Steve Longoria, chief security officer for the Port of Redwood City, briefed first responders during an earthquake response drill on August 29th emphasizing the importance of training for emergencies as realistically as possible.

He warned that one day the San Francisco Bay Area will be hit by a catastrophic earthquake and it won’t be a drill.

Longoria noted that “the Bay Area ports will be critical to life-saving activities in an earthquake” or similar catastrophic event.

He said the first priority of the day’s exercise was to evaluate the damage from the earthquake “to find out what is true and what is not true.”

Longoria said the Port’s Full-Scale Exercise (FSE) anticipated a 7.9 earthquake on the Richter scale in which during the first 24 hours, the San Francisco Bay Area would be impacted as follows:

  • 300 deaths and 13,000 injuries.
  • Roads and bridges would be damaged.
  • 31% of hospitals would be inoperable.
  • Temporary housing would be needed for between 75,000 to 100,000 people.
  • Massive power outages would afflict households and businesses.
  • There would be a risk of looting by desperate people needing vital supplies.
  • $120 billion in damage to buildings.

The Port’s Executive Director Kristine Zortman told AJOT, “We spent $17 million raising Wharfs 1 and 2 by over 3 feet and re-enforcing them to withstand an earthquake of an 8.9 magnitude.” The Port’s investment has won support from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) “when FEMA discovered that we raised and strengthened the wharf, they designated the Port as the emergency staging area for an earthquake and natural disaster for first responders serving the South (San Francisco) Bay.” This has allowed the Port to seek federal grants to support the wharfs as an emergency services staging area. This has created good will and added revenues.

Longoria outlined four key objectives of the FSE:

  • Providing critical transportation for emergency responders, vital supplies and the evacuation of homeless and injured people.
  • Mass search and rescue focused on saving the greatest number of lives. The August 29th exercise included rescuing people from a collapsed building and from overturned rail cars.
  • Efficient coordination of emergency services.
  • Provide emergency power for households and emergency responders as well as provide staples for community members and emergency services personnel.

As part of the FSE, Zortman accompanied Redwood City building inspector Dave Cooks on a waterborne inspection of the piers and their concrete and wooden pilings. Cooks was tasked to evaluate whether the piers would be operable after an earthquake: “I have to check the pilings and also examine the supports of cranes which have a high center of gravity and could be unstable after a major earthquake.”

Another aspect of the drill was putting out a simulated fire that broke out at one of the wharfs resulting in the dispatching of a fireboat, with Zortman abroad, to shoot water on the impacted area and extinguish the fire.

Lony Haley Nelson, emergency services coordinator for the City and County of San Francisco was an observer at the FSE. She worries about the damage to Bay Area roads and bridges and the lack of ferries and other waterborne transportation to move personnel by water to the hardest hit areas. For example: “If we have fires in San Francisco how are we going to get enough firefighters, their equipment and first responders into the City and get City workers, who live outside of San Francisco, home?”