just keep drilling until the bit can�t go any further.  Also, metal is hard!  Make sure that your drill bit is rated for metal, and be prepared to go through the metal extremely slowly.  You may actually think it is not working for a couple of minutes, until it punches through.  Be careful to prevent the bit from moving sideways as it starts the hole.  And it will be VERY LOUD and set up quite a vibration.  It can be easier to drill a smaller hole first, then follow up with a larger drill bit in the same place. 

It�s best to try to drill into the center of the stud rather than at one side, because the metal stud is shaped in cross section like a U with the �base� of the U being to one or the other side; you�ll be drilling into one of the two �arms� of the U.  That means if you are too far to one side, instead of punching through the metal layer, you�ll keep encountering more of the �base� and won�t make much progress; plus, you won�t have a complete hole into which the toggle blot can be secured.  Also, please keep in mind that rather than annoying sawdust, you will now be dealing with sharp metal shavings that can irritate your skin and should under no circumstances be allowed to fall down to where a child or pet can step on them or eat them.

Last word

All this hassle!  But it is worth it, as you know if you caught that funny episode of Modern Family on TV in which there was an earthquake and the book case fell over, almost hitting the kid, because the dad had been procrastinating while telling his wife that he had already braced the bookcase.  What a nice advertisement that episode was for earthquake safety!  But once you spend the half hour to do this and brace your bookcase, file cabinet, or whatever else you want to prevent from falling over, you can rest easy knowing that it simply is not going to fall unless the rest of the building is falling with it, in which case you probably have other things to worry about anyway!


(Thanks to the folks at Cole Hardware in San Francisco for checking this article for accuracy)

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Should I stay or should I go?...the inevitable dilemma about staying in the building during an earthquake

This month, we are taking a break from the actual preparedness issues and will instead delve further into this annoyingly counter-intuitive recommendation to not run out of buildings during earthquakes.

If you have attended or otherwise watched my talks about earthquake preparedness, you know that I make a point about not running out of a building during an earthquake.  I know, it just seems like the thing to do, when everything is shaking around you, and you picture yourself trapped under pancaked and collapsed buildings.  But the point I make in my talks, and want to emphasize with a bit more discussion here if you read further, is that at least in modern industrialized nations, statistically, you are taking a bigger risk of being injured as you run from your nice strong building into the DANGER ZONE that exists right next to buildings. 

While the structure is designed to remain intact, lots of less-secure parts of the building are attached on the outside with much less thought (or attached with nothing BUT thought�), waiting to come crashing down as it shakes (bricks, window glass, ornamental masonry, signs, etc.).   From what I hear, most injuries from earthquakes in places like California are sustained by people getting hit by the OUTSIDES of buildings, not the insides. 

(Here�s an important disclaimer: I have not sat there and watched people get hit indoors or outside during large earthquakes.  What I know comes from the official recommendations of groups like the American Red Cross and the US Geological Survey, which I am passing along.)

Many people assume that inside a building = not safe, and outside of the building = safe, based in part on photos they see after major earthquakes.  The problem is that when large earthquakes occur, do you think the photographers are interested in photographing the store sign over the front door that crashed down to the ground, or the metal light fixture that fell and dented a sidewalk, or a piece of window glass that fell from the neighboring 15-story building like a falling dagger?  Of course not, even if things like that were 99.9% of the damage.  They want to photograph the extremes, so after the Christchurch, New Zealand quake in early 2011 that killed a couple of hundred people, I saw a bunch of photos of collapsed buildings on the web and was just starting to think that all buildings in Christchurch looked alike when I realized that I was seeing the same three collapsed buildings over and over.  (I�ve since read that there were 4 high-profile building collapses; of course that means that the vast majority of buildings DIDN�T collapse.)  

The Pyne Gould building, for example, showed up a lot; amazing collapse; check out these photos (from AFP/Getty Images through newsfeed.time.com, and National Geographic).  Of course, I�m guilty of this also in my talks; when I show notable damage from the Northridge quake for example, I show a collapsed department store, a collapsed apartment building, and a partially collapsed parking structure; and I guarantee you that I did not randomly select a cross section of the typical damage!  I went for the photos that make the biggest impression, and then of course I have to mention to people that most of the damage didn�t look like that.

