The Big One: The Walk

A place of worship in Southern California that defies religious labels. "I'm not aware of any other church in the country that has all three Abrahamic faiths worshipping under one roof." We take you inside. Listen on Imperfect Paradise, a weekly news magazine from L.A.G. "Wondering what's happening with those ballot measures you voted on in the last election? We've got you covered with Make It Make Sense, our elections newsletter. We'll check in on what voters passed and whether elected officials are living up to their campaign promises. Sign up at leas.com/vote." "I have to admit something. What is our earthquake plan right now?" "Exactly." "We don't have a plan. What if we're nowhere near the house? You know our kids' love is at the house with a nanny and we're at work. I'm in Pasadena and you're in Sherman Oaks. So all of us are about 40 minutes from each other over many, many free ways. Do you think about that at all? That's possibly happening? An earthquake hitting and we're all separated." "Yeah, I think about that happening and I think I would just totally panic." I mean, I think that my first instinct would probably be to get into the car and get home as fast as I could to make sure that Lev and Becky were okay. "Do you think you'd be able to get home?" "I don't know. I mean, I can take city streets home. I don't necessarily need to take the freeway, but it would depend on if there's gas lines broken, if there's water mains that are broken. Plus, I'm sure a million people would be out on the road trying to get somewhere if there was a huge earthquake and it was the middle of the work day." "Yeah, that would be really terrifying. I worry about that for sure." The earthquake will probably hit before my son turns 30. He's nine months old right now. And I'm terrified. I wonder if he's going to be okay. "I worry about whether or not Lev is safe, probably 200% of the time. I think about it all the time." "And I think that's pretty normal, especially as a new mother." "Is my baby safe?" "When you're a parent, it's the first thing that comes to mind when you wake up. And it's the last little mental check you do when drifting off to sleep. Is my baby safe?" We live in Northridge, which was leveled by a 6.7 magnitude earthquake in 1994. We moved into the house late last year right around the time Lev was born. We've been a little distracted. "You can do all the things." As of today, we have no extra food, we have no water, no first-aid kits. We don't even have a plan. How do we even figure out what our plan is? "I want to be prepared. Like, I already know that I'm going to lose my SHIT. Like, I I want to mitigate that as much as I can so that I don't feel like a total moron when the big one hits and I'm like, 'Oh my god, we don't have water. Oh my god, we don't have food. Like, I don't want to be in that situation.' I don't know. I mean, like, I feel like there's so many things to worry about. I don't even know where to start." "Can you imagine being in the big one and not being with your baby boy?" I can imagine it. I think it would be really terrifying and heart-wrenching and stressful and I'm sure that I would do everything in my power to make sure I could get to him. I would walk, I would swim, I would cross precarious paths." "You'd shoot murder and kill." "I'd shoot murder and kill." Well, I don't have a gun, but maybe I'll take those croft-megaul classes. "If it happened tomorrow, my wife and I, we'd be screwed. I know I'm going to be freaking out and I know I'm going to be asking myself, is my baby safe? Who are you worried about? Who do you need to get to? And how are you going to get there?" I'm Jacob Margolis and this is The Big One, your survival guide, Episode 2, The Walk. [Music] I'm Frank Stoltz, the civics and democracy reporter here at LAS. It's my job to make it easier for you to understand how to participate in the political process, like voting, which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LAS voter game plan is back. We're here to help you navigate your ballot with informed, accurate reporting on the candidates and the issues. Participation and elections makes for a stronger community. Learn more, visit LAS.com/vote. Hi, I'm Rachel Martin, host of NPR's Wildcard Podcast, where I interview celebrity guests using randomly chosen questions from a deck of cards. It can get pretty deep, pretty fast. I'm coming to Pasadena for a live special taping with my guest, the Always Fabulous Tracy Ellis Ross. Come explore life's biggest questions with us. It's Thursday, May 7th at The Crawford. Get tickets at LAS.com/events. This is a special safety message from the California Emergency Management Agency. Stronger shaking could follow the earthquake that already hit our area. It's safer to stay off the road right now, but if you must drive and the shaking starts again, pull over and stop at the first open safe place you can find. Avoid all underpasses, power lines and overhanging signs. If stopped, stay inside your car. If driving on a bridge or an overpass, carefully continue moving until you're off the bridge. Then look for a safe open place to stop until the shaking passes. And stay tuned to this station from the station from the station. See sit down on the sidewalk. You've made it through downtown LA, passed your favorite taco stand, crossed over the 110 freeway with abandoned cars everywhere. A woman touches your shoulder. Are you okay? I don't know, you say. A couple of buildings have caught fire down the street. Flames roaring. Black smoke rising. Smell it here is terrible. Suidgen burning chemicals. No one seems to know what to do. Everyone's calling 911, but no one's getting through. You can hear fire trucks running across the city, but they're not close. The woman asks you, "When will they send help?" You shrug your shoulders. I don't know. We're better prepared for the big one than any big city in America, which is to say we're woefully unprepared. LA's mayor, Erica, said he is worried. 