WEBVTT

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Let's do this thing.

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All right, I'm hitting record. Yeah.

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Good morning, everyone, or good afternoon, good evening, good night, wherever you come to us from in the world and whichever force you love that you live with.

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This is day two of the Northern California Earthquake Hazards Workshop.

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And sometimes earthquake happens. So today we're going to start with What happens after an earthquake? How can we rebuild and propel and deal with disasters in a way that makes sure that everyone's needs are met as well as possible?

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So all wonderful moderators to take us through this trip. Monica Stoffel and An Unexpected Swap, we have Anne Wine. Woo-hoo!

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And Sarah, would you like me to start off with a little presentation that we typically do?

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Oh, yes, you do. I'm so sorry.

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No, a problem. Just to set the stage for why we are all here.

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The surface of the earth is always changing. Mountains and valleys rearranging.

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The USGS strives to provide a diverse, inclusive, and respectful environment because it is essential to the integrity of our organization and our science. If anything fails to exemplify these ideals, please alert an organizer for immediate assistance.

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That's because the earth is covered up with giant plates. And when they rub together, we get earthquakes.

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Views expressed by the speakers do not reflect those of the USGS or federal government. Presentations were prerecorded in early January.

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Some of the ground rules, we ask that everybody stay on mute unless you're called on.

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But I've got rhythms.

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If you have a question, we would love to hear it from you. You can chat your questions all through the discussions.

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We also have closed captioning for our videos if you'd like to hide the captioning, you can click the hide caption button down at the bottom.

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If you wonder just how big these planes are. Some are as big as our United States are.

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If you don't want to see the chats, there is a little arrow next to the chat button. You can click on that and uncheck show chat previews.

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They are always moving, but they're moving really slow. About as fast as our fingernails grow.

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And then finally, we have a Q&A at the end of each of the series of talks. If you'd like to say something, please raise your virtual hand.

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Using the react button and we will call on you. You can share your video and unmute yourself.

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It's the motion of a mountain's bird. But I've got rhythms.

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And we encourage you to rename yourself to your full name and institution if you haven't already.

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I serve. On the surface of the earth.

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A quick shout out to our organizers. That is a long list. I'm not going to read all of them. And if you have any issues, any problems, you can chat me. You can also email me or Shane if you have any issues at all.

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Okay. Wow. Now the donors reminded me of the part that I skipped Let's go to our awesome moderators, Monica and Anne.

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Woohoo!

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So I wanted to start off with saying thank you for taking the time out of your day to attend this session.

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Focused on how disasters affect our communities and the long restoration and recovery processes that follow.

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While this session is part of the Northern California Earthquake Hazards Workshop.

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The presenters will draw on a variety of disasters from across the United States.

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As was mentioned, my name is Monica Stoffel. I'm the Executive Director of the California Resiliency Alliance, and I'll be co-moderating this session with Anne Wine from the USGS.

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Today's complex world requires lateral thinking, that we think across whole of communities and whole of systems.

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To develop innovative and adaptable responses to the increasingly complex and dynamic disaster landscape that we find ourselves in.

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By drawing on insights from a variety of disciplines, sectors, and geographies.

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We hope that you leave here today with new ideas and questions, or what I like to sometimes call musings.

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We will be holding the moderated Q&A at the end, as was mentioned.

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And participants are invited to submit questions at any point in time. We can have that dialogue going in the chat.

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I will now turn it over to Anne to introduce our first presenter.

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Great. Thanks, Monica. Yes, to start us off today is Mikel Gordon.

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From Jackson State University and she is addressing disaster parity different people, different contexts and different needs.

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Hello, I'm Mikael Gordon and I'm a doctoral student at Jacksonville State University in Alabama.

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I work in disaster recovery with tribes and communities in Southeast Louisiana who have had a bumpy and protracted recovery from the effects of 2021's Hurricane Ida.

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Research has shown that disaster recovery works best when rigorous community-based recovery planning is done well before any disaster hits.

