# Eureka and Haiti Earthquakes: What are you doing?



## mycrofft (Jan 14, 2010)

If you are associated with these incidents, can you tell us what you and emergency services are up to?


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## lightsandsirens5 (Jan 14, 2010)

What is the Eureka part?


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## VentMedic (Jan 14, 2010)

lightsandsirens5 said:


> What is the Eureka part?


 
Eureka, California

There was a 6.5 Earthquake that happened just a couple days before the one in Haiti.


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## JPINFV (Jan 14, 2010)

VentMedic said:


> Eureka, California
> 
> There was a 6.5 Earthquake that happened just a couple days before the one in Haiti.



Meh, I think this quote from a LA Times article sums it up nicely.



> In Eureka's Old Town and elsewhere on the North Coast, residents were largely taking their geological quirk in stride. “I talked to people who just moved here and they thought their life was ending, but for me it was just annoying,” said Sandra Warshaw, who has lived in Eureka since 1985. “It’s like an ‘Oh, well’ rather than an ‘Oh, my God’.”


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lan...california-earthquake-now-at-219-million.html


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## VentMedic (Jan 14, 2010)

JPINFV said:


> Meh, I think this quote from a LA Times article sums it up nicely.
> 
> 
> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lan...california-earthquake-now-at-219-million.html


 
JP, that's part of a blog.

How dare you make light of what the people of Eureka went through! 

Eureka is not a very large city and while it may not be on the same magnitude as Haiti, people have had their homes damaged and have lost their place of employment. 

Please do not make fun of anyone who suffers a loss no matter how unworthy of your acknowledgement it might seem.    Until you lose everything in a disaster you may never understand what it is like to start over or wonder if your insurance will cover everything.


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## JPINFV (Jan 14, 2010)

The people in Eureka are making light of it!


Same quote is mentioned in this, non-bloggy article, published on the website. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-eureka-quake12-2010jan12,0,5777569.story?track=rss

Oh, look, same author. Somehow I doubt that the LA Times just makes stuff like that up. People who live in regions where natural disasters occur with frequency tend to make light of it. Are you telling me that no one in Florida ever jokes about hurricanes? I've lived in California for 22 of 24 years and yes, there are earthquake jokes and wild fire jokes.


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## JPINFV (Jan 14, 2010)

double post


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## VentMedic (Jan 14, 2010)

JPINFV said:


> The people in Eureka are making light of it!
> 
> 
> Same quote is mentioned in this, non-bloggy article, published on the website. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-eureka-quake12-2010jan12,0,5777569.story?track=rss
> ...


 
That is ONE person's opinion.  Did you see any of the live footage in CA from Eureka?  The people interviewed were standing in front of their damaged businesses and homes AND they were NOT laughing. 

$43 million dollars of damage may not be much but if it is your home that is counted in that number, it is a lot. 

Considering the size of the damage in Haiti, you must be rolling on the floor with laughter and can't wait for this LA Times author to write something funny about it. 

There are many jokes about earthquakes and fire in California but only until one happens especially if it is to your community. 

Yeah many people do use laughter to keep from crying during stressful situations but I'm sure while they are laughing they are wondering where they will live and how to pay the bills.

I didn't find too many of those who had homes destroyed by fire in California to be laughing out loud either because it was humorous.   In fact, many who were around from the Oakland Hills fire still get tears in their eyes when they remember the lives lost.  

So remember there is a difference in laughter to relieve some stress and that to be "funny" or make fun of others.  Don't mistake the laughter of the patient you tell he has inoperable cancer as "that is so funny" and dismiss the seriousness of the situation.


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## lightsandsirens5 (Jan 15, 2010)

VentMedic said:


> Eureka, California
> 
> There was a 6.5 Earthquake that happened just a couple days before the one in Haiti.


 
Really? I had not even heard! What kind of mess did it leave behind?


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## Seaglass (Jan 15, 2010)

When it's your own disaster, humor can be part of coping and resilience. When it's someone else's disaster, your humor is tacky and crass. All the more so if you've never had the same thing happen, or if it's very recent. 

That being said, Eureka doesn't have nearly as much to cope with as Haiti, on the general scale. A 6.5 is a lot less than a 7.0, and Eureka has a lot more in the way of resources. I've heard from a few people I know there, and I've also gotten the impression that life is generally going on with some cleanup required for the majority of people. So I'm not surprised that it's pretty much vanished from the news. 

