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The Paly Voice

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City tests emergency procedures in disaster drill

In a Palo Alto city-wide disaster drill Tuesday, the Palo Alto Police Department, Fire Department, and Red Cross responded to a feigned 7.3 earthquake.
As part of the simulation, the art building at Palo Alto High School was reported to have collapsed, leaving 100 injured, 11 in critical condition, and six dead. Authorities hoped to test the effectiveness of the city disaster plan under the fabricated conditions.

“We hope to strengthen the weak spots of our system,” said Public Communications Manager Mary Hanna.

In response to the building’s reported collapse, 18 firefighters, 12 police officers, six Red Cross volunteers, four fire engines, and one ambulance were mobilized to Paly’s campus. According to Alice Mansell, a Red-Cross volunteer, a Civil Air Patrol aircraft flew over Paly, assessing the damage from above. The aircraft, a Cessna 182, took digital pictures and transmitted them down to the base office using radio signals.

“Digital pictures are useful,” Mansell said. “You can see cracks and patterns on buildings that aren’t visible otherwise.”

At Paly, firefighters from the PAFD performed search, rescue, and triage. Triage is the procedure firefighters use to classify victims into four different categories so as to prioritize treatment. According to Fire Chief Nick Marinaro, the “walking wounded” are individuals who sustained minor injuries but are able to walk, the “delayed” are those who are demobilized but are not under life threatening conditions, the “immediate” are those needing immediate care, and the “deceased” are the those who did not survive.

On a gravity of injury basis, victims would be transported to the Stanford Hospital. In the case of a disaster of this magnitude, the city has also arranged contingency plans with Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Redwood City and the Veterans’ Affairs Hospital in Palo Alto.

“At the fire department, the concern is life, then property and the environment,” said Don Ioquiao, a Palo Alto acting deputy chief.

In addition to the search and rescue aspect of the drill, the city reviewed procedures for alerting the Palo Alto community of news and developments pertaining to disasters. In the past, in the event of an incident, all phone numbers of businesses, institutions, and homes in an affected area would be called using an automated phone mechanism, fittingly named “Teleminder.” The issue, however, lay in the timeliness of communicating through such a system, which due to the sheer number of calls to be made, often proved to be a bearer of old news.

According to Palo Alto Police Chief Lynne Johnson, in future, the Teleminder system will be used only when dealing with minor, contained incidents. The city is currently compiling a new calling list, which will reduce the number of excessive phone numbers, like all of those in a household or business. The city will also depend on KZSU 90.1 FM and channel 27 on cable TV to broadcast news, in hope that people will remain calm and make caring for themselves and others their first priority in case of a disaster.

“Our advice is to stay home,” Palo Alto Mayor Jim Burch said at a press conference at Palo Alto’s City Hall after the drill at Paly was completed. “The most important thing you can do is take care of yourself and help family and neighbors.”

Despite the drill and the city’s work to improve safety measures, concerns regarding the logistics of coping with a disaster remain. Due to Palo Alto’s high housing costs, 24% of police officers live 20 or more miles from the city.

“It [the distance police officers must travel to Palo Alto] is a big issue, but we haven’t done anything because of housing costs,” Johnson said.

The city held a full-city debriefing meeting at Cubberley Auditorium, and Paly administration has planned a debriefing meeting tomorrow at 1 p.m.

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