Moving for reasons other than seismic events: A diary of undoing quake precautions before moving out of a home

I have something shocking to tell you.  Today, August 25, 2017, I have absolutely no earthquake precautions in place whatsoever.  No, I have not simply cracked under the pressure; it�s because I have recently moved to a new home, and since the whole concept of moving one's possessions is the opposite of the concept of preventing one's possessions from moving, seismic bracing and other quake precautions need to be undone.

We spend all of our time discussing earthquake precautions in the context of implementing them (that is, bracing, fastening, arranging, etc.), and spend very little time talking about tearing it all apart!  So for a change of pace, I am keeping a mini-diary of my thoughts as I start undoing my earthquake precautions while preparing for the move.  You will read about it when completed after the move [10/21/17: haha, that�s an understatement�], but I am keeping track in real time.  The move will be August 4th; movers are packing me up on August 3rd, and I plan to have everything ready to go by the end of August 2.

Various dates in July:  As home inspections and buyers� mortgage lender inspections have taken place, I have made sure to inform the inspectors and appraisers that the top row of cabinets are using push latches so they should not attempt to pull those doors open.  I have also mentioned that many objects are stuck down.

July 22:  I had friends over for dinner and I unstuck some of my good quality wine glasses that were protectively adhered in my cabinet using quake putty.  When I washed the glasses and put them back, I just placed them on the shelf without re-sticking them down.  Then I pulled the others up as well; now none of my wine glasses are stuck down and they are ready to be packed by the movers.

July 25:  Starting to remove some small objects stuck to surfaces of minor furniture that I plan to discard.  Quake putty is coming off of things without much trouble, although there is usually a bit that doesn�t come off right away that I pull off by dabbing at it with the putty that I have already removed.  I am pulling off the clear objects stuck to clear glass shelves, including the Waterford crystal glasses that were featured in my article about quake gel and how objects will slowly slide over a period of months if the surface is not perfectly level, leaving a snail trail.  I�m happy to report that these objects were still securely stuck, with no snail trails, which means I ultimately leveled the shelves well!  I�ve pulled up one of the plant pots that had been stuck to the top of a cabinet with putty.

So now, we are entering a period in which more and more objects are NOT braced, and one hopes an earthquake does not choose this next week to hit.  I won�t be unfastening things until I have to, so most furniture and objects are still braced/stuck, but the items I�ve freed up today for discarding/donating/giving tomorrow are sitting freely, including one tall display case and one glass/iron small tall end table that were strapped to the wall.

Well this is distressing.  A large crystal vase that has been stuck with quake putty to the top of a speaker for years came right off as if there was no putty there.  I know it used to be stuck because I tried lifting it once and the speaker came up with the vase.  Hmm, I guess it is worthwhile checking these things every few years!  (It�s worth noting that this crystal vase was not flat on the bottom but was faceted; inherently weaker for putty even if the gaps are filled.  Objects with flat bottoms were sometimes extremely hard to detach.)

July 26:  Taking out the first bolts from the wall where I�ve removed the first furniture to give away.  Because this is a metal frame home, I didn�t make small holes in the drywall for bolts to screw into wood studs; I made BIG holes in the drywall and in the metal studs so that toggle bolts could fit through them (1/2 inch and larger; see my earlier article about anchoring to wood and metal wall studs).  There were a couple of places where there were no handy studs, so since it is insufficient to bolt directly into drywall, I used toggle bolts behind the drywall in those spaces, so between the toggle bolts in the metal studs and those in the drywall, I have a lot of large holes to fill!  Remember that with such large holes, spackle can still fill them but it is helpful to blow out all dust from the hole, push in the rim of the hole with a blunt object like the handle of a butter knife to prevent the paper in the drywall from sticking out, and pack a thick layer of spackle into the hole but intentionally push it in too far so that it will harden as a backing; then fill in a second layer over the hardened first plug and smooth that even with the wall using a putty knife, to avoid any shrinkage of the otherwise flat surface.  Alternatively, there are drywall repair tapes and meshes that can be used to give more support to the spackle, as well as other kinds of fillers; I won�t digress into that here.  (Oops, guess I kind of already did.)

