The Great ShakeOut 2011 Drill

On Thursday, October 20th at 10:20 a.m. the South Bay experienced a major earthquake. As a result the Ladera Linda Homeowners Association (LLHOA) self-activated their emergency planning group by setting up an Incident Command Post (ICP) and activating the neighborhood block Captains.

In summary the LLHOA took a significant step forward this year, the fourth year of Ladera Linda’s participation in the Great ShakeOut exercise. Our principal goals were:

1) Bring up our internal neighborhood network consisting of 10 Block Captains equipped with HOA-supplied FRS radios for the roughly 180 single family residences.

2) Communicate from the Block Captains to an Incident Command Post (ICP) set up near a major intersection and staffed with an Incident Commander; an internal Network Control; a Scribe; and a member of the Peninsula Volunteer Alert Network (PVAN).

3) Establish a single link between our Ladera Linda PVAN radio amateur operator and the City of Rancho Palos Verdes where PVAN operators manned its Emergency Communications Center and passed information to the city’s Emergency Operations Center.

4) Have the Block Captains conduct a house-to-house census of the number of houses with people at home, the number away, and the number displaying the OK side of the provided OK/HELP signs.

5) Test the responsiveness of the internal network to simulated emergency situations by providing each Block Captain with a card giving an injury/damage report to be reported to the ICP. On receiving the report the IC is to pulse the network to find out where there are people with medical skills at home who could be sent to assist the injured.

To summarize the results and the lessons learned:

1) We had excellent response from our Block Captain network, with 9 of the 10 participating.

2) Thanks to a number of training sessions in the past few months the internal network operated in a much more effective manner than in previous efforts, and the information was passed to Network Control and the IC with very little difficulty or need for repetition.

3) The PVAN link between Ladera Linda and the City of Rancho Palos Verdes was established and maintained without incidence.

4) The census results were that there was at least one person at home in 55% of the houses surveyed. This is relatively consistent with the demographics of the neighborhood, which has a large number of older, retired residents and a growing population of younger, working families away at work or school.

5) The injury/damage reports were radioed to the ICP as planned, who then requested inputs from any Block Captain who knew of a medically skilled person at home in their block. That was as far as the interaction got, but it perhaps suggests a more realistic exercise next time, with actual “victims” in place and those with medical skills contacted and asked to respond.

Finally, please thank all of those who participated today. We hope they all went away feeling we are making progress towards being able to help each other in surviving an emergency that we also hope will not happen.

Communications
The City of Rancho Palos Verdes activated the City’s Emergency Operating Center (EOC) and Emergency Communications Center (ECC) as part of the Shakeout Drill. Twenty eight PVAN operators throughout the City participated in the Drill along with City staff that manned the EOC throughout the Test.

Test messages were sent from the field PVAN operators to the ECC and entered into the City’s automated Incident Reporting System and displayed in the EOC.

A test message was also sent to the ECC from the LLHOA ICP. Major Incidents were plotted on the EOC display map.

The EOC received inputs from various sources and was in direct communications with the Lomita Sheriffs and fire department through the ECC. Test messages were sent to and from the ECC and the Lomita Sheriffs during the test.

The test drill was considered a success with many lessons learned.