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High hazard areas like coastal Louisiana and Los Angeles where I live.

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Anticipate impacts and do plan. These plans, however, considered the needs of the entire county or parish and consequently exclude those communities within its borders that don't form. Traditional recovery vehicles for housing like FEMA assistance SBA loans, homeowners and hazard insurance present standardized programs that are meant to be applied

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The same across all communities. If a disaster survivor's needs are not met completely, consortiums of nonprofits partner to fill the gap of getting people back into their homes by contributing in a variety of ways.

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Like new construction repair, assistance with purchasing a manufactured home.

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And filling unmet recovery needs like furniture, appliances. Or helping to pay utility bills or rental deposits.

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Fema supports disaster case management services for low-income members of a community who have difficulty accessing recovery programs.

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The communities I have been working with had difficulties accessing official recovery assistance and the FEMA-funded disaster case management programs, which in theory were designed to assist them.

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They needed a different model to aid in their recovery. So let's look at what we used with five of these communities. It's called the Indigenous Resilience Disaster Case Management Program or the IRDCMP.

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It uses a needs-based bottom-up thinking system to better recovery outcomes.

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So first, let me give you some context. Hurricane Ida made landfall over Lafucian Terrebonne parishes in coastal Louisiana.

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As a category four hurricane. With sustained winds of 150 miles per hour and peak gusts as high as 172 miles per hour.

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It brought catastrophic damage to the area, demolishing homes, uprooting and toppling trees.

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And leaving the vast majority of families in its path in need of assistance.

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19 months after the storm, these multiracial and indigenous working class communities were still unrecovered because of a combination of factors, including the extent of their damage.

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Sluggish governmental response and slow delivery of assistance. A high rate of denials from FEMA's individual assistance program.

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And COVID-related program changes. It was clear that the existing federal and state funded disaster case management programs were not working for this population.

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Who have limited cell phone and internet connectivity low literacy, and cultural practices like tribal rather than individual land ownership that did not conform easily to governmental programs.

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Even though they were recognized within the FEMA programs. With funding from nonprofits, the program launched on September 6, 2022 with a one-week workshop that trained indigenous elders, chiefs, and respected tribal members as disaster case managers.

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The nine indigenous case managers helped their tribal members navigate the labyrinthine long-term recovery process.

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The Indigenous case managers worked with experienced case managers, students, and external experts from Jacksonville State University.

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The Disaster Justice Network, the Lowlander Center. Other nonprofits and the national voluntary organizations active in disasters and VOAD groups.

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Each assisting in navigating the cultural difference to support local long-term recovery goals of the target population.

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The disaster case managers were able to help their communities navigate the technological systems the disaster recovery system with its endless appeals and their own distrust of government institutions.

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Although many of the communities lived in areas with repeated history of hurricanes and severe hurricane damage.

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Local recovery capacity was limited. So one of the program's goals was to leave behind knowledge and skill that would allow the communities to navigate successful recovery outcomes in the future.

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The repetitive hurricanes left the communities in a terrible cycle of destruction and rebuild.

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And many had not recovered from one hurricane before being damaged by the next.

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Resilient building strategies were needed. And as such, the IRDCMP partnered with engineers and experts to ensure that whenever possible, rebuilds conformed with fortified gold standards.

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Some of these rebuilds were tested when Hurricane Francine hit the area this year.

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And the results were heartening. If we are going to make American communities resilient, we must give them the tools to access resources from disaster assistance systems that are hard for even well-trained experts to understand.

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This quote written by Dr. Laura Olson focuses on the tipping point disasters cause driving communities and families into poverty.

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Many families who are not living with poverty do live on a financial edge and a single natural disaster or technological disaster can throw even better situated families into financial turmoil.

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The United Way, a major funder of unmet needs and disaster recovery, has dubbed this group ALAS, or Asset Limited Income Constrained employed people and has used this this term to gather research together to gather together to figure out how to deal with a very large population of the United States.