If I knew for a fact that the building I was in was going to completely collapse, I might be tempted to try to get out; but of course we can�t know this.  Our buildings� structural supports are much stronger than their �skins�; the outer walls and windows and all the trimmings.  Even if the building does not collapse, those outer walls still can collapse and they tend to collapse outward.  During a large quake, I�d be happier in an open field than inside a building, but where I want to be the least is next to buildings for those reasons.  In fact, I�ve heard that there is no safe place to be outside in a city downtown area, where any skyscraper window glass that dislodges can sail diagonally like an airborne machete�and I suspect that if I were on the streets of San Francisco�s Financial District, I might just be running into a building while everyone else is running out of it!

Here�s the unfortunate fact: we just can�t know ahead of time.  Let�s say a large quake strikes and one out of a thousand buildings completely collapses, killing or injuring or trapping a total of 50 people.  And let�s say that the other 999 out of 1000 buildings don�t collapse, and people who remain inside are fine under desks, etc., while 200 people who run out of the buildings get crushed by falling bricks and rubble.   Was staying inside the �right� thing to do?  Well, not if you are one of those 50 people who were in the few collapsed buildings; but without knowing ahead of time if yours is one that will collapse, you would have had the best odds of surviving if you had not run outside.  Of course, I completely made up those numbers to serve my purpose, but I think it is a reasonable scenario for a Northridge or Christchurch style quake.  It is the kind of situation where it�s simply not valid to show a photo or two and say �see, this proves what people should have done.�

Speaking of which, I will now show a photo or three and say �see, this proves that being next to a building CAN be a pretty bad idea.�  These photos from Christchurch came from http://thesun.co.uk and from CNN and are all over the web with numerous attributions.  (I am focusing on Christchurch rather than Japan because the Japanese tragedy was compounded by the tsunami and it seems most of the damage photos are tsunami-related; it�s difficult to know when photos of rubble are entirely due to the quake itself.)  I also think these photos are a good illustration of why it is not automatically a good idea to be NEXT to an object during a quake (think back to my article posted a couple of months ago about the Triangle of Life spam e-mail).

And in case you are thinking that all this rubble fell into the streets AFTER people finished running out of buildings and on to safety, this quote is telling: "There are bodies littering the streets, they are trapped in cars and crushed under rubble," Police Supt Russell Gibson said.� (BBC News, Feb 23, 2011)

At any rate, I wish there was an iron-clad rule: �do this and you will be fine.�  Unfortunately, all we can do is play the odds.  Back in Christchurch, in the collapsed Pyne Gould or Canterbury TV buildings, well, I would NOT want to be inside those buildings.  The much publicized ordeal of the woman who was trapped in the building and called her family to tell them she was probably not going to make it before being rescued a whole day later, and her co-workers who indeed did not make it, make us feel like clearly we should get out in case the building collapses; but people who ran out of non-collapsing buildings only to get buried underneath the rubble of the outer walls collapsing into the streets would have been better off staying inside.  How many of us know someone who says that if they HAD been wearing their seatbelt, they would not have been thrown free of the car wreck before it exploded, etc., but we still (hopefully) wear our seatbelts because it gives us the best odds of being protected from harm. 

To me the safest strategy to consider ahead of time if inside a California building in a large quake is to plan on finding a relatively safe spot under a table and to hope that my building won�t be one of the rare buildings to completely collapse, unless I have reason to believe in that specific instant that the building really is going to collapse.  I�ll follow the plan that might hurt me in 1% of the possible outcomes and will save me in 99% of the possible outcomes (again, numbers are just for illustration). 

And the next time I get in my car and I�m about to put on my seatbelt, I might have a brief moment of uncertainty, but then I�m pretty sure I�ll buckle up.

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Your MREs (emergency rations) are good for up to 10 years--or are they?? An update...

Many of us have emergency supplies that allow us to be self-sufficient for several days after a major disaster; not just earthquakes, but floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks, you name it.  Canned foods have a surprisingly short shelf life: typically 2 years and sometimes 3 years, and of course, what comes out of the can is not necessarily nutritionally balanced.  Therefore, MREs (�meals ready to eat�) have become very popular in emergency kits, and I recommend them in my talks.  These are military rations also used for emergency relief, and have a number of advantages including multiple nutritionally balanced menus, decent taste and texture, a little food-warming packet, and a really long shelf life�or at least they did until 2010.  Surprise!