40,000 city employees sounds like a lot, but when a disaster hits, they each have families. They have neighborhoods that they're living in. They may or may not be at work at any given time, and that spreads thin very quickly. Does more need to be done? Every day. Every person listening to this has something they can do today more than they. No listener is 100% prepared. Not even you. Not even me. There are 88 cities in LA County alone, and there aren't enough emergency responders to help everyone. So to get outside help, the mayor has got to declare a state of emergency. Then the governor will act. Not to say that this is a bad day. When California has bad days, Mark Giller-Ducci is in charge of the response. He runs the governor's office of emergency services. People tend to have what I call sort of a 911 syndrome. They feel like, you know, they're used to dialing 911 and getting all the resources that they're going to be able to get to deal with their crisis. In this set of circumstances, it's not going to be the case. You know, you may be on your own for a highly likely that you will be on your own for a period of time. Mark's going to get an alert on his phone, letting him know the big ones hit. So we're going to start activating fire strike teams and search from rescue teams from throughout the state. We're going to activate the National Guard early on. Then the president will declare a major disaster and then FEMA gets involved. Agencies will talk via radios and satellite phones, coordinate help, send resources, but it'll take time. It could be more than a day before outside help shows up. And if you're trapped in a building, time matters. People don't last more than 48 hours usually. If you had stuck a couple of bottles of water under your desk, you're going to be lasting a lot longer. You get a text from your wife. I can't get ahold of anyone at school and stuck in traffic for hours. What should I do? Your desperate to get to your family, but roads are backed up, trains are down. Walking home all the way to North Hollywood is your only choice. Up sunset boulevard through Silver Lake, then over the Santa Monica Mountains. It's about 15 miles. On a good day, this walk takes five hours. But today is not a good day. It's 12.30. You worry you won't get home before dark. Following an earthquake, a hot meal can help everyone feel better and calmer. It's not too early to start feeding people, but plan your meals carefully. Read the helpful information in the Survival Guide section near the front of your telephone directory. And stay tuned to this station for more information from the California Emergency Management Agency. It's hot. You're thirsty. You can still feel the dust in your throat. You notice a grocery store across the street. Cars fighting for spaces in the parking lot. There are more people here than you expected. You get closer and notice that the automatic doors are stuck on open. Stores dark. You head in. You're going to see a place that can't take credit cards. Because without electricity and internet, you can't verify the credit card. So you probably want to keep some cash on you. Because you never know when an earthquake can hit. And having 20, 40 dollars in your pocket means you can go buy that bottle of water. Two guys walk past you carrying tanks of propane. There's a couple of employees sitting by the door just staring at their phones trying to get service. A mom's pulling her crying kids through the bread aisle. There's more food on the floor than on the shelves. And it smells like spaghetti sauce, beer, and fish. Which way is the water? You ask a young woman who works there. It's in the back. It's left of it anyway. You walk down the aisle with every step, class, and cereal crunch beneath your feet. At the back of the store, you see a cooler. There's not much left. So you go to grab the last two bottles of water. You slip on a puddle of milk. You pick yourself up and you head to the register. Shit. Do I even have any cash? When we talk about looting, we're talking about breaking into locations and stealing things. Now mind you, we're in a different world. When this earthquake hits and it's of that type of magnitude, you have to look at the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Phil, Fontanetta, I'm a commander with the Los Angeles Police Department, and I've been with LAPD for a little over 38 years. If you see somebody walking down the street with a case of water, then that's a case of water. And it's just a, it's the sustainment of life. That's understandable. What breaks my heart is when I do see looders and they're stealing a TV and they're stealing not something that's going to sustain life. It's 90 degrees out. You haven't had food since 8. But you're really just going to walk out. Yes, yes you are. You grab a peanut butter protein bar, stick in your pocket, and leave. There's been a strong earthquake and stronger shaking as possible in our area. The police and fire departments are aware of the situation and are busy responding to the most serious problems first. Stay tuned to this station for more information from the California Emergency Management Agency. You didn't notice him before, but outside the grocery store, there's