July 28:  Been staring for a few days at the tall display case, which it turns out I will give away next week, so it is sitting there totally unbraced with its straps hanging out unfettered.  Such tempting of fate; I am a WILD man!

I think I will not have the movers move my 12 gallons of bottled water because there is already a bunch of water at the place to which I�m moving.  I just opened one of these bottles, with a use-by date of 2011.  Remember the FDA said you can ignore that date and keep these unopened commercially bottled jugs indefinitely, but I figured this was a good opportunity to see what it tastes like.  I opened it, poured a little into a glass and prepared myself for an off taste that should mostly go away after I have had a chance to shake up the water and aerate it, but actually, the water tasted fine!  I have updated my article about the water use-by dates to include this 6-year experimental result.

July 29:  I�ve started taking pictures off of the walls; mostly those that have been on the walls for 8 years and are on picture wires hanging from maze picture hooks, with small dabs of quake putty under their lower corners to make keep them straight, and to push the bottom out a bit so that the relatively thick maze hook (a little plastic brick) doesn�t cause the top to be too tilted forward.  When removing quake putty, little bits can remain behind, but these can be picked up by dabbing at them with the remaining quake putty.  This typically works well but I can see that when the putty has been in place for years, it�s a bit harder to get the remaining bits off of the wall.  I succeeded and found that if I dabbed with the rest of the putty and then pulled away rapidly and to the side, it was more efficient at removing the remaining bits.  Still, there is indeed a slightly shinier area on the flat paint where the putty was.  I have already written previously that cutting small pieces of a modern self-sticking polymer pad like �Gripeez� (I have no financial interest in this product) and placing them under the bottom corners instead of putty works well; it does not leave the shiny spot on the flat paint that putty leaves.

[update (3/12/18): regarding the use of Gripeez to stabilize the bottom corners of pictures hanging on hooks, as mentioned above, some unexpected home repairs involving water damage have made me need to temporarily remove some of the framed pictures that I hung with maze hooks a few months ago, and I have found to my annoyance that the little squares of Gripeez that I had cut out and placed under the corners left the paint slightly shadowed, as if it was a little wet.  I was annoyed to see this because the whole point of using these things instead of quake putty was to avoid shiny marks on flat paint, so seeing these shaded areas isn't much better.  In my old home, which had a similar paint job, the Gripeez left the paint absolutely unaffected, so I guess different paints react differently.  I did notice that they are extremely sticky though, so very small squares should still be effective and might leave less noticeable marks.]

July 31:  I�ve been giving away furniture that isn�t getting moved, sold, or donated, and patching holes as I go.  I�m also dumping out the rest of that >6-year old water, again not because it�s not good anymore, but because I just don�t want the movers moving a bunch of water.  It�s worth noting that I�ve had 12 of those commercial gallon jugs of water, on shelves so not pressing down on each other, and individually bagged in large Ziploc bags; and none of them appear to have leaked.  There�s no condensation inside any of the outer bags.  I did manage to drop one of them, and the jug ruptured and water poured out�into the outer bag, which held.  My klutziness enabled me to confirm that having that outer bag is a really good idea, especially if these things might get clobbered in a Murphy�s Law earthquake.

August 2:  The movers are coming to pack up my stuff tomorrow, which means I have to have things unfastened today.  I�m putting labels on the push-latch doors to warn the movers, since I convinced the buyers to leave them in place, at least initially, so I did not have to remove them all.  My knife blocks are on double sided Velcro squares, adhered directly to the granite countertop.  The adhesive squares come up from the counter without leaving a mark, although it is taking a while to slowly pull them off.  Pliers help quite a bit, with a rocking side-to-side motion.  Unfortunately, the bottom adhesive squares can�t be reused, so even though the top adhesive squares are still attached to the bottoms of the knife blocks and the Velcro hook middle piece is intact, I�ll have to get new ones or at least find a replacement for the bottom piece that is as strong as the one that comes with this product.  [I ended up just ordering new sets for the use in the new kitchen.]