Wait, what?  How did all these MREs suddenly get a shorter shelf life, and what does this mean for our emergency kits?  I was perusing the Internet for information about MREs that would help me write the article that I initially planned to post this month, and I came across many references on the web to the new guidelines that were just released last year.  It seems that the chart they�ve been using for years about MRE shelf life at various temperatures was based on tests of the original MRE formulations from the 1980s, at which time they contained a lot of freeze-dried foods.  Modern MREs have largely forgone the freeze-dried foods in exchange for sterile-packaged wet dishes, probably under nitrogen or at least vacuum-packed, that still have an excellent shelf life but one that is less than the limits for freeze-dried foods.

I�ve included here the pair of pictures that are all over the web, taken from the MRE Info website, which is a site with information about MREs including history, menus, storage, and purchase.  Both show the shelf life increasing as storage temperatures decrease, but the rate is now much faster, to the point that they appear to be saying a typical closet floor temperature of 60-70�F only gives the MREs a shelf life of 3�-4 years.  That�s not very impressive if you ask me, especially considering the cost.

However, I suspect that the effective shelf life is really longer than this.  Several points are worth noting.  Even these websites point out the difference between official recommendations and reality, and refer to personal anecdotal evidence that MREs opened after a decade are still good.  Ordinarily, I would not put much stock in personal anecdotal experience, but in this case, I�ll make an exception because I have my OWN personal anecdotal experience.  The last time I had my MREs reach their �expiration date� based on storage temperature (7 years in my closet at the time), I tried one, and it was fine.  Good enough, in fact, that rather than discard them and waste all that money, I had MREs for dinner for about a week and a half.  I also tried one of the new MREs that I got to replace them, and decided, as I say sometimes in my talks, that the new ones were comparable to excellent hospital cafeteria food, and the expired ones were comparable to, well, let�s just say cafeteria food at some of the hospitals that are less culinarily inspired.

I also learned, by doing more research at that time, that MREs that have �expired� should still be perfectly fine to eat; they just won�t taste as good and some texture might have suffered.  It�s more like a �best by� date than an expiration date.  True enough; the beef goes from a nice texture as if you were eating a good quality frozen lunch to more like a canned chili con carne.  But it won�t taste terrible, and importantly, will not have become toxic, rancid, etc.  The nutritional situation may have deteriorated a bit, but to get you through a few days of self-sufficiency, it shouldn�t be a problem.

That is not to say, however, that everything in there will be good.  If you check out that MRE Info website mentioned above, there are links to some great tests that they did with two of the more unstable ingredients from some of the menus, the applesauce packet and the cheese spread packet.  They stored these things at temperatures ranging from 40�F to 140�F (I guess they are thinking about desert storage conditions for the army), and showed photos of what they looked like after different times of storage.  Bottom line, applesauce stored at 140� for three months looks like Vegemite (in case you don�t know any Australians, picture used motor oil mixed with glue).  And indeed, I recall deciding to skip the peanut butter or something like that in one of my old MREs when I was going through my old inventory. 

Some suppliers are not using the new chart, even though they might sell more of these if they did.  For example, SafetyCentral and the Epicenter, as of this writing, are using the old chart.

So, it is worthwhile to be aware of these new guidelines, and also to be aware of how they are being set and the somewhat ambiguous nature of the endpoint.  My suggestion, based only on what I have heard and experienced, is to plan on a long shelf life but make a note to try one about halfway through and see how it is doing.  It shouldn't send you to the hospital, but it you do need to go, be sure to take along a few new MREs in case you don�t like the food!

[Note: a follow-up article was posted on October 7, 2013]

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An amazing story from the past, AND more about hanging pictures that won�t come crashing down (the wired and non-wired varieties)

Even though I don�t plan on posting very often so  I don�t add to the e-mail overload of people who subscribe, it just makes sense to post something on April 18th, the anniversary of the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906.  There are two items on today�s plate: first a link to a then-young woman�s amazing description of what she experienced in the 1906 quake, and then I wanted to discuss a bit more about hanging pictures on the walls safely.

