The fact that the last big earthquake in Los Angeles occurred 32 years ago centered in Northridge, along with a new study saying tectonic stress on major faults in north LA County is highest in 1,000 years, prompted the Board of Supervisors develop plans for responding to a major earthquake that may come sooner, rather than later.
During a presentation at the Board meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 29, several departments shared how they were preparing for “the big one,” what they’ve done to prevent damage from a major quake, and how the county’s 10 million residents can do their own part.
Fifth District Supervisor Kathryn Barger, who felt what it was like to experience a 7.0 magnitude quake via an earthquake simulator in Grand Park before the meeting, ordered county departments to polish off their preparedness plans, kickstart new programs and add more awareness to living in “hazard county,” the way a new, animated public service announcement describes L.A. County.
“It is a powerful reminder we live in an earthquake-prone region,” Barger said of the simulator. “So, pro-active planning is essential. Because it is not if another earthquake will strike, it is when.”
Barger also proposed a motion for Oct. 20 that asks LA County Fire Department, LA County Sheriff’s Department and the county’s Office of Emergency Management to find local, state and federal funding streams to put flesh on the bones of county plans, including the expansion of Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training and deployment so citizens could be prepared. The motion also calls for an annual earthquake exercise for the county in addition to the Great Shakeout, which is on Oct. 15.
“We need to educate and empower people so they know what to do,” Barger said. Resident can register for the Shakeout by going to ShakeOut.org.
The county, led by OEM, laid out emergency preparedness activities to prepare and respond to a 7.0 magnitude earthquake striking L.A. County. Such a large quake would cripple several systems, including transportation, communications, utilities and damage buildings.
Several speakers used experiences from the January fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena and eastern Pasadena to contemplate an earthquake response plan. OEM had received criticisms from a review of the fires that criticized the county’s alerts and evacuations of residents. The report found a “series of weaknesses” that hindered the county’s emergency-alert system in sending timely notifications to residents and also hindered efforts to evacuate trapped residents during the January wildfires.
In short, the review said OEM was seriously understaffed with just 37 employees, which amounts to 1 staffer for every 256,000 people in a county of 10 million people. In comparison, New York City’s emergency response department has 1 staffer for every 42,000 people. So the county added 44 positions to OEM. Also, the 2026-2027 fiscal year budget includes about $77 million additional dollars for emergency responses.
The Eaton fire in Altadena, killed 19 people, while destroying 9,400 structures and damaging 1,000 others, impacting 23,000 residents. The Palisades fire resulted in 12 civilian deaths, destroying 6,837 structures. Some in Altadena where the Eaton fire destroyed a large portion of the town said they never got an alert or even saw a single firetruck.
The OEM messaging on disaster preparedness encourages the county’s 10 million residents to become ready for a mega earthquake by purchasing or obtaining earthquake kits and drawing up evacuation routes. A PSA from Countywide Communications Department explains steps residents can take to get ready.
The county’s plan includes creating a one-stop, “Know Your Risk” portal acquainting residents and businesses with information, preparedness tools and ways to look up earthquake and other hazards by inputting one’s address. The portal is on the county’s earthquake webpage, https://ready.lacounty.gov/earthquakes.
It asks the county departments to take a look inward, to see if there are “any existing gaps that must be addressed.” It basically asks the question: Can the county provide services to residents, repair infrastructure such as ruptured roads and water lines, etc., right after a mega quake strikes?
The motion by Barger was prompted by a recent study from scientists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa that says tectonic stress on portions of the San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems near the Cajon Pass has reached its highest level in at least 1,000 years.
Also, the long period of more than three decades between big quakes also raises concerns, according to Barger.
The last major earthquake to damage L.A. County and the city of Los Angeles was the 6.7-magnitude Jan. 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake. That quake, the costliest in U.S. history, killed 72 people, including those from heart attacks, with about 9,000 people injured. The quake buckled freeways and left billions of dollars in damage to homes, apartment buildings, businesses, hospitals, parks, roadways and utilities. One estimate placed the damage at $20 billion to $40 billion, which is equivalent to $80 billion today.
However, Barger cautioned that researchers emphasize these findings do not indicate a major earthquake is imminent. But she added that accumulated seismic energy often gets released via a large earthquake.
But seismology expert Lucy Jones, who just formed a new Center for Disaster Resilience at Caltech in Pasadena, didn’t lend much credence to a large earthquake on the San Andreas Fault or any fault in LA County being more imminent.
“Yes, it has been longer since the last earthquake (Northridge). But the time of the last earthquake doesn’t change the probability of having it happen now,” said Jones. However, she did say that there have been no large quakes in L.A. County since then, since any of the larger ones were in the desert. “The last 30 years since Northridge has been particularly quiet,” Jones said.
Instead, Jones talked about risks coming from fragile buildings and said one of the best things the county and state have done is retrofit buildings, including apartment buildings, for earthquake retrofitting.
According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Los Angeles County has the highest disaster risk index (100) in the country. Other counties with risks indexes close to that include: Riverside 99.9; Maricopa, AZ 99.87; San Bernardino 99.84; Orange 99.81; Santa Clara 99.75; Miami-Dade 99.62. All counties in Southern California were given a very low resilience score, the county reported.
All the county dams, reservoirs, channels and bridges are routinely inspected and improvements have been made to bridges since the Northridge quake, the county reported. Also, all the dams in the county have been retrofitted within the past 10 years, said Mark Pestrella, director of county Public Works.
Pestrella said there are 1,700 soft-story buildings in county areas that he is putting in a report to the Board as being vulnerable to a large earthquake. These are are multi-story, wood-framed buildings where the ground floor doesn’t have enough bracing or solid walls. Pasadena passed a mandatory soft-story building retrofit ordinance in 2019. In the 1989 La Prieta quake and the Northridge quake, soft-story buildings accounted for significant loss of life and tremendous property damage.
“I want to reduce risks before the earthquake, by protecting life with stronger building standards,” Pestrella told the Board.
L.A. County Fire Department will play a key role in any major earthquake response.
“I would like to point out that fire following an earthquake doubles the losses,” Jones said.
Because fires, often from leaking gas lines that are not turned off by homeowners, are often a major problem, L.A. County Fire will rely on mutual aide during an earthquake to “augment our forces,” said Nick Duvally, deputy fire chief. But he said fire crews from northern California or other states will have a hard time reaching the fires due to damaged roads.
Jones said she’s working on bringing together large companies, faith communities, schools and other community resources to train individuals about checking on their neighbors during an earthquake. It could take several days before a first responder reaches one’s home or neighborhood.
She said having a plan, stocking food and water, batteries, a flashlight and maybe a solar phone charger are some of the things people can do now. But just having a plan, or having county websites with data often is not enough.
“We produce all these great plans but often in such a way that no one knows how to use it,” Jones said.
“What will happen in our biggest earthquake will overwhelm us, and the best thing we can do is to partner, now,” Jones said. “Research from Hurricane Katrina showed that the communities that came back are the ones that had the highest amount of social capital.”