Mock quake helps Surf City prepare

Jenny Marder

The last thing that 13-year-old Daniel Matthews could remember was

skateboarding, he told the men who crouched over him, checking his

vital signs and examining a bloody gash by his right ear. He had

forgotten his phone number, he said in a shaky voice as he lay

motionless on the ground. Next to him, Nick Hanten, 15, winced in

pain.

Ten minutes later, the two Boy Scouts were sitting up and

laughing.

Daniel and Nick were masquerading as victims in a simulated

earthquake drill held Saturday afternoon at Central Park. More than

150 volunteers participated in the drill, a test of Surf City’s

disaster response and a contest between emergency response volunteers

from Huntington and surrounding cities.

The “earthquake,” a 7.8 centered at Beach Boulevard and Pacific

Coast Highway on the Newport-Inglewood fault, struck at 5:45 a.m.

Minutes later, Surf City’s Community Emergency Response Team, known

as CERT, began setting up an outdoor shelter for the pretend victims

at the Alvin M. Coen Youth Group Campground in Central Park, at the

corner of Gothard Street and Slater Avenue.

From Saturday morning until Sunday afternoon, Central Park lawn

was transformed into a tiny village, designed to house hundreds

forced from their homes. The lawn was blanketed with 55 tents,

cordoned off by street signs with names like Quake Street, Tornado

Way and Fault Lane.

Surrounding “tent city” were a makeshift kitchen, an unused first

aid booth and a pet care area, where stuffed animals peered through

glassy eyes out of tiny tent doghouses and a white cockatoo hopped

back and forth across a picnic table.

On the park’s west side, volunteers were treating the unharmed

victims. Huntington Beach took the crown for this year’s CERT

Challenge, in which emergency response teams from Surf City, Irvine,

Placentia, San Juan Capistrano and the American Red Cross responded

to different disaster scenarios.

“The volunteers are only supposed to treat to the best of their

skill,” said Carol Burtis, president of the Huntington Beach

Community Emergency Response Team. Teams are trained to provide basic

first aid until public safety personnel and licensed physicians can

make it to the scene, he said.

Red tinfoil flames sticking out of the chest of Chris

Greenshields, 10, a burn victim, had to be extinguished and his

wounds treated. Victims also suffered from spinal and head injuries,

puncture wounds, broken bones and shock. A dummy lying under a file

cabinet had to be quickly extricated and transported to a nearby

treatment area.

“They’re all doing really good,” said Teri Durnall, one of the

CERT contest judges from the Costa Mesa Fire Department. “All have a

basic understanding of what they’re here for. They’re here to

practice what they’ve learned and to make sure that they don’t cause

further injury.”

The Huntington Beach Emergency Response Team, which boasts more

than 450 graduates, is the largest of its kind in the county and has

become a trendsetter for other Orange County cities. Since its 1991

conception, more than 4,000 have attended its free disaster and

terrorism preparedness training classes.

“I have great confidence in this group that if something happened,

we could really rise to the occasion,” Burtis said.

Seated right on top of the Newport-Inglewood fault and only 100

miles from the San Andreas fault, earthquakes are the second most

likely disaster that could happen in Huntington, next to flooding,

according to a list prepared by the city.

Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Services or RACES, Surf City’s

amateur radio team also set up high frequency antennas and radio

equipment for the drill. Huntington’s RACES team is on-call and

equipped to provide emergency power in the event that all

communication lines in the city were to fail.

The earthquake drill coincided this year with a nationwide amateur

radio contest that the RACES team participates in every year. The

goal for the Surf City team is to contact as many stations from the

United States and Canada as possible in a 24-hour, nonstop period.

The only complaint voiced about the day overall was that these

drills should be more frequent.

Unfortunately, it was the first Camp CERT in years, said Jim

Rowley, a Surf City CERT volunteer.

“I’d like to see the training upgraded and ongoing, so it doesn’t

get stale,” he said. “Hands on is always the best.”