Leonie von Zesch speaks to us from the past

On Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an amazing narrative from a young San Francisco dentist, Leonie von Zesch, who wrote for an unpublished autobiography about her experiences during and after the 1906 earthquake and whose writings ended up in the attic of her niece, who stored them for decades without knowing about the remarkable voice hidden inside until recently.  It�s fascinating and fun; here�s an example: �When finally the tremors stopped, we got up and dressed. I put my right shoe on my left foot and vice versa for the only time in my life, and didn't know it until later. Then we hurried up to the roof to look down over the city.�  You can read Sunday's first half here, and Monday's second half here.

Hanging pictures on the wall safely

In my talks, I recommend using �maze� picture hooks to prevent framed pictures from crashing down in earthquakes, since they can easily jump out of the typical picture hooks.  Surprisingly, the story from 1906 that I just described above mentions that the pictures swung out from the wall but didn�t fall; that woman was lucky!  Pictures frequently jump out of their hooks even in smaller earthquakes.

However, I admittedly oversimplify this in my talks, because we frequently have pictures that are in frames with saw-teeth or other kinds of built-in hooks, with no picture wire.  So what then?  Here are a few ideas of how to best use these maze hooks (I have no financial interest in this).

First of all, if your frame does have picture wire, there are a couple of little annoying aspects of the maze picture hooks that are easily avoided.  First, they are taller than normal picture hooks, so sometimes when the picture hangs from them, the very top of the white plastic hook is visible above the top of the frame.  If this happens, you just need to shorten the wire, and usually you can easily find a length that still works and doesn�t show the plastic.

Second, these maze hooks can hold the wire a little farther out from the wall than the typical hook does, so the picture can have more of a tendency to tilt downward since the top is farther from the wall than the bottom.  You may not care, but it this bothers you, a neat trick is to take two small pea-sized chunks of quake putty (the kind you use to stick small objects down to surfaces) and put one between each bottom corner and the wall.  This not only holds the bottom out from the wall and straightens the picture a bit, but it also has the added bonus of preventing the picture from tilting side to side.  You center it once, and it can even be a little bit off center, but the putty will hold the picture straight.

Now, what do you do if the frame doesn�t have picture wire?  Add some!  With most wooden frames, it�s simply a matter of taking two screw-eyes and screwing them into the wood.  Usually, no drilling is required.  You can just take a sharp metal object and punch a small starter hole, then put the screw eye�s sharp tip into that tiny hole and twist it with pliers to screw it in until the metal ring part is just about flush with the wood.  You don�t have to push, just twist and it will thread itself.  I typically break about 1 in 10 of the screw eyes in the process, and have to start again, so have more than you need.  Usually about 1/4 to 1/3 from the top is a good location.  If they are too high, then it will be harder to prevent the top of the plastic maze hook from showing; and if they are too low, the picture will hang at a strange angle and not be very stable.

What if the frame is not wood?  Frequently there are clips that are holding the frame together, and if they are strong enough, the picture wire can be attached directly to two of these clips.

There are some frames to which you simply can�t attach picture wire without glue.  I avoid these when I buy them in the first place.  For some smaller picture frames, like some very light-weight frames for 5x7 photos, I admit that I just hang them on normal hooks from whatever hole or hook is built into those frames, but only if they are light.

And don�t forget, you can always opt to post such small things directly on the wall without a frame.  That quake putty is really good for this also, a tiny bead behind each corner; or the 3M Command strips that have the pull tab for release; some of these are meant for posters.  Just make sure you do that in a way that allows you to have access to the pull tab in case you ever want to remove it!

By the way, one more thing about these hooks: in addition to the little diagonal nail hole for standard mounting, they also have a larger horizontal hole for screwing or bolting it into a wall stud.  This allows the hooks to be used for heavy objects.  I have a couple of gongs (about 2 feet diameter) hanging on the wall by cords (shown in the picture on the left), and the cords used to be in regular hooks but they currently are hanging from the maze hooks.  They are heavy enough that I wasn�t convinced that they would remain attached via that little nail, so I have screwed them into a metal wall stud using the large hole and fastened it with a toggle bolt (as the other photo shows, I painted over the bolt to make it match the plastic hook and the wall).  In a quake, those gongs aren�t going anywhere, unless the string breaks.

