Disaster Preparedness

Firefighters demonstrate the danger of fallen power lines. 

We spent a couple of hours at the park on Sunday to attend the disaster preparedness fair. Checklists can be found on the City website, but there's no substitute for actually meeting the emergency personnel and getting a sense of their competence.

We talked to the geologist about earthquake science, were reminded to stock supplies for our pets, and got a coupon from Orchard Supply for the latest equipment (TV velcro straps, hand-cranked radios, water purifiers) to survive an earthquake and its aftermath.

The bad news: we were informed that the days were numbered for our landline and pulse-dial telephone ("it's our one phone that can operate if the power goes off say, during an earthquake"). Even if it were possible, I would never turn back the clock, but oftentimes progress makes us more vulnerable. © 2014 Stephen Yuen