As for my response to this, I'm sending a small donation (can't afford much) to MSF, and thinking a little harder about applying to the local DRT.


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## VentMedic (Jan 15, 2010)

My friends told me downtown Eureka was a mess and they lost some of their historic buildings. It seems like a very neighborly type of a community so recovery should go well if the broke state of CA comes through with the promises made by Arnie.

It is not uncommon for a larger disaster to over shadow a smaller one. 

Katrina still took precedence in the news over a serious storm in Florida a few weeks later. Few even noticed Hurricane Wilma go through Florida killing over 35 people and doing $22 *b*illion dollars in damage. Wilma had reached the strength of a Category 5 storm.

What I am doing for the Haiti Earthquake?
We're receiving patients from Haiti here in South Florida that need taken care of.  I'm also trying to be supportive of friends and co-workers who have family in Haiti they haven't heard from.


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## mycrofft (Jan 15, 2010)

*Eureka and Haiti updates.*

Eureka (where my daughter had been going to school): latest score is over 80 millon dollars' damage, no reported injuries or fatalities.

Haiti: US military seized the capital's airport and assumed operations of it, aid bearing aircraft are in circle patterns because there is not enough facility to receive them. The Central California USAR folks were, as of this mrning, waiting at Travis AFB (between the San Francisco bay area and Sacramento California on Hwy I-80); their time window for rescues, versus cadaver recovery, is about to close. Media reports that looters and angry Haitians are appearing to add to the misfortune already upon them. (Of course media reports of looting, shooting and savagery in New Orleans afer Katrina turned out to contain liberal amounts of exaggeration, but Haiti has a tradition of this).

Haiti is going to be a prime example of how and why preparedness and resilience needs to be regional; when it happens to your site, your resources are affected too, you will rely upon help from without.

As for Eureka, some of the locals we have heard from play it down, and medical resources there were not strained nor severely damaged.


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## VentMedic (Jan 15, 2010)

mycrofft said:


> As for Eureka, some of the locals we have heard from play it down, and medical resources there were not strained nor severely damaged.


 
I've heard some of their patients have been moved to other facilities just to relieve some of the strain from their system.  I don't believe any of the hospitals in that area are very large.  SF takes some of their more seriously ill patients such as CVAs.


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## mycrofft (Jan 24, 2010)

*Central California USAR Code Four*

They went to Travis, they waitied to leave, and were called off. Took too long, plenty of folks already on scene, trouble wasn't searching and finding but having enough aircraft handling capacity to allow everyone to come in, an having enough capacity to treat people if/once they were rescued.


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## Maya (Jan 31, 2010)

I live in Eureka (Humboldt County) and work in Crescent City (1 hour North).  Eureka hasn't been that badly damaged, although historic buildings in the downtown area have had some damage.

I can't say how EMS in Eureka is responding to the quake, as I don't work in Eureka.  However, EMS in Del Norte County will be holding seminars on Earthquake and Tsunami readiness for the public and for emergency responders.  (Crescent City was very badly damaged by a Tsunami in 1964, following a 9.2 magnitude earthquake off Archorage, Alaska.)

We are staging a practice drill, to make sure that emergency responders know their roles in the event of an emergency.  Our maps have recently been updated, showing the evacuation zones, evacuation routes, safe ground and assembly points.  Also, there are frequent reports on the radio to inform the public of how to respond in the event of a Tsunami Evacuation.


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## mycrofft (Jan 31, 2010)

*Your closest Commnity Emergency Response Team is at Humboldt State.*

Consider getting their training?

Haiti has started to relapse into it's customary role of internecine fratricide, seeking to flee to other contries, attacking aid givers (as NPR put it "It has been observed that young armed men force their way to the head of the "(aid)"lines".


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## Tincanfireman (Feb 2, 2010)

mycrofft said:


> internecine fratricide


 
A lot of folks have told me that I have a good vocabulary, but I'll admit; I had to look this one up.  Very sad and tragic...


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## mycrofft (Feb 3, 2010)

*Never let it be said USAF plug-huggers are at a loss for words.*

Actually internecine and fratricide are sort of redundant.

Sort of like us Democrats in Congress when they find they have a majority.


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## EMTSTRONG (Feb 3, 2010)

*I posted this link in the news forum before seeing this thread.*

For convenience, here it is:

http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/video?id=7240931


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