Remember, even with the maze hooks, please don�t hang heavy objects over the head of your bed, because if you have nailed it into drywall, that chunk of drywall could potentially fall apart if a quake is large enough; and even if you bolted it, nothing is foolproof!


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Special considerations for pets

I decided to lift one more of the articles on my website for this blog, which makes it a quote of a quote because that web article is based on a previous article that I wrote for a newsletter.  It's timely because the CNN website just had an article about plants that are poisonous to dogs and cats.  The following is from my website (at the end, I'm adding a little bit more today). THEN I'll start sticking to my promise and post infrequently!

Pets present many special problems, especially if you have to leave your home in a major disaster.  However, here's one big problem that I think people frequently overlook.  Even a small earthquake that causes just a few things to fall over in your home can still cause major problems if you have a dog or cat that stays home alone during the day.  If you have anything that you would not want to leave your pet with unattended, you should make sure that it can't fall and be accessible to your pet before you can get home.  The following is an article that I wrote for the April 2010 Cole Hardware newsletter, Hardware Hotline.

For more information on common foods and household plants that are toxic to dogs and cats, see the ASPCA's toxic-to-pets lists (several relevant lists are at that website).

Earthquake Preparedness in the Home: Remember Your Pets Matt Springer          Cole Hardware's Hardware Hotline, April 2010    You�ve probably all heard that you are supposed to take various precautions around your home to lessen the chances of damage or injury from earthquakes.   Hopefully you even have some idea of what do to (that is, don�t hang heavy or sharp-corner items on the wall over your bed, keep an emergency kit, brace tall furniture, use quake-proof cabinet latches, stick down important loose items with quake putty or buckles, hang pictures with quake-proof hooks, etc.).   But here�s something that is frequently overlooked: how can you protect dogs or cats who are left alone at home during part of the day?     I first realized that this was a concern a couple of years ago when I was setting up the standard �earthquake proofing� in a new apartment and a puppy joined our family.   I had been installing stretch cords in front of heavy books on upper bookshelves (to stop them from walking forward and falling during the vibration of an earthquake), and I realized that the rows of CDs on the upper shelves of a bookcase would be hazardous for the puppy if they all fell on him.   The CD cases consisted of hundreds of sharp plastic corners, so I installed stretch bands in front of the CDs also.   It then dawned on me that I had a whole new set of concerns that I needed to consider because of the dog.     I think of these in two categories.   First, the small members of the family, be they two- or four-legged, are shorter than adult humans; and that means that in addition to bracing tall items that might fall and injure you, shorter items that could fall should be braced as well if they could hurt a small child or pet.   Second, unlike a small child, the family dog or cat may be home alone during the day, so anything that might fall to the floor in a quake could easily be eaten, licked, or otherwise touched by your pet before the humans get home.   Will your cat try licking anything at least once?   Better make sure your sharp knives cannot fall on the ground.   Does your dog eat anything?   If so, a little bit of broken glass that would not bother you may end up in the dog�s mouth and stomach, so make sure that nothing can fall and shatter.   Likewise, given the list of human foods that are toxic to dogs (most notably, chocolate, coffee grounds, onions, garlic, grapes, raisins, and macadamia nuts), perhaps you should not have a bowl of chocolates or a bunch of grapes lying around that can fall to the floor in a quake.   Similarly, if you have houseplants, it would be wise to look them up to see if they are toxic to your pet; and if they are, either make sure that they can�t fall or shed leaves in a quake, or consider getting new plants. And of course, make sure that your household cleaning chemicals can�t spill.     Remember, your pets are counting on you to keep them safe, and a little bit of thought now may prevent a tragedy when the ground starts to move!

A couple of additional thoughts today (4/2/11):  

First, it was recently pointed out to me that all these nasty things that the dog shouldn't eat are in the garbage bin, which could easily fall over in a minor quake and spill while the dog is home alone; a real weak link in the safety chain.  Point well-taken, and so I put a loose strap around the basket attached to the wall, loose enough that it's still easy to replace the garbage bags (garbage, compost--same problems).  