a guy sitting up against the wall. He's holding his shoulder. Hey, are you okay? He doesn't answer. He crouch down and ask him again. Do you need help? He groans. It's my arm, he says. You hear a siren and look up. Fire trucks pushing through traffic and you tell them to wait, you're going to go get help. You run over and wave your arms and scream, stop. They don't. People need to understand that they might be in danger, but somebody down the road might be in worst danger or there's a fire that if it's not put out, it could lead to more fires and damage a whole neighborhood. Captain John Ignatisick is with Los Angeles Fire Department. After the earthquake, he and other firefighters and police and sheriffs will all go into what they call earthquake mode, trying to triage the city. First, we'll check their own buildings and count for their own people. And then they do what's called a windshield survey. Driving through neighborhoods, documenting how bad things are so they can let headquarters know. But it probably means that you'll see police officers and firefighters, people who can help you just drive by and not stop. Should people rely, feel like they can rely on emergency services right after the quake hits. The recommendation is that people need to get prepared for a delay in response. The most important is going to be our critical patients, those that need immediate assistance, where their injuries are going to be hazard to their life or their health. That's the priority and in that scenario, we have over a thousand criticals. I believe that need to get to hospitals. Those are going to be the priority. We're going to have fires and conflagrations. We want to stop those and we want to transport the criticals to the hospitals. You walk back over. He's wearing a dodger shirt. Same one you almost sent your dad for his birthday. There's a hospital about a mile from here. You tell him. You reach out to help him up. Your phone vibrates. I've got Omar. He's fine. We're heading back home. Where are you? Okay. I'm walking home. I'm in Silver Lake. Be home as soon as I can. I love you. You just want to get home. You can't leave this guy. He keeps apologizing to you like the whole thing's his fault. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I was just at the bookstore and it was like someone was throwing books off the shelf at me and it was just so loud in there. How did you break your arm? Can't remember. He says, I'm sorry. The most available source of help for your family, friends and neighbors right now is you. If your area has damage, check in with the other people nearby. Your family, neighbors or coworkers. Use the first aid information in the front of the telephone book to treat any injuries. Small children and elders will need special attention and reassurance even if they seem okay. People with special needs may need a little extra help too and stay tuned to this station for more information from the California Emergency Management Agency. I'm Brienne Lee, Senior Producer for Community Engagement at LAS. It's our goal to take complicated issues and make them easier for you to understand, which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LAS Voter Game Plan is back. We're here to help you navigate your ballot with informed, accurate reporting on the candidates and issues. Participation in elections makes for our stronger community. Learn more. Visit leus.com/vote. I didn't know if my house was in shambles. I didn't know if my wife was buried under rubble. And there were no, you know, I couldn't get a cell signal. And so I just had to focus on what we were doing there and say, "Okay, well, we've got to do what we have to do here in the emergency department. And if there's a problem at home, I can't help with it now regardless." It's 4.30 in the morning and Dr. Greg Moran's doing some paperwork at his desk. He's wrapping up his overnight shift at the emergency department at Northridge Hospital. When all the sudden, the Northridge quake hits. I initially felt a little shake. So I just kind of reflexively stood up and got in the doorway that was right next to me, just a couple feet away from me. And as I, right as I got in the doorway, then a very violent shake happened. I mean, it felt like everything moved a couple of feet into one side very suddenly. And then there was a lot of noise and when that big shake happened, all of the lights went out. We lost our power. I really, I realized I was pretty helpless. There wasn't really anything I could do other than stand there and hope that the entire hospital building was not going to collapse on top of me. The shaking finally stops. The lights come back on and it's chaos. Computers are on the floor. Carts have tipped over. Water's pouring out of the ceiling and there's a thick cloud of dust in the air. The room that I had been sitting in, this very small doctor's office, was a couple of rooms away from the outside of the hospital. But the wall opened up. The wall of the room that I was sitting in split open by about six inches. And I could look through into the room next to it, which was the waiting room. And then through that entire room and there was another wall on the outside that had also cracked open. So I could see through two rooms to the outside of the building because the very hospital cracked, you know, the building itself cracked and split. Ran checks on his colleagues and luckily everyone's okay. They have no idea just how bad things are. There is an information blackout. At first we didn't know what the extent of it was. As it turned out, we were pretty much at the epicenter