I just took one of my bedroom stereo speakers off of the dresser, repeating the angst-filled experience I�ve had in several previous moves because I stuck it down with quake putty, and over the years, the putty has spread and flattened to make a freakishly strong attachment; but I ultimately manage to pry it off each time without leaving a mark.  Wow, I forgot I tried an experiment with the other speaker 2 years ago when I put it on a wicker hamper and figure that quake putty would not be removed well since it would work its way in between the wicker �twigs� so instead I stuck it down with four �Gripeez� (see above).  It worked excellently.  The speaker did not come off too easily (so the attachment was good) but I was able to kind of peel the speaker off of the wicker surface without too much trouble, and the Gripeez came off of the speaker nicely with a bit of pulling and stretching.

Speaker that was stuck to a hard surface with putty (left) and another speaker that was stuck successfully to the wicker hamper with Gripeez (center, right)

Wall after Command Picture Hanging Strips were removed, showing no marks

I�m removing the pictures that I had stuck to the walls last year with Command Picture Hanging Strips, and I�m very impressed.  The pictures were just as firmly adhered as when I put them up, but easily separated at the Velcro-like interlocking layers when I used a peeling motion; then I removed the Command Strips by pulling the tabs to make them lose adherence, and the two pictures came off leaving no holes and no marks whatsoever.  There is no sign that anything had ever been stuck to those walls.  Very nice.

August 3-10!  I then fell into the inevitable swirl of constant activity that didn�t allow me to write as I went along, but I will mention the important points.  First, I made sure to unlatch, unstick, and unbrace everything rather than having the movers do it.  Not including taking pictures off of walls, that was a total of 85 objects detached, both large and small.  I was filling a lot of holes in the wall, and of course, the last couple of days in the old place were spent with no seismic precautions; good thing a large quake did not occur during that time!  And in the new place, it�s taking a long time to set up and unpack; bracing is not practical yet.  So that guy who keeps nagging everyone to take precautions (that would be me) is currently in a place where bookcases can fall over, objects can fly through the air, cabinet doors can open, etc.  But as I�ve said in other articles about not running out of buildings and so on, this is an odds game.  If you can reduce the chances of an earthquake causing problems by 99%, that�s pretty good even though the 1% chance is still there.  Likewise, if I am in a seismically secure home all the time except for a few days once a decade, then my chances of being slammed by a quake have been enormously reduced!

Epilogue October 21!!  I�ve been so swamped that I have not had a chance to polish this article until now.  A perfectly poorly timed 2-week illness and several unforeseen events didn�t help.  It�s taken a while to put the new place together and much of the bracing and sticking can�t really be done until things have found their final resting places, so my home has been a model of not practicing what I preach� although by now, all large furniture is well braced, some but not all objects are stuck down, and notably I have not had a chance to install cabinet latches yet but will be doing that soon.  And of course, within days of moving in, we had a tiny earthquake on the San Andreas fault just a few miles offshore of where I just moved that most people didn�t feel but I did, and the Mexico quakes were in the news a lot; let�s just say that being me, I�m getting more worried about being massively embarrassed by an earthquake than being injured by one!


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Simple ideas for making sure your phone and eyeglasses stay on your nightstand

Here�s a relatively short article with some simple ideas for preventing the useful items on your nightstand from flying away in an earthquake.  I already described how I keep my flashlight easily accessible a few years ago.  However, I also keep my eyeglasses and my cell phone on my nightstand when I�m sleeping, and it would sure be nice if they remained handy if a quake hit while I was in bed.  My approach is not rocket science but I figured I�d share it.

The astute reader will discern several things by looking at this photo of my nightstand.  (1) It�s in terrible shape (it�s an end table from the 1970s currently in its 10^thlife), but that is not really relevant.  (2) My eyeglasses case is right next to me under stationary conditions.  (3) My iPhone is charging in a nice convenient stand. 

You can kind of see the flashlight on the lower level, but concentrate on the upper level.  Here�s how those objects are held in place. 

First, the cell phone.  Pretty simple: that charging stand is stuck to the surface of the end table with quake putty, since I never need to move the charging stand and it even makes it easier to remove the phone from the charger with one hand.  I might have been hesitant to put quake putty on bare wood if the nightstand was some great antique, but considering my nightstand is a non-great �antique� full of water marks, I�m fine with it.

