25 years after the Northridge earthquake, what will it take to prepare for the next big one? A smaller one, experts say

Tucked in the back of a parking lot near Van Nuys Airport, Jeff Edelstein has run a survival equipment store for the last 30 years. And in that time, he’s learned a few things about being ready for a disaster.

He’s noticed a familiar pattern: After big disasters, selling emergency kits is easy.

As several large fires menaced Los Angeles and Ventura counties over the last two years — first the Thomas and Creek fires in late 2017 and the Woolsey fire that ended last November — sales picked up at his S.O.S. Survival Products, where he specializes in emergency supplies and hardware.

He’s expecting another bump in sales this week, coinciding with the 25th year anniversary of the Northridge earthquake on Thursday.

But after that, he’ll have to go back to getting the word out through preparedness classes and outreach events that another devastating earthquake is inevitable.

“Anybody can sell emergency supplies after a disaster,” Edelstein said. “It’s selling emergency supplies before a disaster that’s hard.”

Most Californians remain unprepared for an earthquake the size of the one that struck Northridge in 1994. The 6.7-magnitude quake was one of the most destructive natural disasters in U.S. history, with 57 killed, thousands wounded and as much as $44 billion in damages.

According to a 2008 survey by UCLA’s School of Public Health, a majority of the state’s residents understand how to be safe during an earthquake. But less than half have made a disaster plan with their families, or have at least three gallons of water stored in case of an emergency. And less than 35 percent know how to make their homes safer in the event of an earthquake.

Margaret Vinci, who runs Caltech’s Earthquake Research Affiliates Program, helped create the Great California Shakeout, the biggest earthquake drill in the U.S., more than 10 years ago.

Still, it can be frustrating to find Californians who still don’t understand how to prepare for an earthquake, she said.

“There are a high percentage of people who have the attitude that it’s not going to happen to me and I’m not going to worry about it,” Vinci said. “It’s sometimes like hitting your head against a brick wall. But you keep trying.”

Last Wednesday, a few customers picked through items like flashlights and survival rope at Edelstein’s store.

He said he expected the earthquake anniversary to bring a trickle of familiar faces to his Van Nuys location.

His regulars already show up about once a quarter to restock food and water supplies. But others who haven’t been back for a while — a few years at least — could show up looking to replace their expired emergency kits.

But a few may come to his door with emergency kits decades old, bought in the months after the 1994 quake rattled the area.

“Only the smallest number of people are planning ahead,” Edelstein said. “Most people are reactionary.”

Getting prepared

Still, any amount of preparation, even if its spurred by current events, is a good thing, local preparedness experts said. But the pattern also highlights their constant battle to get people to disobey human nature and plan now for a future quake.

Scott Ferguson needs no convincing to be prepared for a disaster. For years he has focused on making sure he has enough water at his home in the Topanga Canyon area to last for several weeks.

He stores hundreds of gallons of water in tanks on his property. His hot tub, which he cleans with hydrogen peroxide instead of toxic chlorine, could provide hundreds of gallons of water in a pinch. He also rigged up an industrial filtration system that flows into a 75-gallon tank under his home for yet another water source.

“You can pour pond water in those things or water from the gutter, and it’ll filter it into drinking water,” he said.

Ferguson is the chairman of the Topanga Coalition for Emergency Preparedness. He helped author the nonprofit organization’s extensive survival guide for residents. He’s also been a firsthand witness to the frequent mudslides that strike the area, and November’s massive Woolsey fire.

The Woolsey fire line came within about two miles of Topanga Canyon, but most of the area was spared. Ferguson said he saw some encouraging signs from the community’s response to the disaster — by his own estimate, about three-quarters of the canyon’s residents heeded evacuation orders when they were called. And he found more people were signing up for alerts from TCEP’s social media feeds to get information as quickly as possible.

The increasingly year-round threat of wildfires might be making more Californians aware of the supplies they need in an disaster — sales of emergency supplies over the last two years have been brisk as a direct result of wildfires near the Los Angeles area, Edelstein said. But it’s not clear that fear of wildfires is making locals any more prepared for the specific threats communities face from earthquakes.

“With an earthquake, it’s just everywhere all at once,” said Dino Schofield, a longtime Valley resident.

Schofield was standing outside a classroom at the Sherman Oaks East Valley Adult Center last Wednesday. He and about two dozen other students were about to take their first class as Community Emergency Response Team members.

The Los Angeles Fired Department has run the program, which trains any interested citizen in basic first aid, small fire suppression and evacuation tactics, since 1985. The only requirement is being “in good health and with a sense of community,” according to the department’s website.

Schofield said he’s already well known among his circle of family, friends and church community as somebody who plans ahead. His experiences during the Northridge quake — he watched from his car as Valley buildings burned and helped a few panicked people he found along the way — conditioned him to be ready for the next big one.

Schofield said he keeps an “earthquake route” in his head of all the people he will visit in the immediate aftermath of a disaster, driving to them to check if they need transportation, supplies or medical help.

He’s made sure his friends and family are well aware of who he’ll be visiting when that happens — Schofield said a friend “told her daughter if she was getting an apartment, it had to be on my earthquake route.”

Millions of residents who end up trapped or without supplies during the inevitable next big quake may have to relying on Community Emergency Response Team members like Schofield to help them organize their response.

The instructor that night, LA city firefighter Mitch McKnight, said in about 15 years teaching the course, he’s trained at least 10,000 students. If an earthquake were to hit soon, there’d be a few hundred active CERT members to help in the initial response, he said.

In the meantime, the most reliable way of getting people to prepare remains earthquake news or a local temblor big enough to rattle nerves.

“We’ve gone years without having a big one — that really gets people to relax and forget,” Ferguson said. “They don’t understand how chaotic and bad it’ll be, and for how long that will happen. How much they’ll have to rely on their neighborhoods and communities. I don’t think they’ve thought that out.”