By John Driscoll
Eureka Times Standard
Copyright 2007 Times - Standard
All Rights Reserved
EUREKA, Calif. — Seizing on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to find people at home, some 250 volunteers went door-to-door in six coastal communities to help residents brush up on tsunami and disaster preparedness.
After a three-hour American Red Cross training at College of the Redwoods, teams of two and three spread out to canvass neighborhoods in the tidal wave zone. They found a wide range of preparedness, and helped people learn the latest on where to go and what to do in case of an earthquake or a tsunami.
“Face-to-face,” said Troy Nicolini with the National Weather Service, “there’s nothing better.”
Most of the volunteers were with AmeriCorps, who opted to use the holiday to help people.
At one house here, Allison Phillips, Monica Schallert and Kelly Ward talked to a woman about the route she should take to the highest ground. That’s the water tower site near Peninsula School, at a height of 46 feet.
They gave her information on how to put together a disaster kit and provided her with a list of emergency phone numbers.
“If you feel the ground shaking, that’s your cue,” said Schallert.
Local earthquakes can cause a massive swell of water that surges ashore, bringing debris with it. That type of tsunami can strike in minutes, before officials can issue a warning. In contrast, a tsunami spawned by a distant earthquake in Alaska or Japan can take hours and is typically announced on NOAA weather radio.
The effort gave people a chance to ask questions and even share information. At Ray Craig’s house, the crew talked with the volunteer firefighter and 45-year resident about some of the earthquakes and tsunami warnings he’d been through.
“We’ve been through a few,” Craig said.
With a fire radio on hand, Craig would likely know quickly what’s happening in the event of a disaster. He had some thoughts on how to make the water tower site a better base to help people in the event they needed to retreat there.
Craig said that when Louisiana-Pacific Corp. owned Samoa, a trailer with disaster supplies was kept on high ground. He hoped that could be done again, with food, water and medical supplies available for firefighters to help disaster refugees. That could prove valuable in the event a major West Coast earthquake or tsunami forces communities to fend for themselves.
Loleta, Manila, Fairhaven, King Salmon and Fields Landing — all towns in the tsunami zone — were covered by the teams.