Second, the glasses case.  I like to be able to pick up the glasses case when putting my glasses into it at night or taking them out in the morning, so I didn�t use putty.  One could potentially come up with a Velcro-based solution, but I decided to use magnets and my favorite 3M Command Strips (the sticky tape with a tab that you can pull to make it stop being sticky and release from a surface).  In this case, I used the clear Command strips, so you don�t have ugly white tabs on the dark wood furniture.  Again, I would hesitate to put these strips on good wood furniture.  I used those strips to stick down a couple of strong magnets, figuring I�d attach other magnets or a metal plate to the bottom of the glasses case.  However, as luck would have it, the glasses case was already paramagnetic so I didn�t have to add anything else to it.  I just stuck down the magnets to the table, and now if I even put the case close to the right place and let go, it jumps right to where it should be; quite helpful in the dark.

Now, these may still fly off if the quake is large enough, but it�s nice to know they are at least discouraged from leaving.  Velcro might be safer, but I do like the idea of being able to pull the glasses case off without making an audible noise that could wake up someone else in the bed.

The touch light visible in the photo is actually also stuck down with putty.  None of the other objects are stuck down, like the wireless remove for my floor heater or the wired remote that adjusts the firmness of the bed.

I�m sure that those reading this could easily come up with similar solutions on their own.  The point of this little exercise is really to plant the suggestion in your head that it�s worthwhile to keep important objects at hand if a quake hits while you are asleep in bed.  As I pointed out at the end of the flashlight article, this is all moot if the nightstand moves away from the bed, so you might consider discouraging it from sliding if necessary, perhaps by putting rubber non-skid pads under the feet.  

Of course, if these essential objects stay on the nightstand and you tumble out of bed, then I guess the joke is on you.  Somehow, resorting to velcro pajamas and bedsheets seems like a bit much, although it could possibly benefit the space program.

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Special bulletin: potential evidence that push latches can fail during shaking

I have been recommending that people use push latches (a.k.a. touch latches) to prevent cabinet doors from opening for several years.  There have been discussions and debates about whether shaking in the right direction can cause the door to wiggle enough that the latch would disengage.  There are various accounts from people who have experienced quakes while using these latches that the doors don't open, and I have shaken a cabinet and noticed that since the hinge is moving along with the rest of the cabinet, the door doesn't move relative to the hinge so it does not jiggle in and out and the latch does not open.

However, that doesn't mean that some kinds of earthquake motion can't disengage the latches.

Evidence is now emerging from simulations of actual earthquakes of various intensities that these latches may fail more easily than previously thought.  While I don't yet have enough information to warrant no longer recommending the latches because they may still be protective in many earthquake scenarios, I feel the responsible thing for me to do is to alert people about this issue now, and I will post a new article with more comprehensive information in the near future when I have looked into it more fully.


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How to vacuum pack dry supplies without a vacuum (the magic of oxygen absorbers)

Today I�m sharing a tip about preserving dry emergency supplies, from a chance observation that I was surprised to make a couple of years ago.  Most of my emergency supply food is in the form of MREs, emergency food bars, and canned food.  However, I also wanted to store away a few small bags of my dog�s kibble (dry food), so I parceled out portions into a couple of heat-sealable Mylar bags to be sealed and stored in my emergency kit.  To ensure that they were adequately preserved, before sealing each one, I tossed in a fresh oxygen absorber packet, the kind that you commonly see in sealed bags of jerky and other preserved foods to remove oxygen from the sealed contents and avoid oxidation.  These sealable Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers are easy to find online.

I also took the same approach to preserve some dry dental hygiene treats (yes, still for the dog) that I could only get in a large bag; I wanted to preserve smaller bags of them and open them successively over a couple of years.  This was not for the emergency supplies; it was simply a way to stretch the contents of the large bag over a longer time than I felt they would last after opening once air got in.

No, I haven�t gotten to the surprising part yet.

In both cases, I pressed as much air out of the bags as I could before heat-sealing them, but since the contents were dry hard pellets, it was impossible to get rid of ALL of the air since the air left between the hard objects could not be pressed out.  That means that the bags right after sealing were firmly enveloping the hard contents but the outside surfaces of the bags were smooth and flat.

However, when I looked at the bags the next day, in both cases, I was surprised to see them appear to have been shrink-wrapped and vacuum-sealed, even though neither was the case.  That is, there were invaginations in the bag surface between each pellet, it looked like crinkled foil, and it was completely stiff with no movement at all of the contents inside!  As close to a perfect vacuum as one could get with no actual vacuum device!

I would not have guessed this in advance, but the oxygen absorbers apparently were able to remove enough gas from the sealed bags that they effectively vacuum-packed themselves.   This is shown in the photo of the dental treat bags, in which the bag on the left was sealed the day before, and the bag on the right was just sealed a few minutes before the photo was taken.  And yes, that bag on the right looked like the bag on the left the next day.

The next pair of photos shows one of the kibble bags that I just removed from my emergency kit to photograph, viewed from the front and side.  It�s as tight as it can be, like a brick, completely vacuum packed still nine months later.

Perhaps a chemist will weigh in here; I was a bit surprised since air contains only ~20% oxygen (78% is nitrogen), so if the oxygen absorber only absorbs oxygen, I would not have expected it to effectively remove all of the gas from the bag.  However, I�ve done this several times and it always happens.

So you can actually vacuum-seal and preserve dry supplies even if you don�t have a vacuum sealer, just as long as you can heat-seal bags and have oxygen absorbers.

By the way, a few years ago, I had an e-mail correspondence with a representative from Pack Fresh, one of the companies that manufactures oxygen absorbers and sells them on Amazon.  I learned some interesting tips about preserving supplies in heat-sealable ziplock bags; that is, the bags that have a ziplock top but then extra material beyond the ziplock part that you can heat-seal (the bag is completely sealed until you rip the top part off and then you can re-close it with the ziplock).  That ziplock part is just plastic, not Mylar, and I was surprised to learn that oxygen goes through even the closed ziplock because the plastic is somewhat permeable to oxygen.

That means that if you take an ordinary plastic �Ziploc� bag and close it, oxygen can still get in.  If you have a Mylar bag with a ziplock top that is closed, oxygen still gets in, more slowly.   You need to heat-seal the opening of the Mylar bag to truly keep the oxygen out.  This means that if you put supplies into even a Mylar ziplock bag with an oxygen absorber and just close the bag with the ziplock part, oxygen will ultimately get in and overwhelm the oxygen absorber, and you will not have successfully stored away the contents.  For that reason, you should heat seal the top of the bag for long-term storage, and then when you ultimately open it, you can use the ziplock closure for subsequent closing for short-term storage.

He also told me that while an actual heat-sealer (like that used for Seal-a-Meal bags, the photo shows mine) is great, many people just use a clothing iron or a hair iron and that works as well.

Of course, if you really want to go all-out and your bag contents are dry, you can also toss in a desiccant packet before sealing the bag.  Interestingly, a comment was left on my recent article about keeping emergency cash in emergency kits, from someone who had put some paper money in their kit and opened it years later to find that it had gotten moldy!  I checked my paper envelope of emergency cash and it is fine, but I guess if you suspect that moisture might be a problem, you could also seal emergency cash in a Mylar envelope with a desiccant packet inside.

So there you have it; how to shrink-wrap bags with oxygen absorber packs.  However, this doesn't work for everything; please don't attempt to reduce your waist size by eating oxygen absorbers!

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Do you have a ticking time bomb in your cupboard? Better check what is supporting your shelves!

If it seems like I can be fixated on kitchen cabinets, it�s because they frequently are not on the radar screen of people trying to prepare their homes for earthquakes, but there are actually multiple ways in which they can be vulnerable.  You�ve read many references in this blog to keeping the cabinet doors from swinging open and letting everything fall out, with potentially disastrous consequences, by putting quake-proof latches on the upper cabinets.  I also have occasionally mentioned that quake putty can be used to stick down rarely-used expensive wine glasses in the cupboards, since even if the doors don�t open, the contents can get knocked over and fly around and break inside the closed cabinets.  However, there�s another potential problem, and some of you have it in your cabinets right now!

The shelves.

Yep, those sturdy boards on which very heavy loads of dishes, glasses, liqueurs, etc. are sitting.  Nope, I am not saying that the boards will buckle under the weight, but look for the weak link: what is holding the boards up??

