Earthquake Preparedness: When the Ground Moves

By Tom Neal
Bigfoot Trails Basecamp | Independent Adventure Media

I remember the Nisqually earthquake pretty damn well.

I was at work, standing around talking with my boss when the building started shaking. At first it wasn't really a holy shit moment. Your brain takes a second to figure out what your body already knows. Then the shaking got serious, and my boss and I started heading toward the big bay door.

That's when I saw my truck.

It was sitting on the hill outside, and the ground underneath it had started moving. Not the truck moving because somebody was driving it. The fucking ground was moving, and my truck was sliding down the hill with it.

That'll get your attention!

I remember standing there watching it happen and thinking, Well, that's not good. The building was shaking, the hillside was moving, and suddenly the thing I normally depended on to get me around was halfway to somewhere I hadn't parked it.

When the shaking finally stopped, I went outside, locked the hubs, put it in four-wheel drive and crawled it back out.

The earthquake I am referring to is the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake in the Puget Sound region. The number isn't really what stuck with me. The truck sliding down the hill did.

I've felt three earthquakes in my life, and that one is the one that made the biggest impression on me because it showed me something that you don't necessarily think about when somebody says the word earthquake.

You think about shaking. You don't always think about what the shaking can do to everything around you. The ground itself can change.

A road that was there five minutes ago can be damaged. A hillside can move. Water lines can break. Power can go out. Things can fall. A building that looks okay from the outside may not be okay inside. And after the shaking stops, you're left standing there trying to figure out what the hell just happened and what you're supposed to do next.

That's where preparedness starts to get interesting. It's not really about earthquakes. It's about what you do when the world you were standing in five minutes ago isn't quite the same world anymore.

The First Lesson Is Simple: Get Through the Shaking

The first part isn't complicated.

If you're inside when the earthquake starts, Drop, Cover and Hold On.

Get down. Protect yourself from things that can fall or break. Hold on until the shaking stops.

That's not particularly exciting advice, and there's no fancy equipment involved. But sometimes the most useful preparedness advice is the boring stuff that works.

What you don't want to do is make the first few seconds of an earthquake more dangerous because you're trying to outrun it.

The same thing applies to getting outside. We tend to think of outside as automatically safer than inside, but during an earthquake you don't necessarily know what's coming down around you. Glass, masonry, signs, electrical lines and other debris don't care which direction you're running.

So the first decision is pretty simple:

Protect yourself from what's happening right now.

Then wait for the shaking to stop.

That's when the situation gets more interesting.

Then Look Around

My truck taught me something that day that no preparedness checklist ever could.

When the shaking stopped, I couldn't just assume the world was exactly where I'd left it.

The building was still there.

The truck was still there, just not where I parked it!

The hill wasn't. Well, the hill was still there. It just wasn't behaving like the same hill anymore.

That's an important distinction.

After an earthquake, you need to pay attention to what's actually around you rather than immediately falling back into whatever you were doing before the shaking started.

Look for obvious hazards. Broken glass. Damaged structures. Fire. Downed power lines. Water where it shouldn't be. Things that have shifted. Slopes that may have moved.

And don't forget that the earthquake itself may not be the only shaking you'll feel. Aftershocks can happen, and something that was already weakened may not tolerate another round very well.

You don't have to become a structural engineer.

You just need to stop and ask yourself:

Does this still look safe?

That question is worth asking before you walk back into a building, start moving debris, climb onto something, or head down a road that may have changed.

The Road Home May Not Be the Road Home

This is where earthquakes start becoming a transportation problem, a communications problem and a family problem all at the same time.

If you're lucky, you shake the house, look around, find that everything is basically okay, call your family and go back to whatever you were doing.

But what if you're at work and your family is across town?

What if the bridge is closed?

What if a road is blocked?

What if the power is out and the traffic lights aren't working?

What if the cell network isn't cooperating?

What if everybody else in town has the exact same idea you just had and is trying to get home?

You don't need to have a twenty-page emergency operations plan for your family.

