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MISSOURI DIVISION |
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PROCEEDINGS OF THE SEPTEMBER 2000 POST EARTHQUAKE HIGHWAY RESPONSE AND RECOVERY SEMINAR HELD IN ST. LOUIS MISSOURI
STATE SEMA RESPONSE BY CHARLES CUTRELL
MR. MUSSER: Our next speaker is Charles Cutrell. Charles is currently a Disaster Service Planner and Earthquake Planning Coordinator with the Illinois Emergency Management Agency. Some of his duties include organizing, planning, executing, evaluating the operations of a variety of earthquake program-specific projects. He also plans and conducts field activities such as training workshops and seminars and assists local planning teams, coordinators and regional coordinators by providing technical assistance in earthquake planning and preparedness. As the Earthquake Program Coordinator, he also publishes materials including audiovisual presentation materials, technical reports, and materials for earthquake education efforts, working with schools, representatives of State Board of Education and other public and private emergencies to develop, produce, and disseminate earthquake planning and preparedness literature.
He has participated in several disaster response and recovery efforts in Illinois and participated in recovery efforts with California Emergency Services and FEMA after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. He was an assistant professor in the College of Engineering with Southern Illinois University and taught in the industrial technology program for 14 years. He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel for the U. S. Air Force Reserves with over 30 years of commissioned service. Charles, it´ s all yours.
MR. CUTRELL: I work for the Illinois Emergency Management Agency in the earthquake program. I also work in floods and other disasters. Our agency has only 70 or 80 people, so we get involved in a little bit of everything.
But today I want to talk about something that I don´ t think we have emphasized enough and that's earthquake response and recovery. I want to mostly talk about planning and preparedness.
Basically you know that in any disaster or any preparedness for a disaster, we talk about four phases of management: disaster preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. I want to emphasize interagency coordination. I´ m sure you are aware that the Midwest is in an area that has a high probability of having a damaging earthquake from the Wabash-New Madrid seismic zone.
Much of the seven-CUSEC states would be involved in this type of disaster. You may have seen some probabilities on having a damaging earthquake. We normally tell locals and other state agencies to expect 6 to 7 size earthquakes and be prepared. This is the size of Northridge, Kobe, and Loma Prieta. You´ ve all seen the type of damage that can occur from the 6 to 7 size earthquake.
This conference is basically talking about highways. Highways are going to be a critical infrastructure in any major earthquake. If you look at a USGS map, we´ re talking about impacting maybe 200 counties within the seven-state area. In Illinois we concentrate on working with about 30 counties that are highly vulnerable to earthquakes. The other CUSEC states also work with basically the same amount of counties.
All of our transportation systems in an earthquake are going to be highly vulnerable, not just bridges and highways. Highways are going to be critical because the other types of transportation systems are going to be using the highways and bridges to some extent. So it´ s critical that all other state agencies work with the state DOT. States also need to work together to restore connections between states so we can travel.
Later this afternoon one of our Illinois Department of Transportation representative will give you an outline of their earthquake preparedness program. We work with them, other state agencies, and local agencies to prepare for an earthquake.
The work you do before an earthquake is going to make the work you do after the earthquake much easier. I´ m talking about being prepared. And you've already been told several times during this seminar that you can´ t have or develop an effective preparedness plan after an earthquake occurs.
You´ ve also seen the type of damage that occurs from that 6 to 7 size earthquake. In the U.S. two recent examples are Northridge and Loma Prieta. You´ ve also seen the type of damage that occurs to transportation infrastructure systems in other countries. Taiwan, for instance, had very similar damage to their highways and bridges as we did in the Loma Prieta and Northridge earthquakes. You´ ve also seen the type of damage that has occurred in other countries from the same size or a little larger earthquake. Turkey is one of the latest examples.
State Emergency Management´ s role is basically going to be filled before an earthquake. We do technical assistance, preparedness and planning training and exercising. I want to emphasize and I hope other people in this conference emphasize the importance of interagency coordination. Emergency management agencies, other state agencies, local government, city government, and all the federal agencies will find themselves working together after a major disaster. We even need to work together before to get prepared and ready together.
All the preparedness, all the plans that you do before an earthquake occurs is going to insure that the response and recovery is efficient and you put the resources where they´ re needed most as quickly as possible. Somebody is going to have to make some hard decisions on where we respond first.
It´ s mandatory that you have a response and recovery plan. You need to tell other people what you plan to do. You inform the other state agencies. You inform the local jurisdictions. You inform the Federal agencies that are going to be involved. It´ s important that they coordinate with you whether you´ re a state agency, the local government, the county government, the city government, or Federal government.
I have worked with CUSEC states on interagency coordination. Our agency also works with other state agencies and especially with county officials and city officials on their planning, all-hazard planning, or earthquake planning.
Responding and recovery from an earthquake is going to be a little different than responding and recovering from a tornado or a flood. One of the big differences is it´ s going to affect a much larger area in the Midwest. You´ re going to have a lot more agencies involved, local jurisdictions, Federal agencies, state agencies, and other states. It´ s going to be a big difference in how you respond to an earthquake compared to other disasters, even though some of the response actions are similar.
In most planning, we talk about communications. When we talk about emergency communications, we're talking about having at least three modes of communications. Radios might work, cell phones might work, and regular telephones might work. In addition to these emergency communication methods, I´ m talking about communicating before the disaster. The communications that need to occur between the state official and the local official; the communications that needs to occur from the local officials to the state agency; the communications that needs to occur between state agencies; and the communications that needs to occur between state and Federal government. So disaster communications is more than just radios.
We need to have more communications between all parties involved in response and recovery before the earthquake than we do after the earthquake. All the work that you do before an earthquake will make the work you have to do after that much easier. One of those huge interagency coordination events that occurred between state, local and Federal agencies was CAT 1997. I´ m sure some of you may have been at that. This was a large-scale interagency communications event. You also need to have smaller-scale communications events between your agency and the agencies you will work with on a day-to-day basis during a disaster.
One of those agencies we work with day-to-day is our state DOT, IDOT, the Illinois Department of Transportation. We have worked with them for years in conducting exercises and helping them develop their plan. They have three IDOT districts in that southern Illinois area that are going to be impacted by a major earthquake. One of their plans is to drive primary routes to gather information about road and bridge damage and transmit that data back to their facilities and to state emergency management´ s facility.
They also bring in people from outside their district to augment their disaster preparedness plan execution because they know many of their employees are going to be personally impacted by a major earthquake. They are not going to have 100 percent response from their own people. So they have plans to bring in people from outside the area.
There is a lot of work that we do with IDOT before a disaster occurs. There are several agencies in the CUSEC states that already exist. When we talk about interagency coordination, we have the state directors as board of directors of Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC). We have earthquake program managers who are another group that get involved in agency coordination. We also have a new group, the State Geologists of CUSEC organization. The next step, and I think it has already been formalized, is the organization of DOT people in CUSEC states.
Earthquake planners have to usually fight for every resource that they get. I´ ve adopted the slogon,"Don´ t ever give up." for earthquake planning and preparedness.
Why are we here at this conference? We´re here to learn about earthquake planning, earthquake preparedness, earthquake response, and earthquake recovery. So take notes. Take this information back to your organization. Learn from their mistakes because we can never live long enough to make them all ourselves.
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