Preparing to Shelter in Place

It is important to prepare yourself and your loved ones for evacuation, but it is also imperative that you prepare to shelter in place, should the need arise. Sometimes flooding, damage from earthquakes or other destructive forces, or otherwise unsafe conditions may encourage the community to shelter in place, rather than to evacuate the area. In the event of hazardous weather or liquefaction or other changes to the ground during or after an earthquake, city services and transportation routes may be impacted, making it difficult to evacuate and tricky to find shelter in town.

Here are some ways you can prepare to shelter in place if your home is safe to occupy, even if it does not have power or running water.

Stored Water

Retain 1 gallon of water per person in the household, per day. ½ of the gallon is for drinking, ¼ is for cooking, and ¼ is for washing. This means to store enough water for an entire year, each adult will need 360 gallons stored for them. Luckily, the city will not take a year to restore necessary services like running water, so prepare for about 2 weeks of time - 14 gallons per adult in the home. Add additional water to accommodate animals and children.

One way to do this is to always have containers of water in the home that are used day to day and refilled as needed. These containers can be filled with tap water, and does not need to be purchased from a filtration service.

Canned Food

Canned food is good to have on hand in an emergency, particularly and extended one. Canned food can be kept for longer, and some canned food is pre-cooked and can be safely consumed without heating. Canned food is also much tastier than emergency rations. As with stored water, canned food can be used in the home and replenished. Be sure to retain enough food, canned or otherwise, for any animals in the home. Other shelf-stable foods such as grains, beans, lentils can be stored for extended periods without needing to be replaced and can be prepared to eat in the event of an emergency. To heat food without power, consider getting a camping stove if your household does not already own one.

Plan to hold enough food to feed the household without replenishment for two weeks. Services will likely be restored before then, but depending on the scope of the disaster, supply may not be as available as before an emergency.

Other Household Items

A few other items to consider keeping on-hand in the event of a need for sheltering in place, with or without city services.

• Batteries and battery banks for cell phones
• Flashlights, candles and matches
• Portable radio - tune to 1350AM (English), 89.1FM (English/Spanish), 98.7FM (Spanish), 100.1FM (English), 100.9FM (Spanish), 103.5FM (English) for updates during an emergency
• Toilet paper, disposable hand-wipes
• Bleach, plastic gloves, updated first aid kit

Sheltering in place may be necessary during a period with or without power and running water. The most likely hazard to induce that amount of damage to the City is an Earthquake.

Earthquakes

Santa Rosa has faced wildfires and flooding in recent years, but like all cities in California the threat of earthquake looms ever over us. Many small quakes happen around us daily - especially around the Geysers in Lake County which are induced by the withdrawal of steam to produce electric power. Quakes like these are not the result of the earths crust shifting around, but the same cannot be said for quakes that erupt over fault lines.

A fault line is a place where the crust of the Earth is fractured, and the pieces can slip and slide against each other. Some of these faults are small, but the San Andreas Fault in California is hundreds of miles long and is visible from space. The San Andreas Fault represents the place where two large portions of the earth's crust are sliding past one another. The Pacific Plate - home to California's glittering coastline, most of the state's population, and most of the Pacific Ocean - is moving northwest at about 3 inches per year, while the North American Plate - home to North and Central America, Greenland, and a large portion of the Atlantic Ocean - is moving southward at about 1 inch per year. This slow march builds up energy beneath the two crusts, which is released periodically in the form of earthquakes.

The San Andreas Fault may be large, but it is not lonely. There are hundreds of faults in California. The faults closest to Santa Rosa predicted to pack the greatest punch other than San Andreas are the Rogers Creek Fault and the Hayward Fault. Energy released from these faults can be catastrophic to the built environment within and around the City of Santa Rosa, potentially impacting water, transportation, and power in large portions of the City for an extended period. And, because predicting earthquakes is difficult to do, preparing for them is the best way to remain resilient.

We thank you for your continued participation in preparing for disasters and helping to make Santa Rosa a resilient city.

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