Disaster Planning and Penguins

I’ve been writing for the past few weeks about two big public buildings I like, our local hospital and the Monterey Bay Aquarium, where I volunteer once a week.   Every October at the Aquarium we have practice evacuation drills and go over where all the emergency exits are and what our job is in case of a fire, earthquake, tsunami, chemical spill or active shooter.  Some thoughts about disasters and getting out safely…….

Big public buildings have many different rooms and floors and corridors and doors.  Also many different people, and not just staff, but visitors, many of whom are there for the first time. 

If you add in a hurricane with lots of wind and rain, or an earthquake with lots of things falling down, or a fire inside or outside, and then take away electricity and elevators, you have many, many problems.

Just ask the people of New Orleans, who ten years ago this fall suffered the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.  Or residents across the western US experiencing this summer and fall a horrific fire season.  Or the folks of Mexico blasted this week by the worst recorded hurricane in history.  A big wet El Nino season is predicted for the California coast this winter.  (And we wonder if the climate is really changing?)

Here in California October is Disaster Preparedness month, because it’s the anniversary of the big Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989.  It was also in October, 1991, that a huge firestorm destroyed 300 homes and killed 25 people in the Oakland Hills.  So we’re having lots of news stories and “where were you?” accounts and reminders to stockpile food and water and fuel and have a disaster plan.

Not being myself a very good planner, and prone to denial, it is a challenge to get organized to buy those extra canned goods and clean out the culverts on my dirt road in anticipation of record rainfall this winter.  Maybe I’m writing about disaster planning this week to get myself motivated.

At the Aquarium, with our 2 million visitors every year and our complicated building (a former sardine cannery, much modified, hanging out over the bay), the security staff teaches us 1000 volunteers every October where all the exits are, how to try to convince guests to evacuate and where to gather afterwards.

They gave us a handy little booklet to carry in our volunteer guide jacket about what to do in an emergency; different situations each have their own tab: earthquake, fire, hurricane, chemical spill, active shooter.  (Aquariums in other nations probably don’t have to include that last tab.  The advice actually is to run, and if you can’t run then hide, and if you can’t hide then you’re supposed to “fight, using any resources available.”  They told us shooters are scared and can be taken down.  I think I’d be the most scared person in the room….)

Mercifully they don’t ask us to help evacuate the animals at the Aquarium - that’s the job of the staff.  But we have some experience there, from the receiving end. 

Ten years ago, when the New Orleans Aquarium was hit by Hurricane Katrina, with power our for days and severe flooding the building and its animals were devastated.  All 10,000 fish died from loss of oxygen pumped into the water.  But the brave staff was able to save the sea otters and the penguins, that is, from immediate death.  All they needed, while mopping up and rebuilding, was a temporary home for them.  Enter their friends at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, who did the usual thing that concerned friends and colleagues do– call up and say, “So sorry for your loss. Anything we can do to help?” 

Betty WhiteWell yes, actually there is.  Could you provide a temporary home to 20 penguins and 5 otters?  OK, said the Aquarium.  But how to get them 2000 miles from Louisiana to California?  And do it right away – we won’t have power for weeks.  Enter Betty White, fantastic TV star and feisty old lady and animal lover and Monterey area resident.  The Aquarium called her up, she wrote a check for $80,000, and a chartered, refrigerate plane brought the refugee animals to our place for almost a year, until they could go back home.

Guests loved this story, but wondered if “our” penguins might be feeling a little crowded with these new refugees in the exhibit.  No, actually, they are used to being in big crowds – this felt more like home.  And some of these refugee penguins were actually their cousins – they are all part of a captive breeding program to ensure a genetically diverse population of these South African penguins, in case another disaster – an oil tanker spill – wipes out their native brothers and sisters at the tip of Africa.  So there were some family reunions during that refugee year. 

So, perhaps a few lessons from these various disaster stories:

 -The usual: Know your nearest exit, ask for help, stockpile needed goods, practice drills and learn from them, have a plan.

-Be generous when asked for help.  (You may not be Betty White, nor able to write a big check, but share something.  When we were evacuated in 1998 in the last big El Nino and the Red Cross put us up at a local motel, we made a small donation afterwards, and they told us that 80% of their donations are from folks who have received their services.  Who are probably not big rich donors.  Just grateful former victims.)

-Remember the needs of the most vulnerable.  Not just penguins, but people who can’t walk to the nearest exit, like folks in wheel chairs.  Without elevators, they will have a hard time getting out of the Aquarium, with its long flights of stairs.  But there is a plan, and there are litter-type carrying chairs at all exits, for four people to carry handicapped folks. 

-Work for gun control to reduce the odds that an active shooter will complicate your disaster planning.

-Remember that welcoming refugees can sometimes make us feel more at home, not less.  And that we are all related, especially in a disaster.

Happy Disaster Preparedness Month!

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter