California Earthquake Clearinghouse. After Action Report: March 28, 2014, M 5.1 La Habra Earthquake Clearinghouse Activation

Transcription

1 California Earthquake Clearinghouse After Action Report: March 28, 2014, M 5.1 La Habra Earthquake Clearinghouse Activation

2 Notification received at 9:11 p.m. via text from USGS Earthquake Notification Service of M 5.3 earthquake 1 km south of La Habra in southern California. The initial report magnitude was subsequently revised down to M 5.1. Confirmed report on USGS website. USGS Pager Alert Level Yellow. Selected Cities exposed MMI City VII Brea 39k VII VI La Habra Heights 5k Rowland Heights 49k VI La Habra 60k VI Fullerton 135k VI Placentia 51k VI Anaheim 336k V Santa Ana 325k IV Riverside 304k IV Long Beach 462k Population IV Los Angeles 3,793k Shortly after ENS received, Clearinghouse management committee notified, via text, of earthquake, and subsequent conference call scheduled for 10:00 p.m. Representatives of all Clearinghouse managing organizations called in. Reports of scattered minor damage, water main breaks, rock slide in Carbon Canyon, discussed. Clearinghouse management decided to treat earthquake as a training opportunity and initiated a low-level activation, consisting of a virtual Clearinghouse only. Clearinghouse management scheduled a follow-up conference call for 8:00 a.m. pacific, March 29, Media reported numerous small aftershocks and evacuations at a few buildings in the Fullerton area. Scattered reports of broken glass, inventory falling from store shelves, but no reports of major damage or injury. Clearinghouse management decided to maintain low-level activation through 8:00 a.m. March 30. If necessary, Clearinghouse activation could be extended. SpotOnResponse (SOR) notified of activation 7:00 a.m. eastern, 3/29, and mobile app made accessible to report earthquake related observations. Instructions for using SOR published on Clearinghouse website and in-app. New Clearinghouse volunteers required to create new SOR account, but Clearinghouse members who registered and participated in the October 2013 Clearinghouse ShakeOut exercise were able to log in using existing account. SOR map with updates viewable on the Clearinghouse website. A total of 31 incident reports, 5 with media attached, were posted to SOR. Clearinghouse also notified Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) of low-level Clearinghouse activation; SCEC sent notification of Clearinghouse activation to all SCEC members.

3 EERI managed the Clearinghouse website. Numerous updates, including initial notification of low-level activation, links and how to information for viewing the SpotOnMap from the Clearinghouse web site and using SOR, and, also sent out notification of low-level activation to Clearinghouse members. EERI notified its 1, 065 members in California of the Clearinghouse activation and encouraged members in the affected area to contribute observations through SpotOnResponse, the event forum on the clearinghouse website, and through social media. EERI also posted this information on its homepage and facebook and twitter pages. Given the size and level of damage of this earthquake, EERI did not send a reconnaissance team to the affected area. RECOMMENDATIONS CGS geologist Brian Olson conducted preliminary reconnaissance in the affected area after the earthquake. CGS is in the process of determining what sort of information would be useful for geologists to take to the field with them. Recommendation: CGS Hazard Zone maps and other geologic data relevant to earthquake response should be prepared in formats for use on mobile devices for event response. In addition, CGS should investigate tools and technologies that will make these CGS products easily accessible to field personnel. Duplicate incident reports posted to SOR. Some Clearinghouse members using SOR posted duplicate incidents because they clicked on the submit button more than once. To correct the situation, an announcement was posted in SOR advising members to wait a few seconds to receive confirmation from SOR that incident report submission was successful. In addition, the site administrator deleted all duplicate reports. Recommendation: In future, Clearinghouse notification to members advising them of activation should include the SOR User s Guide. Descriptive icons only defined for a few different incidents e.g. rockfall. Recommendation: The Clearinghouse should define a set list of icons to SOR to be assigned to specific incidents to provide more informative overview of detail on SOR map. In addition, consider rightsizing or scaling the symbols as appropriate to improve the GUI Some people had problems logging in to SOR and there were comments that it was confusing trying to figure out which username/password and project code to use to log in. The reason the tool is set up this way is because the Clearinghouse SOR core has not had a permanent home. When not in exercise or activation mode, SOR is not connected to a core. In the event of an actual earthquake, the SOR team has to connect our Clearinghouse SOR to a live core, create a project code and users have to be authenticated i.e. must create a new login/pw and the Clearinghouse provides a valid user code. Recommendation: The Clearinghouse should continue working very closely with our partners at OES. They are now taking over the lead on the technology interoperability project and UICDS core implementation. As the lead for emergency response in CA, OES is implementing a UICDS core, with the intention that all OES partners, including Clearinghouse, will be able to use it. This means that our Clearinghouse SOR UICDS core will have a permanent home and thus, Clearinghouse members will create a username/password once. When the Clearinghouse is activated, there will only be one UICDS incident and all will have access to it. The process becomes greatly simplified.

4 Accessing Clearinghouse Fieldnotes tool: SOR enables Clearinghouse FieldNotes field data collection forms to get saved to USGS BayQuakeAlliance.org site, however, it is USGS that then pushes the data to UICDS, where it becomes an Observation and SOR reads it. No data received from USGS for Clearinghouse FieldNotes. Recommendation: Clearinghouse coordinates with USGS on how Clearinghouse FieldNotes data will be shared to SOR. USGS ShakeMap included as layer viewable in SpotOnResponse but USGS publishes the Shakemap in the same KML feed as all the other sensors (See Figure 6). Recommendation: Clearinghouse contact USGS to see if possible have a ShakeMap as separate KML from other sensor data e.g. focal mechanism.

5 Figure 1. Clearinghouse website with activation notification Figure 2. SpotOnResponse map on Clearinghouse website

6 Figure 3. Clearinghouse SpotOnResponse mobile field data collection tool main map showing Clearinghouse team members and detail for Carbon Canyon slide incident Figure 4. Clearinghouse SpotOnResponse mobile field data collection tool partial list of reported incidents.

7 Figure 5. Clearinghouse SpotOnResponse mobile field data collection tool main map showing CVS pharmacy incident detail Figure 6. USGS ShakeMap with all USGS sensor data