SANTA ANA : City Gives Plan for Temblors a Test

The Police Annex is collapsing. Fires are spreading wildly. And people are running helter-skelter in the streets of the city.

The Big One has struck Santa Ana, the All-American city.

Well, almost.

In the aftermath of the Bay Area’s deadly 7.1-magnitude temblor in October, Santa Ana employees tested the city’s all-purpose emergency plan Friday when they pretended that an earthquake of 6.8 intensity had jolted Orange County.

For two hours, the mayor and the city manager, along with dozens of city workers, gathered around huge maps of the city to plot out what they could do to save Santa Ana.

The simulated quake rumbled through the City Council chambers at 9:36 a.m., with the help of a 300-watt amplifier and giant speakers that blasted the sound effects from the 1974 disaster move, “Earthquake.” The noise startled employees.

“I never heard anything like that in my life,” City Manager David N. Ream said. Minutes later, Ream rounded up city officials to start determining damage throughout the city. He then declared “a local emergency” in Santa Ana.

Dozens of city officials and emergency workers were rushed off to Fire Station 5 on Walnut Street, where the city’s old civic disaster room had been dusted off to act as Santa Ana’s Emergency Operation Center. There, they armed themselves with walkie-talkies and legal pads and paid strict attention to someone playing the role of a Cable News Network reporter on closed-circuit TV. The reporter announced that “people were crying for more help.”

“We want to be completely prepared if there’s any kind of disaster in Santa Ana or in the county,” Mayor Daniel H. Young said. “After the San Francisco earthquake, we wanted to do something timely and get everybody ready for anything.”

Anything on Friday meant shattered windows, train derailments, the City Hall facade falling apart and a huge blaze in an apartment complex. More than 36 quake emergencies were played over the walkie-talkie airwaves. An hour after the Big One, a 5.8 aftershock rolled into the fire station with the help of people pounding the walls of the center with their fists and shaking the cameras of the fake CNN broadcast.

During the two-hour test, city officials opened emergency shelter centers, broadcasted emergency information through the media, surveyed danger areas in the city and asked county supervisors to declare a state of emergency in the area.

In 1988, the City Council adopted the all-purpose emergency plan designed to handle anything from earthquakes to floods to major chemical spills, said Sharon Frank, emergency preparedness coordinator. For Friday’s simulation, the main jolt and a 5.8 aftershock was reported along the Newport-Inglewood Fault, which is seven miles away from the city.

Santa Ana has to be ready for any kind of emergency because of its location, Frank said. The city has high potential for an earthquake because the county is surrounded by several faults.

Also, floods are a constant concern because of the Santa Ana River; with two freeways running within the city, hazardous material could spill from tanker trucks, and because the city lies in the flight path of John Wayne Airport, there’s always concern over air crashes.