Consider disaster preparedness for example. Is that another one of those resolutions that never seems to stick?

Meet the North Coast CERT 26-week Disaster Preparedness Planner, a tool designed to help you gather the supplies you need and to make the necessary plans to get your home and workplace disaster prepared.

Here is your opportunity to join other members of your community in creating a regional Disaster Preparedness plan by beginning at home.

You can find the Planner at http://northCoastCERT.org/26-weeks/

Say “yes” to preparedness, and join the North Coast as we become prepared together.

Spread the word: North Coast CERT is working to create a disaster-resilient community.

So, since we’re all facing the same regional hazards, why not face them together as a community? It would be great if we could all create a prepared household at the same time.

Welcome to the North Coast CERT 26-week Disaster Preparedness planner. Each week, we’ll offer you a list of things to purchase and to-do items to follow. By the end of 26 weeks, you’ll not only have a disaster supply kit in place, but you’ll also have a household disaster plan defined as well.

So stay tuned to North Coast CERT. Beginning January 2, 2012, we’ll start the 26-week disaster preparedness plan. And when we get to July, we start over again this time focusing on maintaining your supplies and plan.

Think of it as a regional plan where all of your neighbors are taking the same steps as you.

As a community, we can take these necessary steps ahead of time to mitigate the hazards we face.

Coming soon January 2012, your weekly disaster preparedness kit building lessons, courtesy of our local businesses.

Stay tuned for more. We are scheduling many exciting and fun ways to discover how CERT can change the way you think about disaster awareness and preparedness. Keep reading your favorite hometown newspaper and/or listening to the radio. North Coast CERT is about to happen.

Why are these devices important? It’s simple: like smoke alarms, they can save lives. See the following article from our heroes at the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) on the topic of the hazards of carbon monoxide.

FDNY members warn the public about the dangers of carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning after an incident on Oct. 29, which killed one man and left another seriously ill.

Two workers sitting in the back of a truck driving from the Bronx to Queens used the heat from a gas-powered lawn mower to keep warm. The exhaust fumes filled the confined space and poisoned the two men.

Both men were taken to area hospitals by FDNY EMS members. One has since succumbed to his injuries.

The FDNY urges everyone to understand the dangers of CO poisoning.

Any fuel-burning appliance, vehicle or tool that is inadequately vented or maintained can be a potential source of carbon monoxide gas. Examples include fuel fired furnaces, gas fueled space heaters, charcoal grills and, wood burning fireplaces and stoves.

Long-term exposure to low concentrations of carbon monoxide can gradually build up in the blood causing flu-like symptoms such as headaches, fatigue, nausea and drowsiness. Learn more

Original source: http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/events/2011/103111a.shtml

It seems like the earth off the coast of Oregon just wants to move these days. This evening there was an earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.9Mw off the coast of Oregon. The earthquake occured on one of the corners between the Pacific Plate and the Juan de Fuca plate.

No tsunami alerts or warnings have been issued for this event. Had it occured on border of the Juan de Fuca plate and the North American plate (in the subduction zone) things could have been much worse.

As you steer through that always-dangerous curve headed to work that morning, you are the only witness to a traffic collision. As if in slow motion, you watch the vehicles collide and settle. You stop your car, and in front of you lays the mangled remains of an SUV and a loaded school bus resting on its side.

You’ve already tried to activate EMS by calling 911, but you’re in a dead spot where there’s no wireless signal. Even if you could get through, you know that it can take First Responders at least fifteen minutes to get to your location, and that doesn’t begin until they’re notified.

You’ve grabbed your CERT bag from the trunk of your car. You’ve pulled on a pair of gloves and donned the rest of your PPE. Now you’re facing the scene. Where do you start? You’ve got more victims than you can count from outside the bus.

To whom do you attend first? The ejected SUV passenger bleeding on the road? The screaming children inside the bus? It’s not an easy decision to make. Or is it?

Know What You Are Dealing With

You take a moment to use all of your senses to size up the entire situation. You consider your own safety before taking any action. There’s a safe area just twenty feet from the bus that will serve well to evacuate victims from the scene. There are no power lines or any additional hazards to be concerned about.

To get the full scope of the scenario, you quickly walk around the entire scene. Through the front windows of the bus you see victims. There’s a small fuel leak, but it’s not a hazard yet. As you come around the back of the bus, the emergency door pops open and four dazed but uninjured children slowly emerge. They are scared, but they seem unhurt. You calmly tell them who you are, and you ask them to stick together. They walk over to the designated treatment area huddled in a small group.

The driver of the SUV is complaining of a lot of pain in his left arm and ribs, but otherwise he says he’s okay. You guess he’s got a few broken bones, but you briefly ponder what kind of nightmares he’ll have in the coming months. He agrees to walk up the hill to try to get a signal to call 911, but one of the older boys comes back saying he’ll go instead: the man looks like he hurts too much. He says his mom is a nurse at the hospital so he can call her so the emergency room can get ready. You send the driver over to the where the children are sitting as the boy sprints up the hill and out of sight.

Start Where You Stand

Now you recall your CERT training. You take a deep breath and focus on the S.T.A.R.T. system (Simple Triage And Rapid Treatment) you learned from North Coast CERT. Turning to the bus, you call out loudly, “Emergency Response Team…if you can stand up and walk, come to the sound of my voice!” Eight more children climb around seats and over broken glass to freedom. As you point them toward the others in the designated safe zone, one young girl doesn’t seem to want to go with them.

She’s limping a little, but she assures you it’s just twisted. She says her name is Sarah and that her little brother Charles is in the front of the bus and needs help really bad. She says she took CERT with her mom last year, and she remembers a lot of it. Your thought: she’s hardly even a teenager. Yet, on your request, she agrees to check on the ejected SUV passenger as well as the kids and the SUV driver. Before heading off she tells you that there are no immediate hazards inside the bus other than the broken glass. She’ll come back to help you once she’s completed those two assignments.

Glancing at your watch, less than five minutes have elapsed since you watched this happen, and you have no idea how long it will be before First Responders will arrive. There remains an unknown number of victims in the bus.

Now You’re Revving!

After those precious few first minutes of clarity have evaporated, the enormity of the situation has got your pulse pounding and your adrenaline rushing. How do you remember what to do next when you’re all revved up?

The words then come back to you, clear as day: “When you get revved up, remember ‘R.P.M.’” That’s the key: R.P.M.

• “R” = Respiration
• “P” = Perfusion
• “M” = Mental Status

Armed with these three letters, you turn to the closest victim. Is she breathing? Yes, she’s got good respiration, but she’s looking at you with terror in her eyes. You ask her what her name is, and she answers Fern. Does she know what happened? Good, she has good mental function. Her leg hurts a lot, but with no apparent bleeding she is otherwise well. You take the pink marker from your CERT bag and write a “D” for “Delayed” on her hand. Before letting go, you draw two dots and a smiley face inside and give her a secret wink…for a very brief moment, Fern smiles before remembering how much her leg hurts.

You move forward a few rows to the next child. He’s not moving, and what’s worse is that he’s bleeding from the left temple, and he’s got a gash on his left leg as well. You reposition him on his back and perform the head-tilt/chin-lift maneuver (it just comes back naturally to you after all this time since your training) and within a second he gasps for breath. He is conscious and alert. You press your fingernail into the bed of his and observe the capillary refill rate. It’s longer than two seconds, but considering the bleeding gash on his leg, that’s almost expected. You mark an “I” for “Immediate” on his forehead.

Without saying a word, Sarah grabs some 4×4 gauze pads and a bandage roll from your CERT bag and nods to you to continue. Your adult size gloves seem so huge on her little hands. As you move forward you hear her coaxing him closer to the roof so he could get out of the glass and elevate his legs above his heart to prevent shock. He asks a few questions about what happened, and she answers quickly and quietly. You hear her call him Tyler so clearly that’s not her brother.

It’s only at that moment that you are struck by the strength emitted from such a seemingly “young and innocent” child. Despite the difference in your years and experience, you both seem to know what you need to do. Thinking back to the CERT classroom, you wondered at the time how you would ever remember anything you learned, especially in a crisis. Yet in the present it was coming back as if you had learned it yesterday.

You move on to the last child up front. The image is more gruesome than you’ll be able to forget soon. After two unsuccessful attempts to reposition his airway, you realize the obvious: his body has sustained injuries that you know are beyond your abilities to treat. The pink marker is shaking as it writes the word “DEAD” across his forehead, and without taking the time to respond emotionally, you remove your over-shirt and cover the boy’s body and move on, fully aware that this is Charles.

The bus driver is lying in a crumpled ball in the well of the door. You reposition her airway and ensure she is breathing. Whew. After a perfusion check on her nail bed passes, you see her struggle to return to consciousness. She’s got a lump on her head. You ask her name. She hesitates. You ask what happened and she doesn’t know. You brush her hair aside and tell her that help is on the way. Her forehead gets an “I” due to her decreased mental status.

As you make your way back to the emergency exit, you notice that Sarah has wrapped Tyler’s hoodie around the leg wound tightly so he could hold it in place. She grabs your hand and the both of you crawl out. She says she knows her brother didn’t survive, but instead of joining you to check on the other children, she inches her way back into the bus. The last thing you hear as you step away from the bus is a small giggle from Fern saying that pink is in fact her favorite color too.

