It is important, as part of a resident’s emergency planning, to understand how the LACFD will respond, including their priorities, to an earthquake in the first hours of an event.

Within the first 15 minutes of an event, personnel will make a site survey of personnel, equipment and station facilities reporting to Battalion Command the status and the estimated intensity. They will secure the utilities and station as required.

Within the next 30 minutes they will conduct a jurisdictional survey and report to Battalion Command. This survey will only be interrupted in response to life threatening incidents. The focus of the survey will be as follows,

A. Status of high life hazard occupancies

B. Status of major transportation arteries

C. Other significant information

D. Determine resource needs

What happens next will depend on the magnitude of the event, local or regional damage.

Under a normal situation where the damage is local and communications are in place, all jurisdictional surveys throughout the County, 911 calls and messages relayed from Sheriff’s Emergency Operation Centers (EOC) are sent to Battalion Command in Downtown L.A where the Incident Commander establishes priority and resources are dispatched using normal procedures.

In the local damage area where damage can be as little as items are off the shelves and windows are broken to greater damage, the local Battalion Chief sets the priority, dispatching single resources for each incident.

If the damage is widespread, then all responses will be sent to the jurisdictional companies for prioritization.

This of course assumes that the normal Command and Control system is functioning. If all communications between Command and Control and the field have failed then the Battalion Chiefs will establish communications using assigned personnel which in this case include the Amateur Radio Disaster Communications Service (DCS) and the Peninsula Volunteer Alert Network (PVAN).

Response times to any incident will be determined by established protocols.

Priorities

Limited Resources

Adequate Resources

It should become clear from the above discussion that in a major earthquake, with wide spread damage, individual residents and neighborhoods might initially be left on their own, making emergency planning mandatory for survival until resources become available.