But you probably ought to have had the conversation before the earthquake.

Where do you meet?

Who do you contact?

What happens if you can't contact them?

Where are you going if you can't get home?

Those are simple questions, but they're much easier to answer when nobody is scared, traffic isn't moving and the phone isn't working. That's one of the biggest lessons I've taken from preparedness in general:

The emergency isn't the best time to make the plan.

Earthquakes Don't Shut Off Just One Thing

This is probably the part of preparedness that gets overlooked the most.

We tend to imagine a disaster as one thing happening.

The earthquake happens.

Then we deal with the earthquake.

But an earthquake can knock other things out along with it.

Water.

Power.

Heat.

Communications.

Transportation.

Fuel.

Stores.

Medical services.

You can suddenly have several ordinary systems fail at the same time.

That's a very different problem from simply having a scary few minutes while the building shakes.

And this is where having some basic supplies at home makes sense.

Water is an obvious one. So are food, flashlights, batteries or other ways of keeping basic things functioning. Having some basic first-aid supplies and necessary medications available matters too.

But even those things are only part of it.

If you have water but can't communicate with your family, you've solved one problem.

If you have a flashlight but don't know whether the road home is open, you've solved another.

If you have a three-day bag but you've never talked to your family about what happens when you can't find each other, you've still got a problem.

Preparedness works better as a system than as a pile of gear.

That's something I didn't necessarily understand when I was younger.

You Can't Prepare for Every Possible Earthquake

And that's probably a good thing.

Because if you start trying to prepare for every possible combination of earthquake, landslide, fire, power outage, broken water line, blocked road and lost communications, you're going to drive yourself nuts.

You don't need to know exactly what will happen.

You need to understand the problems that might come with it.

Protect yourself during the shaking.

Recognize hazards afterward.

Have some water and basic supplies.

Know how you're going to communicate.

Know what your family is going to do if you can't immediately find each other.

Think about how you're getting around if the normal route isn't available.

And understand that the first few minutes may not tell you what the next few days are going to look like.

That's a pretty good starting point.

The details are where things get complicated.

How much water?

What kind of food?

What happens if the power stays off?

How do you handle communications?

What about medical needs?

What about pets?

What about your vehicle?

What if you have to leave?

What if you can't leave?

Those are the questions where preparedness becomes a system instead of a collection of good intentions.

What That Truck Taught Me

I didn't know any of that while I was standing at that bay door watching my truck slide down the hill.

I wasn't thinking about emergency management.

I wasn't thinking about preparedness philosophy.

I was thinking, There goes my fucking truck.

Then the shaking stopped.

I looked at what had happened.

I figured out what I could safely do.

I locked the hubs, put it in four-wheel drive and crawled it out.

It wasn't some heroic survival story.

It was just a guy looking at a situation that had changed and figuring out the next move.

But that's exactly why I remember it.

Because preparedness isn't really about predicting the future.

It's about giving yourself enough knowledge, planning and resources that when the future throws something at you that you didn't expect, you aren't completely starting over.

I've felt three earthquakes.

The Nisqually one is the one I remember because I got to watch the ground move underneath something that mattered to me.

Twenty-five years later, I still think about that.

Not because I'm afraid of earthquakes.

Because I learned something.

The world can change underneath you in a matter of seconds.

You can't stop that.

But you can decide whether you've thought about what happens next.

And that's what practical preparedness is about.

Not hiding from the world.

Not waiting for the apocalypse.

Being ready enough to keep living in it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tom Neal is the creator of Bigfoot Trails Basecamp, an independent adventure media project built around real-world travel, vehicles, motorcycles, outdoor adventure, racing and practical preparedness.

Tom has formal emergency-management and public-safety training, including FEMA Emergency Management Institute coursework, FEMA's Professional Development Series, Vector Solutions emergency-response training, and First Aid, CPR/AED and Wilderness First Aid training.

Bigfoot Trails Basecamp isn't about preparing for the end of the world. It's about being ready when normal life suddenly stops working.

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