Second, I've gotten occasional questions about bird cages, aquariums, etc.  I think these are best handled as furniture and braced.  That is, the biggest problem with such pet houses is that they might fall if they are loose, creating an annoyance for the bird and a disaster for the fish (although the cat may be happy).


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Important information about the recurring "Triangle of Life" e-mail spam

One more "catch-up" post taken from my website:

Many people ask me about an e-mail that circulates with regularity describing the so-called Triangle of Life approach to avoiding injury during an earthquake.  This theory, which holds that one should get NEXT to something uncompressible rather than UNDER something sturdy, has been rejected by many emergency management organizations as being based on a number of incorrect assumptions and questionable premises, and these organizations have predicted that this approach is more likely to cost lives than to save them if the earthquake occurs in a country like the U.S. that has well-constructed buildings. The following is a summary of the issue with links to more information:

Recently, the American Red Cross has taken an aggressive stance against what it views as dangerous mis-information that is continuing to propagate.  I recommend that you read their statement.

It is also well worth looking at the links accumulated here by an impressive array of emergency organizations that reject the Triangle of Life approach and explain why.  Especially interesting as well is a point-by-point rebuttal of the different recommendations that comprise the Triangle theory.  Here are just a few examples of the interesting points raised:

- While safe pockets have been found next to large objects like cars in collapsed parking structures, the object would have shifted or rolled over and the person would have been crushed before the "safe" pocket found its final home.  (Similarly, just because protected zones are sometimes found next to non-compressible objects does not mean that all non-compressible objects will result in a protected zone.)

- In developed countries, the vast majority of building failures result in crumbling and rubble, rather than intact ceilings coming down.  Being next to an object does not shelter you from being buried under the rubble.

- In a Turkish study referenced by the creator of the Triangle of Life concept, a simulation of a tall building being knocked down resulted in collapse of whole floors onto each other (pancaking), but that was not a real earthquake simulation.  It simply rammed the pillars and did not include side-to-side motion that creates much of the damage and that may send objects sideways into potential safe pockets.

It is also extremely interesting to see what the reputable myth-busting Snopes website has to say about the issue (search for "triangle").  Notably, some variations of the e-mail claim that it has been "approved by Snopes," while in fact, the opposite is true; further eroding the credibility of the circulated e-mail.

Furthermore, some of the background given in the e-mail is questionable.  For example, the e-mail claims that after the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, every child in a particular school was under their desk and they were all crushed; but the earthquake occurred well before the beginning of the school day (7:19 a.m.) and Mexico City officials claim that children were not in school at the time.

Please tell the kids to get UNDER the desks, not next
to them! (1983 Coalinga earthquake, photo from
Wayne Bennett, see URL to the left of picture.)

If you have received this e-mail (who hasn't?), and especially if you have forwarded it on yourself, I urge you to look at these links and pass along the information to anyone to whom you may have forwarded the "Triangle of Life," or to those who send it to you.

The major emergency organizations still agree: the best thing to do in an earthquake is to "drop, cover, and hold."  That is, get under something sturdy and hold on to it so that you can move with the object if it moves itself.

5/30/12 update: I happened across this very cogent extra perspective from a fire fighter and felt it was worth pointing out.

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Thoughts about the much-publicized North American earthquake prediction for late March 2011

This is what I wrote on my website in late March about the prediction from an ex-USGS scientist and made popular by Fox News.  The predicted quake did not occur, which of course doesn't mean that it won't happen tomorrow; but these thoughts are still worth considering for the future:

Many people are talking about a prediction for a large earthquake to hit North America this week, from a geologist who allegedly predicted the 1989 Loma Prieta quake, Jim Berkland.  I can't comment on the 1989 story, as I am having trouble finding details about it from reputable sources, but here are some thoughts about the widely-viewed recent Fox News interview in which he makes his current prediction.

Mr. Berkland makes several points in the interview about beaching of whales, etc., that may or may not be valid.  I am not in a position of expertise that allows me to judge.  They are certainly interesting, but aren't much on which to base a geographical location.

Similarly, it is true that some large quakes have occurred near the full moon, and it is also true that some large quakes have occurred closer to the new moon than to the full moon (like the 9.0 Japan quake, 6 days after new moon and 8 days before full moon).

