Features

Berkeley Briefs

By JAKOB SCHILLER
Tuesday October 21, 2003

Emergency Supply Expostion 

Berkeley’s Office of Emergency services along with the Berkeley Fire Department and Disaster Resistant Berkeley are hosting the Emergency Supply Exposition this Saturday, where tenants along with home- and business-owners can learn about life-saving disaster reduction techniques and purchase or order emergency supplies. 

Berkeley residents who remember the Loma Prieta earthquake and the Berkeley-Oakland Hills fire might also know that the city continues to face other natural disasters, including the threat posed by the North Hayward Fault directly beneath the city. 

Disaster Resistant Berkeley program coordinator Carol Lopes said that prevention and preparedness programs like the one this Saturday will help the city develop the most comprehensive safety plan for residents and help individuals make plans that will allow them to be self-sufficient for five to seven days in the event of major disaster. 

This, she says, will help the city ensure that its infrastructure is back up and running as quickly as possible. 

At Saturday’s event residents can attend demonstrations of medical, fire suppression and search and rescue equipment by the Berkeley Fire Department and a question and answer session about wood frame housing with Jim Gillett, a licensed building contractor and instructor in earthquake retrofitting at the Building Education Center. 

The event takes place at the Truit and White Lumber Company Showrooms at 642 Hearst St. from 1 to 4 p.m. For more information, contact Carol Lopes at 981-5514 or clopes@ci.berkeley.ca.us. 

 

Earthquakes Rattle East Bay 

Sunday sleepers might not have felt them, but the East Bay had two minor earthquakes Sunday morning, the first registering a 3.5 and the second a 1.9, followed by another registering 3.4 on Monday. 

Sunday’s first temblor came at 8:32 a.m. with it’s epicenter 4 km from Lafayette and 4km from Orinda. The second came at 11:31 a.m. and was located at the relatively same position as the first. Monday’s shake happened around 10:50 a.m. 

According to Dr. Robert Uhrhammer, a research seismologist with the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, these three quakes were actually part of what is called a swarm of tremors, with hundreds of small earthquakes happening throughout both days, most under magnitude 2—the threshold for feeling them. 

The swarm he says, “Is like someone turned them on and then will turn them off.” 

The earthquakes are occurring along the Pinole Fault, which Uhrhammer says is mostly under the San Pablo Bay. 

No damage was reported from the quakes and Uhrhammer says that typically no type of significant damage occurs until the quakes get above magnitude 4.