Are We Ready?

Depends on who you ask. There is this article that opens with the scare numbers for what happened in a simulation of The Big One hitting Los Angeles. The rest of the article mostly suggests that, again, FEMA isn't really ready to deal with this type of disaster before or after it happens. Locally, though, politicians are at least aware of the problems and are actually doing something about it. LAist hasn't seen an earthquake/disaster preparedness site for our city yet but San Francisco has a very cool one called 72 Hours. The goal of the site is to get you prepared for surviving the quake and works for us down here just as well as it does up there.

The Economist is the most optimistic, noting our familiarity with dealing with disaster and the local work done since the Northridge quake to protect our buildings. That said, they hit us with the scariest numbers of all. The Southern California Earthquake Center puts a 7.0 or higher quake as a 70-90% certainty in the next 20 years.

Maybe we'll need a more serious kit.