The Big One could leave 250,000-400,000 quake
refugees in California. Where will they go?
By RONG-GONG LIN II and SARAH PARVINI
JUN 03, 2018 | 6:00 AM
The Big One could leave 250,000-400,000 quake
refugees in California. Where will they go?
People walk toward the Ferry Building on Market
Street after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.
(Library of Congress)
When a catastrophic earthquake hits California,
buildings will topple and potentially hundreds could
be killed.
But what gets less attention is the wrenching
aftermath of such a huge temblor, which could leave
whole neighborhoods torched by fires uninhabitable
and hundreds of thousands of people without a home.
Officials are grappling with where all these quake
refugees would go.
In the San Francisco Bay Area, more than 400,000
could be displaced in a magnitude 7 earthquake on
the Hayward fault, which directly runs underneath
cities like Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont,
said Ken Hudnut, the U.S. Geological Survey’s
science advisor for risk reduction. And it’s
possible that more than 250,000 people in Southern
California could be forced out of their homes after
a major earthquake on the San Andreas fault, Hudnut
said.
Not everyone will need to stay in public shelters —
many will stay with relatives, friends and hotels.
Still, more than 175,000 people may have no other
choice than stay at a public shelter in Southern
California, which could be could be challenged with
acute shortages of food, water and medicine,
according to ShakeOut, a USGS report simulating a
major Southern California earthquake.
And in the Bay Area, so many buildings built under
minimal codes could be so damaged many may be forced
to move away “for at least several months, and
possibly permanently” due to the region’s housing
shortage, according to a separate USGS report on a
hypothetical Northern California earthquake, called
HayWired.
“So many people will be displaced they won’t be able
to stay within the metro area,” Keith Porter, a
University of Colorado Boulder professor and chief
engineer of the USGS earthquake reports, said of a
major Bay Area earthquake. “So they’ll move away,
just like they moved away from New Orleans after
Hurricane Katrina.”
Arizona recently took a major step in dealing with
this question. Officials in May launched a full-
scale exercise that simulated a mass exodus of
400,000 evacuees from Southern California. The drill
gave emergency workers a chance to consider how they
would respond to the many elements of the disaster:
providing food and shelter, helping unaccompanied
minors, assisting in family reunification, and
dealing with the transportation and resource
hurdles.
The exercise was aimed at beginning to think about
how to deal with such a refugee crisis, though
experts in California said it’s unlikely that many
people would end up in Arizona. It may actually be
quite difficult to leave California after an
earthquake moves one side of the San Andreas past
the other by as much as 30 feet — severing routes to
Phoenix on Interstate 10 in the Coachella Valley and
Las Vegas on Interstate 15 at the Cajon Pass.
Also complicating problems would be a widespread
lack of power, thwarting the ability of motorists to
refuel. “If you choose to go, it’s going to be
difficult to do so. It’s a pretty hot desert between
you and Phoenix,” seismologist Lucy Jones said.
In the hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the
San Andreas fault, many people living in eastern
L.A. County, Riverside, San Bernardino and the
desert cities of the Coachella Valley will likely
leave for less affected areas.
But even within Southern California, it’ll be hard
to move around. Streets will be clogged with debris;
traffic lights won’t work; bridges will be damaged,
the USGS says.
Experts said it probably won’t be necessary for
quake refugees to go all the way to Arizona or
Nevada. Even if a magnitude 7.8 earthquake hits the
southern San Andreas, areas farther away from the
fault will still be habitable, such as Orange,
Ventura and San Diego counties, Jones said.
“There’s going to be a lot of Southern California
that’s not going to be devastated,” Jones said.
Which areas are most affected depends on which fault
ruptures. A magnitude 7.5 earthquake on the Puente
Hills thrust fault directly underneath downtown Los
Angeles would be catastrophic there, but would leave
Riverside in comparatively better shape.