In many cases, those boards are sitting on pegs that fit in holes on the inner sides of the cabinets.  Multiple holes enable you to select the optimal height of the shelf.  I�m not telling you anything you don�t already know... except that some of you have pegs that can spontaneously fail.  Yep, it�s true!

Here�s a true story from my own condo building.  It�s a modern building that was opened in 2007, good quality.  The shelves are supported by plastic pieces that sound like a great idea; they are not only pegs but they include a wide flat support on which the shelf sits, and then a thin piece of plastic sticks up next to the board and around on the top, clipping it in.  That not only supports the board, but also stops it from sliding around.

It turns out that it�s not as smart as it sounds.  A few of my neighbors have had experiences over the last couple of years in which the plastic peg suddenly fails, shearing off where it sticks out from the hole, and people have had shelves and all of their contents spontaneously pancake down in their cupboards with a crash.

In fact, a neighbor experienced this, got a whole bunch of metal pegs, and replaced the plastic supports with the metal pegs to prevent this from happening in the future.  He had a bunch left over and gave me some so that I could do the same when I managed to get around to it, to prevent this from happening to me.

Well, Mr. Preparedness here never got around to it.  A few days ago, there was a clunk in the kitchen that I could not identify and I figured it was something shifting in the drying rack.  Then a couple of days later, I needed to get a tall pot out of the back of the lowest shelf in one of my cabinets, and as I was pulling it out, it was scraping against the bottom of the shelf above it.  Since it�s never scraped before, I was very confused, and a few seconds after I pulled out the pot, that whole shelf, supporting lots of heavy serving platters and ceramic bowls, came crashing down!  It turns out that the clunk I heard before was one of the supports giving way, and the corner of the shelf falling just a tiny bit onto the pot.  When I pulled out the pot, the rest of the shelf gave way.  As a result, I replaced the plastic gizmos with the metal pegs for all shelves that were supporting heavy and/or breakable objects.  Fortunately for me, nothing broke.

Ok, so anyone want to guess what this has to do with anything?  Well, if everyone in my building has cabinets in which the plastic shelf supports are degrading over time to the point that they might spontaneously fail when they are not moving, what do you think is going to happen in a moderately-sized earthquake?  Every shelf support that was going to spontaneously fail without an earthquake, say in the next year, is going to fail when the cabinet and contents start quaking!  Cabinet doors stay closed, expensive wine glasses don�t fall over, but the shelves all pancake and everything breaks anyways.

If my kitchen has plastic shelf support pegs, some of you have the same problem in your kitchen.

You can prevent this Murphy�s Law scenario easily; just check what is supporting your shelves and if they are plastic, replace them with metal pegs before the next quake hits!


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The earthquake precaution step nobody told you about: tell visitors about your preparations or else you could have problems!

(Note for e-mail subscribers; rather than read this in the e-mail message, please click on the title and go to the actual blog article so that the embedded videos will work; they may be large blank spaces in your e-mail message.  Depending on your browser, you might see one or two versions of the videos.)


Congratulations!  You have braced your bookcase to the wall, installed earthquake-proof cabinet latches, installed emergency power failure lights, stuck down various objects, and done a host of other sensible and wise things to make your home as quake-resistant as possible.  You are done, right?  Actually, there�s one more very important step, and I am probably one of the few people to remember to advise you of this:

You have to tell your visitors, cleaning services, �handypeople,� etc., about some of these measures, or else they or your home could suffer.

Of course, I like to tell visitors about some of my earthquake precautions as part of my earthquake safety evangelism, if the topic arises, but there are more practical reasons to do this: if they aren�t expecting things to be stuck and fastened, they might try to move them... with some potentially destructive consequences that I know can happen, because they have happened to me!  So please learn from my rueful experiences.  Here are some real-life stories:


Bracing of bookcases to the wall:

I practice what I preach and have all of my tall furniture like bookcases braced to the wall with furniture straps.  A year or two ago, I had a company install a new ceiling fan in my den, where there was no pre-existing electrical box in the ceiling.  This involved different teams cutting drywall, running electrical wires, patching and painting the wall, and installing the fan.  A tall bookcase was near the region where they would be working, attached to wall studs of course.  I was concerned that this might get in their way and I asked them about it, but they told me they could easily work around it.  I mentioned that it was fastened to the wall, just in case they needed to know that, and they told me it was no problem.