or very near the epicenter of the earthquake. It took a while before we even got any reliable information about what was going on. It wasn't until a little bit later as we started to seeing some police and first responders coming in that we got at least some second hand information about the extent of it. Where it was located, what was the extent of the devastation in the city. They know a bunch of people are going to show up at the hospital, but their emergency department is completely ruined. There's no way they're going to be able to treat people in there. So they had outside to work on people in the parking lot. And as we were setting it up, we already were seeing some of that initial wave of the walking wounded come in. I do remember it was dark. It was nighttime. I have this image in my head of almost a zombie apocalypse type scenario. Just seeing the people who were kind of injured and slowly lumbering out of the dark to come into the parking lot where we were assessing them. So then we basically just started to work. There were a few critical people that we saw coming in. I remember one of the very first patients that we saw was poor guy who worked in a donut shop and had gone in early to open up the donut shop. And as all the shaking happened, the hot oil for the donuts splashed him and he had pretty extensive bad burns over a good part of his body. And so he was one of the early ones that showed up. He was one of the sicker early ones that showed up. Most people aren't nearly as hurt as him. The most common injury marancies is people that need help getting glass out of their feet. And that was because the time this happened at 4.30 a.m. people are in bed. The shaking starts. They get thrown out of bed. They hear everything crashing and shaking. They kind of freak out. And what's their first instinct run outside and often they're running outside through broken around broken glass sliding doors, broken windows, things like that. There's stuff shattered. It's 4.30 in the morning. They're in bed. They're barefoot. And so they're running through their house and stepping on broken glass or stepping on broken glasses. They get outside. We spent a lot of time digging little pieces of glass out of the bottoms of people's feet. The hospital's overwhelmed, but Greg's totally focused. He's treating as many people as he can, but to his surprise, there are all these people showing up who aren't hurt. They're just freaking out. I remember there was this one relatively young guy and he'd had a prior spy injury. He was in a wheelchair from a prior spy injury. He was paraplegic. And he didn't have any injuries. There were no new injuries from the earthquake, but he was just freaking out. I mean, he just lost it. And remember what he was saying? He was just saying, "No, you need to take care of me. You need to help me. You need to. And I did an assessment of him. He had no physical injuries, but he was just basically screaming, carrying on at one point, or remember, he threw himself down on the floor out of his wheelchair. And it was just screaming that we needed to help him. And I didn't know what to do. I mean, other than give him some sedatives, which we did, and just try to put him back in his wheelchair. But one reason that one particularly stands out was that he was actually interfering with us taking care of other people who were injured. Was he okay? Once he was okay? Okay. When the big one hits hospitals across Southern California are going to be overwhelmed. There are going to be about 50,000 people that need help. Some hospitals themselves are going to be damaged. Some won't even be usable. The reality is, right now, in America, in emergency medicine, we sometimes struggle day-to-day just to keep up with the regular flow. If you've ever been to an emergency room, you know that it can take forever to get treated. When this happens, that weight's going to be even longer, especially if you're not that badly hurt. But even if you do have a serious injury. Well, do you feel like more people will die from serious injuries that could have been treated during a normal time versus when the big one hits, and hospitals are overwhelmed? Yes. But we expect that will happen. Yes. [music] You're standing across the street from the hospital and it's chaos. Doctors and nurses are running around outside. Lines of people waiting to be treated. You get another text from your wife. "Hey, the house is pretty bad. How far are you?" You tell the guy you can't stay with him, and this time you apologize. I know he says. I'll be fine. [music] [music] This is a special safety message from the California Emergency Management Agency. A strong earthquake has hit our area. Use a fire extinguisher to put out small fires. Never use water on electrical or gas fires. If the fire can't be controlled quickly, evacuate the building right away. Check for gas leaks. [music] You finally get to the top of Rengen Canyon and walk up Mohol and Drive. Cold. Down below, the city burns. Broken gas and power lines. Small fires grow, merging, turning into giant walls of flame. Black clouds of smoke rise high into the sky, backlit by the setting sun. The Hollywood sign is barely visible. It's what fire officials were worried about all along. When an earthquake happens, it tends to damage the fire protective characteristics of buildings. Right? We have fire-resistant walls, but then the earthquake cracks that wall and hot gases get through. Fire is spread more quickly because of that. Structural engineer, Keith Porter travels around the world to make sure that buildings are safe. Oh, and on top of