Halfway between the bus and the treatment area you pause. The SUV passenger is no longer face down on the pavement, but safely curled on his side with a pink jacket under his head and a black “I” on his forehead. You turn around and look back at the bus. That’s the moment you realize the enormity of what you just accomplished. For a few brief moments you recognize how eerily quiet it has become. The sweat on your freshly ungloved hands feels cold in the morning air. A few moments later the endless silence is pierced by the sound of a distant siren.

A Few Minutes Later

By the time the first EMS unit arrives at scene twenty minutes after the collision, you had already triaged a total of eighteen victims. The decisive action of using voice triage not only left you with fewer victims to deal with, but also provided you with a trained buddy partner.

Medics on scene treat the remaining patients. Two of the Immediates (Tyler and the SUV passenger) and one Delayed patient (the SUV driver), are transported by ambulance to the hospital. The bus driver is evacuated by air ambulance to the inland trauma center. A team of firefighters extricate Fern, and medic teams treat the remainder of the children for mostly cuts and other light injuries. But Sarah’s brother could not be saved, and the Sheriff-Coroner’s office is called in to handle the details.

End Result

Nowadays, whenever you come around that particular curve, you slow down and remember the day you literally saved lives because you knew what to do in that moment. Had you not taken action, several more people could have succumbed to their injuries before responders would have arrived at scene.

As a result of that day, Sarah has remained a close friend of yours—not like a daughter or niece—but as a peer. It’s not easy to talk about the day her brother died. But she thinks it’s really important to keep talking and thinking about it, because more people could have died if you hadn’t stopped to help.

While you’ll never quite understand from where the depth of Sarah’s wisdom comes, it’s obvious that her life continues despite the tragedy. As does yours.

At 13:51 EDT, a 5.9 Mw earthquake jolted the entire eastern seaboard. The relatively shallow shock was felt not only in the D.C. area but in New York City and as far inland as Ohio. Reports of damage to building and infrastructure are coming in. So far there are no reports of casualties, but this is a breaking story and is subject to change as new information comes in.

While earthquakes in the Virginia region are not uncommon, they tend to be smaller. To the south, the Carolinas are home to an active fault system considered to potentially be one of the more dangerous in North America. The hypocentral distance from the surface is most likely why the quake was felt so far away.

For more information see the U.S. Geological Survey event page:

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/recenteqsus/Quakes/usc0005ild.php#details

Your address sign does not need to be large or fancy, but there are a few suggestions for maximum readability at any time of the day or night.

• Use numbers that are at least four inches tall and are visible (preferably reflective) in the dark.
• Place your numbers so that they are visible from both directions—responders can arrive from multiple locations and may not see a sign facing only one way.
• In addition to identifying your own home, if you live down a road with multiple houses, get together with your neighbors. Create a group sign with all house numbers visible, and place it at the end of the road where it connects with the main road so that first responders know who is down each road.
• Periodically clear vegetation around your signs to keep them visible.

When calling 911 in an emergency, if you need to give special instructions to visitors or delivery companies such as UPS, be sure to give this information to the dispatcher, who will forward it to responders.

In an emergency, time is essential. The faster responders can find you the better. But if first responders have difficulty in locating your home, time can be lost.

Protect yourself and your family by checking your address sign today. If it is not as good as it could be, why not put up a new set of reflective numbers from the local hardware store? It’s just one of the many things you can do to make your home and neighborhood safer.

Yet this one was “just an aftershock.” Were that size quake to strike that close to our coast, how would we do as a region?

How would you do? Look around your home/office. Is your space earthquake safe?

But “big” can be widely interpreted. Is 7.0 big? What about 8.0? Come to think of it, how do they measure earthquakes?

A Little History

Back in 1906, there were no seismographs, and seismology was a hobby more than a field of study. It wasn’t until 1935 that Charles Richter co-developed the measurement scales that bear his name. The original “Richter Magnitude Scale” was created to describe a small local study area along the San Andreas Fault in Central California, and as such came to be abbreviated as M_L (where subscript “L” stands for “local”).

The Richter local scale was suitable during the early days of seismic research; however its design for relatively small and shallow earthquakes soon became a problem. For theoretical events larger than 8.0, the scale saturates and becomes useless. Richter and his partner Beno Gutenberg continued research and created two more scales: surface wave magnitude (M_s) and body wave magnitude (M_b). Both are calibrated to coincide numerically with the traditional Richter local scale. Body wave magnitude is particularly useful for measuring earthquakes at greater distances and depths, but similar to local magnitude saturates around the 6.0-6.5 range.

Seismology Goes Mainstream

By the 60’s a more reliable method of measuring earthquakes was needed. Creation of the “moment magnitude scale” was began in 1966 by Caltech seismologists Thomas C. Hanks and Hiroo Kanamori. Their research was long, arduous and done mostly by hand because computers were not fast enough to keep up. Yet by 1979, the new scale began to be used routinely.