They finished the job and it looked great, and I was moving some things around on the floor after the last workers left when I noticed a little indentation a few millimeters wide in the rug next to the bottom of the bookcase.  I realized that the bookcase must have been moved a little since the original location was still pressed down in the rug.  I looked up at the straps, and sure enough, one of the two straps attaching it to the wall had been disturbed and the metal washer holding the bolt through the strap into the wall stud anchor was bent out of shape.  Clearly, somebody did not get the message and had tried their hardest to move the bookcase, impressively bending a thick metal washer in the process but also confirming that this bookcase was not going to leave the wall despite the best efforts of a major earthquake or an amazingly strong human.  No harm done; I moved the book case back in place and replaced the washer.  Still, this was still pretty frustrating, because I HAD told them about the bracing and it STILL failed to prevent this problem.  Just goes to show you that this is a real concern!


Push latch cabinets with the original pull handles in place:

I first started using push latches to prevent my kitchen cabinet doors from opening in the apartment where I lived in Palo Alto in the 1990s.  The cabinets were old and full of little nail holes, and the wood stain was dark and not in great shape.  I installed the latches, and then decided it was pointless to keep the original cabinet door knobs there because I didn�t need to pull on anything, so I unscrewed the knobs (keeping them and their threaded bolts in storage so that I could replace them when I ultimately moved).  I non-permanently filled those knob holes with dark wood filler (waxy, like a crayon) that roughly matched the color of the wood stain.  I did the same thing in my next apartment in San Francisco.  It did not look bad--no worse than it already looked--and since there was nothing to pull, visitors would instinctively push on the cabinet door to disengage it, as in the video that below (you should be able to see at least one of the two versions or click here).

However, when moving into my subsequent apartment and then into my current home, I found that the cabinets were light enough in both cases that even color-matched wood filler looked terrible in those holes; so for aesthetic purposes, I left the original cabinet door handles in place.  It was no problem if one was already familiar with the set-up, because it was still very easy to push the door and then as it sprung open, to finish opening the door from the handle.  It involved no extra thought or effort whatsoever; see video below or click here.

But guess what, when a visitor tries to open a door that contains a door handle, the visitor tries to pull it open.  I�ve had a few occasions where a visitor would complain that they couldn�t open the door, prompting me to quickly explain.  However, one visitor (I forget who) was helping me to take things out of a cabinet or put them back in, and told me that the door had been very hard to open but she had managed to pull it open anyway.  That was distressing, because I figured that either the latch had failed, or the visitor had broken the door!  Fortunately, it turns out that if you really pull hard on these latches (kids, don�t try this at home), they give; but it involves a pulling force with leverage much harder than a simple shaking motion that would result from even a massive quake.

Lesson learned, if you have push latches and leave the handles on the doors, you�d better head off any visitors before they create the very kinds of damage you were theoretically trying to avoid.


Push latches, Part II:

A very simple extra consideration is that if you have push latches, even if the visitors know to push rather than pull, you may still have to remind them to push the door to re-engage the latch when they close it.  Also, sometimes the springy action of the latches results in it opening again as you push it in, not very often, but people should know to ensure that they leave the door in the latched position rather than slightly ajar.


Make sure they don�t turn the emergency lights off:

I�ve mentioned this in another article about power failure back-up lights already, but it bears repeating here.  Many back-up lights have a night-light, or an indicator that they are on and charging.  Sometimes, even this light is bright to look at in a dark room.  Many years ago, someone was sleeping in a sleeping bag or air mattress or something, on the floor of my living room. Unbeknownst to me, the night light was preventing them from sleeping, so they flipped the switch to the off position.  Months later, I finally noticed that the indicator light was not on, and realized that it had been turned off, and figured it out.  But that means that during those months, the light would not have turned on if the power cut out during an emergency.


Objects stuck down with quake putty:

Well this one takes very little imagination to predict... if an object is stuck to a surface, and someone attempts to pick up the object to get a better look, or to clean around it, they at best will just not be able to move it.  Worse scenarios are that they do move it and either damage or completely break it in the process, or with larger objects, perhaps the visitor gets a hernia while trying.  (You know, this might be the secret behind King Arthur and the Sword in the Stone...)  Or perhaps they pick up a large vase stuck to a pedestal or stereo speaker on the floor, and that supporting object gets picked up with the vase only to come crashing down on the visitor�s toe.  The possibilities are endless!