that, also the water pipe in the ground that's supposed to bring water to the fire hydrant, it gets cracked up in an earthquake. Right? Because we had this old brittle pipe in the ground, decades and decades old. And even when the fire engine shows up, there's a good chance that in the strongly shaken area, there's no water coming out of the fire hydrant. Nothing to fight the fire with. The fires are about as destructive and deadly as the shaking. Are you worried about the big one? Yeah, I am. I mean, we live in this imperfect paradise and our blissful ignorance, usually, assuming it's not going to really be under our watch or it's not going to be tomorrow. tomorrow. The thought of these fires keeps LAs mayor up at night. Are you at all concerned about the long-term health of Los Angeles after the big quake? Yeah, I think the biggest, I mean, the short term thing that keeps me up to your earlier question is the fires that break out. The medium term is the lack of electricity or water and the long term is, would people stay? Would the city continue to be what it is if it's so catastrophic that people leave and never come back? This could be the most expensive natural disaster in US history, costing 200 billion in damage. An estimated 1,800 people will die. There won't be enough body bags for all of them. Los Angeles, we all know, will be gone. You want to get off the mountain so you run. Down, Mohol, and through the Lankersham tunnel of Pacific View Drive, is my family safe? You keep running. I don't know. I mean, I don't really feel like I have a lot of survival skills. I've been put in a lot of situations where it was like, survive or die, you know? And so, you don't feel super confident about my survival skills, but I know I would do whatever I needed to do, and I would do the best that I could do to make sure that he was safe and you were safe and that our family was safe. I'm Frank Stoltz, the civics and democracy reporter here at LASD. It's my job to make it easier for you to understand how to participate in the political process, like voting, which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LASD voter game plan is back. Learn more, visit LASD.com/vote. The stories you need from LASD's award-winning journalists, today on the LAS Report, in less than five minutes. Catch the morning edition with me before 8am. The afternoon edition at 1 with me, Nidita Moreno, and the evening edition at 6 with me Julia Paskin. Welcome back to the LA Report. The LA Report, now three times a day on weekdays. Subscribe wherever you get podcasts. And for the credits, we have a correction for episode one. The Christ Church earthquake that Ann Brower talks about happened on February 22nd, a Tuesday, not a Sunday. It's credit time and we've got a thousand people to talk about, including Misha Yusef, our lead producer, our one champion Nix, our executive producer, and the woman behind our sound design. Is that weird to say the woman behind our sound design? Great, okay. Mary Noth is our assistant producer, Megan Garvey, edited all this. Our music was composed and performed by Andy Klassen. The guys who have to listen to me do 300 different takes, our Sean Quarry Campbell and Valentina Rivera. Our artwork is by Stephanie Kraft. This episode was written and reported by Misha Yusef, our one Nix, and me, Jacob Argolyse. We got production reporting help for the big one from David Rodriguez. Our marketing hero is Alex Loughlin and thanks to James Kim for his incredible posture. And thanks to Rita Pardue for voicing all our emergency messages. If you want to know how to purify contaminated drinking water with bleach or what will happen to you if you drink a bunch of pool water, to spite all our warnings, you can check out our write up at kpcc.org/thebigone. I'm your host, Jacob Argolyse. Thanks for listening. Hey, Big One listener, I'm back. This episode's even scarier, so I'm here to help. I'm Misha Yusef in case you forgot my name. And I have three practical tips for you that are going to help you survive the big one. The first tip, get water. The recommendation is to get one gallon of water per person or animal per day. And that includes things like washing your hands or brushing your teeth. But that might be an overwhelming amount of water to get and figure out where to store in your house, especially if you live in an apartment. So what you can do is have a bottle of water everywhere you might be. So at your desk, at work, in your car, in your purse, and at least some at home. When we talked to Lucy Jones and asked her how much water we should have, she said, "How ever much water you have, get more." Here's tip number two. Get a first aid kit or at the very least, get some gauze, get some burn cream, and get some band aids. Hospitals are going to be super overwhelmed. And the injury that people saw most after Northridge was people with glass in their feet. So you want to put yourself in a position where you can take care of that yourself. Last one. Tip number three, get a radio. And I'm not just saying that because I work at a radio station. When the big one hits, you're not going to be able to get on Facebook, internet's going to be down. You might not even be able to call people. So where are you going to get information? Handcrank radio. Or your car radio. Just a radio people. [Music] I'm Frank Stoltz, the civics and democracy reporter here at LAest. It's my job to make it easier for you to understand how to participate in the political process, like voting, which is why I'm pleased to tell you the LAest voter game plan is back. Learn more, visit laest.com/vote.