Stewart Brand (The Whole Earth Catalog, How Buildings Learn) shares a number of lessons learned from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, where volunteer rescuers in San Francisco’s Marina District outnumbered professionals three-to-one during the critical first few hours:
- Collect thoughts, then collect tools! These are some of the tools that have proven useful for earthquake search and rescue and for fighting fires while they’re still small:
- Gas-powered saws
- Hand saws
- Axes
- Ladders
- Crow bars and pry bars
- Bolt cutters
- Wrenches for gas valves
- Flashlights, miner’s lights, lanterns, extra batteries
- Portable generator and power tools and work lights
- Jacks, blocks, and shoring material such as 4 x 4 lumber
- Rope
- Shovels
- Work gloves, boots
- Loud hailers
- Buckets
“A lot of people don’t know it, but the best fire extinguisher in the world is a garden hose with a hand shut-off nozzle and enough hose to reach any part of your building. If you don’t have a hose, use a bucket.” — Bob Jabs
- In any collapsed building, assume there are people trapped alive. Locate them, let them know everything will be done to get them out.
- Searching a building, call out. “Anybody in here? Anybody need help? Shout or bang on something if you can hear my voice.”
- After an earthquake, further collapse is not the main danger. Fire is.
- If you want to lend your help, ask! If you want to be helped, ask!
- Fire fighting is a series of mistakes, corrected as soon as possible.
- Bystanders make the convenient assumption that everything is being taken care of by the people already helping. That’s seldom accurate.
- Join a team or start a team. Divide up the tasks. Help leadership emerge.