So telling your visitors about your quake bracing precautions can be a wise idea.  You can presumably stave off some damage to property or person (which was kind of the whole idea of making these preparations anyway, wasn�t it?), and perhaps even plant a seed in their head that might blossom into their own precautions later on.


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Grants are available for quake retrofits (California)

This is actually an intermediate "between articles" post, just passing the word along to homeowners in California that you may be able to qualify for grants from the California Earthquake Brace & Bolt (EBB) program to help you with seismic retrofits.  Eligibility depends on zip code, age of home, type of retrofit, and a good bit of luck because the current registration is only for a lottery.  Still, it is worth checking it out if you are thinking about retrofitting.  More information is available directly from EBB website, and you can also read the San Francisco Chronicle article describing the program.

(Sorry about the local focus of this announcement, given readership all over the world, but for those in other seismically active regions, it may be worthwhile to inquire about whether your local governments have financial aid like this.)

As long as I am in local announcement mode, my schedule of talks in San Francisco is currently taking shape.  If anyone has been hoping to attend, check out the online calendar, and you may want to check back a few days into February because a couple of talks still haven't been scheduled yet as this is being written.


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New Year�s resolution: put some cash in your emergency kit

How many of you have cash in your emergency kits?  Wait, how many of you have emergency kits?  Hopefully if you are reading this blog, you all do; if not, please assemble one... and while you are at it, I strongly suggest that you include some cash.  You know, cash, remember that stuff?  Paper and metal money, not plastic or electronic money, that can be used even when the power is out and credit cards aren�t being accepted.

A cash reserve is an important part of any emergency kit, regardless of whether your own local likely disaster of choice is an earthquake or anything else.  In the aftermath of a regional disaster, it's unclear whether stores will be open, but even if most are closed, some stores might be doing limited business.  If stores are open but the bank systems aren't working and credit cards/ATM cards are not useful, the stores will probably work on a cash-only basis.  That's happened before after some disasters, with inventory being tracked using pen and paper, and also during some extended power outages not related to disasters.  Even if no stores are open, people might be willing to sell each other spare supplies and will probably prefer cash to chickens, goats, and bags of salt or spices.  For all of these reasons, I do suggest having spare cash, and keeping it in your portable kit.  You might want to also keep some spare cash in your car (hopefully not in a spot clearly marked �EMERGENCY CASH�).

You might be wondering, if you have responsibly stocked an emergency kit anyway, what else would you need to purchase?  Perhaps you find you are going through batteries faster than you expected.  Perhaps that 1/4 gas tank that you always keep in reserve turned out not to be enough.  Perhaps you were just about to run out of toothpaste before the quake and now need to buy some.  Maybe you could really use something for an upset stomach and don�t typically keep things like that around.  Or perhaps the toy designed to keep your 2-year-old satisfied as you stay in a Red Cross shelter turns out to not be very useful for the current 6-year-old who mysteriously replaced the 2-year-old some time in the past four years.

One thing I like to emphasize in my talks is that having cash is good, but having it in small denominations is even better.  Assume whoever is selling you something won�t be able to make change.  I�ve been using the same example in my talks for years now: If you need to buy a battery and someone can sell you a battery but they don�t have change, having an envelope of $20 bills means you�ll pay $20 for a battery.  That�s an expensive battery, and also a poor use of what would probably be a sizable chunk of your emergency cash.

How much money to have is debatable.  I started off years ago with $100, and then years elapsed, and I realized that I might need to bump that up.  A transition from being single to married or having kids means more people in the household and more money that might be needed.  It's really hard to judge how much to keep handy.  I am very prepared with supplies, so in that respect, needing to purchase them is a low probability for me, but one never knows.  I saw one blurb about emergency kits that mentioned $1000 in cash.  I don't plan to do that.  However, if space aliens invade the Western United States and I have to bribe a corrupt military official for safe passage to Canada, I might regret it!


(Also check out my earlier post about where to keep emergency kits.)


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