The moment magnitude scale measures the amount of energy released at the moment of the earthquake, and thus was ideal for most large and relatively shallow events. The scale is abbreviated M_w where “w” refers to the amount of “mechanical work” at the moment of the seismic event. The scale is numerically designed to overlap with the Richter local scale for moderate quakes around the 5.0 range to retain consistency. But the benefits of the new scale are many, including the ability for seismologists to compare energy released by earthquakes more directly. The primary downside is that the scale saturates below 3.5, and as such is only used for moderate and larger events.

So Where Did It Happen?

To get the complete picture of an earthquake event, the seismologist uses several criteria. Seismograph measurements differ depending upon their proximity to the earthquake. The more seismograph station measurements reported the more points of view the seismologist has available. By spreading seismographs around earthquake-prone regions, we have a network of sensors that can be monitored and processed by modern computers in real-time.

The first clue the seismologist looks for is the “epicenter” of the quake. The epicenter is the location of the earthquake mapped as a point of latitude and longitude. This point represents the place on the surface directly above the center of the event.

By adding the third dimension of depth, the “hypocenter” can be determined. Surface seismograph data is used to triangulate this point below the epicenter. With the hypocenter determined, the seismologist can move on to determining the actual magnitude of the earthquake.

It Was How Big?

The magnitude is calculated by reexamining the original seismograph data. This is where selection of magnitude scale is initially made based upon initial estimates nearest the presumed epicenter. Note that the first scale used is not always the one used in the final report.

Most moderate or larger earthquakes use moment magnitude. Body wave magnitude can be used for deep or distant quakes. The original Richter local scale (M_L) is still used for small earthquakes recorded by nearby seismographs, particularly here in California where small earthquakes are common.

With the scale determined, the seismograph data is reexamined, and the magnitude is calculated. The seismologist then takes another look at the data, refines the epicenter, hypocenter and recalculates the magnitude, repeating the process until a consistent result is returned.

But It Felt Stronger Than That

The seismologist has one more tool to get the overview of the earthquake, and this one involves the human component. Magnitude is merely a mathematical calculation based on data. This number can only describe so much about the region surrounding the epicenter. This is where the intensity measurement comes to play. On their website the United States Geological Survey (USGS) defines earthquake intensity as,

“…the strength of shaking produced by the earthquake at a certain location. Intensity is determined from effects on people, human structures, and the natural environment.”

In other words, intensity an attempt to quantify how much shaking was experienced in the region surrounding the epicenter. To specify the intensity of an earthquake, seismologists use the Abbreviated Mercalli Intensity Scale, which employs Roman numerals from I (one) to XII (twelve) for classification.

In addition to seismograph data, the USGS relies on us humans for input regarding local intensity. By visiting the USGS website for the specific earthquake event, we can fill out a short questionnaire describing where we were, what we experienced and what our reaction was. This information is then compiled into a “Shake Map” which describes the intensity over the region using color coding.

A Mercalli intensity of I (one) equates to “instrumental” meaning the quake was only perceived by seismographs. Intensity III reflects the equivalent of a heavy truck passing. By intensity VI (six) the human fear component emerges. And at the top of the scale, XII represents “Cataclysmic, damage total, lines of sight and level are distorted.”

A Little More History

The Tōhoku Japan earthquake of March 2011,  measuring M_w 9.0 generated a Shake Map that holds a wealth of information. Peak intensity was classified at VIII (severe) in inland Miyagi and Iwate prefectures. Most of east coast Honshu felt VII-VIII (moderate to heavy) intensities, and the west coast of Honshu experienced up to VI (strong).

Compare this to the much smaller magnitude M_w 7.9 April 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. While the epicenter is believed to have been offshore from Daly City, Shake Maps generated from perceptions and degree of damage at the time indicate intensities as high as XI (extreme) in Santa Rosa and as high as IX (violent) to X (intense) along the northern third of the San Andreas Fault from Cape Mendocino south.

We cannot forget that Fort Bragg was devastated by the 1906 earthquake and our own ensuing fire. It is well documented that Santa Rosa received significant damage, as did most surrounding cities and towns north and south of San Francisco. Most people simply do not realize that the great quake of 1906 destroyed far more than just the City of San Francisco.

The Scale Speaks For Itself

Earthquake magnitude and intensity are the two primary ways that seismologists measure and classify earthquakes occurring around the globe. By utilizing this data, seismologists can now begin to understand what elements cause fault systems to rupture. And along the way they may discover clues as to how to predict large events in the future.

By adopting several overlapping scales, seismologists can now convey more about an earthquake in a way that is more succinct. The magnitude scale used in specifying an earthquake’s size says a lot more about the earthquake than simply how big it was.

Without specifying a scale, “6.4” doesn’t say much about the quake. On the other hand “6.4 M_w intensity IV” says it was fairly shallow and felt by many.

The Richter scale was so totally last century.