Experts say it would be much better to shelter in
place at home. Owners can take steps to do so by
retrofitting older houses or apartments now at risk
for sliding off its foundation or collapsing in an
earthquake. Residents can prepare by storing water,
food, medicine and other supplies to sustain
themselves for, ideally, two weeks, or at least a
minimum of 72 hours. A gallon of water per day per
person is recommended.
Unfortunately, most Californians don’t bother to be
prepared, and a failure to stock up on something as
basic as drinking water could lead residents to
leave even if their home is structurally sound.
“It’s clear the public doesn’t think about these
things,” Hudnut said. “I’d rather be one of those
people who doesn’t have to go and has more water
stored.”
But a big wild card that would push someone to flee
are fires following an earthquake, with shattered
pipes expected to hamper firefighting.
Most hydrants in the East Bay will be dry in a
magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault, the
USGS says, helping to allow fires to burn a building
floor area equal to 52,000 single-family homes; in
Southern California, it’s possible the equivalent of
133,000 single-family homes will be charred.
In three great urban earthquakes in modern history —
Lisbon in 1755, San Francisco in 1906 and Tokyo in
1923 — it was the fires following the earthquake
that was particularly devastating.
“The fires were overwhelming,” said Jones, author of
“The Big Ones: How Natural Disasters Have Shaped Us
and What We Can Do About Them.” “If the fire storms
are getting going, and we’re going into Santa Ana
conditions, and they haven’t been able to control
the fires,” it’s possible that people may seek to
flee to other states, Jones said.
But states like Arizona could have other problems
than just dealing with evacuees. Those states could
suffer fuel shortages from the severing of pipelines
in California where they cross the San Andreas
fault, Jones said.
While California may have to deal with a short-term
shelter crisis, a longer-term concern is whether so
many people move away permanently that communities
wither, jobs are lost and businesses shutter, Jones
said.
The only years that L.A. has ever lost population
were the two years following the 1971 Sylmar and
1994 Northridge earthquakes, Jones said.
The 3½-day-simulation near Phoenix — planned over
the course of a year, involving 75 agencies and more
than 1,000 people — first focused on Arizona
counties closest to California’s border.
“They will be the first to experience fuel or food
shortages, cellphones getting overloaded and a
medical surge,” said Judy Kioski, spokeswoman for
the Arizona Department of Emergency and Military
Affairs. “We’re worried about where are people going
to shelter, how do we feed them, and family
reunification.”
The exercise included mass of tents on a field near
Phoenix simulating a shelter; some acted as
evacuees, others practiced how to render aid.
Some lessons have been already learned. “One of the
things we identified was turning rest areas into
locations where we could have additional
information, and providing hard copies of
information if cellphones go out,” Kioski said.
Previous drills have taken place in Utah, where the
Wasatch fault zone threatens the Salt Lake City area
with earthquakes as large as magnitude 7.5, and
Missouri, where the New Madrid Seismic Zone
generated several earthquakes between magnitudes 7
and 8 in the winter of 1811-12.
In California, officials have undergone their own
emergency simulations and drills. Recently, a
simulation was held envisioning a big tsunami wiping
out roads in Humboldt and Del Norte counties, and
officials flew C-130 aircraft and helicopters in an
exercise to test how supplies could be flown in and
which airports could be accessible, said Kelly
Huston, a deputy director for the California
Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
In September, the Bay Area will undergo its annual
Urban Shield training that tests the region’s
response capabilities in a disaster; this year, the
exercise will focus on mass care and sheltering.
Elements of emergency plans have already been put in
force. When more than 100,000 people were ordered
evacuated downstream of Oroville Dam last year amid
fears an emergency spillway could collapse,
officials moved to open up mass evacuation centers,
including one in Sacramento.
But one lesson that has been learned is that most
people aren’t inclined to flee long distances, as
was the case in the Wine Country wildfires last
year.
“We found most people want to stay near to or close
to their homes,” Huston said, even if it meant
pitching a tent in front a damaged property. That
means a key priority may be, for instance, “to
provide food and assistance to neighborhood by
neighborhood.”
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