Week 5: Prepare Your Home for an Earthquake

This week's task: Identify hazards in your home that could pose a danger to your family during an earthquake or that could block your escape routes if quick evacuation were necessary immediately after an earthquake.  Make the necessary changes to eliminate the hazards (or reduce them as much as feasibly possible).

We live in Earthquake country.  Berkeley sits on the Hayward fault, which is expected to produce a major earthquake in the not-too-distant future. The last five major earthquakes on this fault were in 1315, 1470, 1630, 1725, and 1868.  That's an earthquake every 138 years on average. It's been 145 years since the last one.   Click here to see a map of the fault.  Click here to read about the destruction caused by the 1868 earthquake.

The 1868 Hayward earthquake and the 1906 San Francisco earthquake both lasted 45-60 seconds. The 2010 Chile earthquake lasted for 3 minutes.  That's a lot of time for things to fall, fly, and scoot around. The task this week is to identify things that could pose a hazard during or after a quake and take steps to reduce the possible danger.  

Step 1: Walk through your house and note things that could fall or fly across the room and injure someone during an earthquake.  Obviously if you have small children who could be playing out of arm's reach when the shaking starts, you will need to be extra vigilant about securing anything that could harm them.  

Also note things that could fall and block exits or make your escape route dangerous and difficult to navigate quickly if the earthquake causes a fire or gas leak or destabilizes the building.  You don't want to walk through spilled cleaning chemicals or slip and fall in a mess of spilled olive oil and broken glass or have to move heavy things out of the way to get to the door, especially if you are are helping children get out.   It may be difficult to get medical attention for non-life threatening injuries immediately after a major disaster, so preparing to avoid even small injuries could make a big difference in your ability to cope and care for your family.

A small aside about tip-over injuries in general: If you have children, read this to motivate yourself to secure your furniture.  Even short pieces of furniture can be tipped over by a child and suffocate him while he is trapped underneath.  And half of tip-over injuries to children are caused by a TV falling on them.

Step 2: Fix the problems you found in Step 1, keeping in mind that some things may not pose a danger to an adult, but would pose a danger to a child if you have children in your home.

• Secure large furniture & heavy/breakable items.  Hardware and kits for securing various types of furniture are available at hardware stores or online (search for "earthquake straps" on Amazon.com).  Don't store heavy things on high shelves.  Use museum putty to secure breakable decorations.  See this website for more information about securing your stuff.

• Move things that could fall behind a door and block access to a room.

• Move anything (including heavy pictures) that could fall on you in bed.  Move beds that are right next to windows.

• Secure cleaning chemicals.  If they are on a high open shelf, they could fall, break open, and mix (potentially creating deadly gases).  

• Put latches on kitchen cabinets that contain breakable or heavy items that could fall.  Child-safety latches will work.  Or these (which are pricey and not child-proof, but wonderfully easy to operate) are my favorite.

• Remove heavy items from glass-doored cabinets or reinforce the glass doors with plexiglass.

• Secure water heaters to a stud with a strap to prevent tipping.  Secure all gas appliances to prevent a gas line rupture.  

If you own an older home, it may need seimsic retrofitting.  Check with a local contractor for more information or get information online here.

For more information from the Red Cross about what to do before, during and after an earthquake, click here.