Susan Swartz

Our neighborhood leader had the front page of the newspaper
spread out on her coffee table, in case we needed motivation. It
showed a neighborhood on fire in Japan. It was the day after the
Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Before we discovered the part
about the nuclear plants.
The meeting of our neighborhood disaster group had been set for
a month. Given that we had been glued to images of terrified people
running in the streets and a monster wave swallowing whole towns,
plus a tsunami warning for our own west coast, the horrible timing
couldn’t have been better.
Coincidentally, the first time we met to put together an
emergency plan was six months ago, right after a gas pipe explosion
in San Bruno leveled a neighborhood and killed eight people.
You don’t schedule earthquakes and explosions. The only thing
you can do is try to be ready when one comes. Yet who gets worked
up over disaster preparedness?
The notice for our neighborhood meeting went out to 20 houses on
three cross streets in Sebastopol. Eight people showed, nibbled
oatmeal cookies and took notes.
Marian, a no-nonsense hospital nurse and volunteer organizer,
displayed her emergency bag which she calls her “bed bag” because
she keeps it next to her bed to grab when disaster strikes.
In it is a hard hat, a pair of work gloves and sturdy shoes, so
you can get moving and not injure yourself while you check out your
house and then see about the neighbors.
I’d rather pack for a vacation and hunt down my passport than
pack a bed bag that I’ll need if things go boom in the middle of
the night. I’d also rather go just about anyplace on a Saturday
morning than a meeting.
But as Marian said “if you are a calm organized self today you
won’t be a freaked-out self later.”
Marian once put out a house fire in the middle of the night and
was grateful she already knew how to use a fire extinguisher. “Your
head really fogs out in a crisis,” she said.
We went over guidelines for what to do in the first hour after a
disaster, based on a plan called Map Your Neighborhood that started
in Washington state. After you put on the gear, you check the gas
line outside your house and shut it off if there’s a leak.
(Hissing, smelling, the dial whirling like crazy.) You turn off the
water at the house main pipe. Then you place the sign that says
“Help” or “Okay” in your front window.
Do you know where your gas line is? Do you know all your
neighbors? Can’t all this wait?
The day before what is now being called the worst natural
disaster in human history, people in Japan were no doubt focused on
work, the kids and everyday stuff. I keep thinking of the woman on
NPR who said she thinks of her ruined town in Japan and wonders,
“How is this possible?.” Then she added, “We always knew it was
possible.”
In Japan the earth slid and the sea poured in. And then things
got even worse and people in a 19 mile radius of a nuclear power
plant were told to seal themselves in against radiation
poisoning.
It’s about 19 miles from where we live to Bodega Bay and the San
Andreas Fault, which would have had a nuclear power plant perched
on it had residents and activists not stood up against PG&E 50
years ago.
I was able to report to my neighbors that we already have
earthquake supplies in a clean garbage can that holds tuna and
toilet paper, flashlights and dog food. And we have a drum of
drinking water, urged on us by a retired fire captain who said at
the very least have an emergency water supply so you’re not a
burden to rescuers helping people in serious trouble.
A man down the street said he has a chainsaw and a woman two
blocks over knows CPR. We are to meet again in May and hopefully we
won’t need another reminder. But now my husband and I own hard hats
– $13.95 at the hardware store.
Susan Swartz is an author and local journalist. You can also
read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear
her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is
su***@ju***********.com.