The interview gives the impression that there has been a clockwise progression of major quakes around the "Ring of Fire," the seismically active zone surrounding the Pacific.  The graphics showed recent notable quakes in Chile (8.8 last year), New Zealand (6.3 last month), and Japan (9.0 last week), and implied that if one continues the clockwise progression, one ends up at North America.

First, while the 6.3 New Zealand quake did considerable damage, the real seismic event was the 7.0 earthquake several months earlier; so let's say we are talking about a 7.0 in this progression.

Still, earthquakes around magnitude 6-7 happen quite frequently.  What made the New Zealand quakes notable was that they took place close enough to population centers to have caused damage.

In fact, in 2010 alone, twelve earthquakes occurred over magnitude 6, including three >7 Ring-of-Fire earthquakes on the same day in the Philippines and one in Sumatra...and a 7.2 in Baja California and a 6.5 off the shore of Northern California (we didn't hear about the latter because it didn't affect us here).  The 6.5 occurred 1.5 months before the massive Chile quake, and the 7.2 occurred a month after the Chile quake.

Therefore, trying to demonstrate a clockwise pattern of earthquakes based on Chile, New Zealand, and Japan strikes me as trying to see a pattern by ignoring most of the data.

To be fair to Mr. Berkland, he never said in the interview that this clockwise progression including New Zealand pinpointed North America to be next; that was the Fox News graphics playing while Mr. Berkland spoke.  Still, that aspect, had it been accurate, would have been the most compelling part to me.

So is Mr. Berkland wrong about a large quake hitting North America this week?  I couldn't say.  Perhaps his other information is solid. In any event, if no large quake occurs here this week, he won't have been wrong; he said only that there's an increased chance of one.  And so should you be prepared for a sizeable earthquake if you live in an earthquake zone?  Of course!  Whether or not it is a result of this week's prediction is less important.

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"Why the heck do you live in that place with earthquakes??"

While some might question the wisdom of living near earthquake faults, it's notable that California is pretty far down on the list of historical disasters in this country.  Hurricanes and flooding in cities like New Orleans, Galveston, Miami, etc. have been much more disruptive, tornadoes and killer winter storms certainly wreak their havoc on a regular basis, domestic and external terrorism in places like New York and Oklahoma City have been very disruptive, and even the 1906 San Francisco earthquake did more damage by starting a fire than it did by shaking.  We haven't had an earthquake of that size (about 7.8 magnitude) in over 100 years, although we certainly could have one again.  The notable earthquakes in the state over the past century have typically killed about 50 people each, which is tragic, but is a small number compared to the number of casualties of many other typical causes; and this number will hopefully shrink as building construction and personal preparation continue to evolve.  And by the way, did you know that the area around Arkansas and Missouri, and the South Carolina region, are both very seismically active, and that there have occasionally been sizable earthquakes every few hundred years in Boston, New York, and Connecticut?

It's also worth pointing out, in the wake of the massive 2011 Japan earthquake (9.0) and the almost-as-large Chile earthquake (8.8) the year before that geologists are saying that the faults in the San Francisco and Los Angeles areas are probably not capable of experiencing such massive events.  These faults, caused by tectonic plates that slide against each other, probably can only trigger up to about an 8 (the Richter scale and similar systems are log scales; you go up by 1, and the quake is 10 times larger).  In contrast, the fault systems in places like Japan, Chile, Indonesia, the Himalayas, Alaska, and the extreme north of California by Oregon that have given rise to the truly massive quakes in history (8.8-9.5 magnitude) are subduction zones, where one plate dives under another plate and creates a much bigger event.  So San Francisco probably will never experience something so massive, which is a bit of a consolation, but we should still take precautions against the problems that can occur from quakes like San Francisco 1906 or the 1989 Loma Prieta quakes.

Those in other parts of the country might say that at least they have advance warning about the hurricanes, etc.  That has not prevented large-scale disruption, damage, and loss of life caused by some of these hurricanes.  Plus, it's like I say in my talks, we DO have advance warning about earthquakes; we just have it much farther in advance than for the other disasters...so, there's going to be an earthquake, do something about it!  There, you've been warned.

For information about the precautions you can take, many of which are quite simple, check out my earthquake preparedness website.  And no, I have no financial stake in any of this...

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