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Alice describes the population of people who earn above the federal poverty level yet struggle to meet even their most basic needs.

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Alice includes 42% of Americans, although 13% of those are below the federal poverty line and 29% are in between.

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It spans all races, ages, ethnicities, and abilities, although historically under-resourced populations are disproportionately Alice.

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It includes workers whose wages cannot keep up with the rising cost of goods and services.

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And often includes people who are working two or more jobs and are in households with two or more employed people and they still are having trouble paying their bills.

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They live from paycheck to paycheck. And are forced to make impossible choices like whether to pay the rent or buy food.

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Receive medical care or pay for child care. Pay utility bills or put gas in the car.

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Annually, the United Way tracks the change in price of essential expenses like housing, child care.

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Food, transportation, healthcare, and technology And it found that the rate of growth of what they call the Alice essentials generally outpaces the consumer price index.

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We can see here that we can see here housing generally takes about 36% of a family's income And in the period between 2007 and 2023, The average rental rate raised 76%.

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And the average medium house price tracks around that same rate.

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So how does ALICE impact people in disasters? We know that disasters have a negative impact on financial health for all populations.

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The Federal Reserve in its most recent annual report on economic well-being reports that 37% of Americans could not cover $400 in unexpected expenses.

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$400 won't cover evacuation, yet alone any substantial disaster recovery. We also know that negative financial outcomes of disaster persist and even grow with time.

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The Urban Institute, for example, in its insult to injury report found that the first two years following a mid-sized disaster there's a 5% raise in the share of people with debt in collection and that raises to 10% after four years.

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And finally, people and communities struggling financially are more likely to live in higher hazard areas be un or underinsured.

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And not have the financial wherewithal to recover without assistance. They are also less likely to have savings that would allow them to recover on their own.

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Alice populations vulnerability interacts with disasters at every phase. People's coping capacity is compromised by the same factors that play out in their day-to-day life.

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Race, ethnicity, social class, physical, mental, and functional ability or disability.

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Health and access to health care, language, proficiency and literacy. Citizenship, social capital, gender, age.

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Whether you're rural or urban. So where you live, who you live with, and whether or not you own your home or auto all interact with disaster influencing outcomes.

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Research has shown that people living with these pre-existing conditions tend to encounter barriers after disaster when trying to access assistance.

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Have more protracted recovery timelines and face a higher likelihood of permanent displacement.

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So let's look at an example. This is a picture of a client's home following Hurricane Ida in 2021.

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He is in this Alice population. He's a 58 year old man who has lived in this community his whole life.

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He worked at the pump station and in fact did not evacuate for Hurricane Ida because of his job.

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For the first four months after the storm, he lived at the pump station until he moved into an Ida camper trailer a small travel trailer that the state brought in as non-congregant shelter while people waited for FEMA trailers because this was happening in the midst of COVID.

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In this town, FEMA trailers never arrived. And they remained in these small temporary shelters.

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The last eight of those trailers still in use in the state, in fact, are still in this community.

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He lost his house and MHU to previous hurricanes. Hurricanes Katrina, Laura.

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And most recently to Ida. Each previous time he was able to recover fairly quickly purchasing a new mobile home pulling it in and reestablishing himself.

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But for Hurricane Ida, he had a few substantial barriers to his recovery.

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His home was insured through the National Flood Insurance Program, a requirement because of earlier floods.

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So what were these barriers? The town he lives in is sandwiched between the Mississippi River and the Gulf.

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On the Mississippi side, there are federal levy and on the Gulf side, there's a locally maintained levy.

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Both of these levees overtopped during Ida and the town's drainage system failed.

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The flooding was substantial, even disintering caskets from the town's graveyard.

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Townspeople all commented on the smell and the stickiness of the mud which persisted for months after Ida and stained all existing surfaces.

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So FEMA's new flood maps raised the base flood level of this area and he could not rebuild without elevating his home.

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Two feet above base flood level, which in the case of his lot is 13 feet.

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His love is also because of its adjacency to the levees, requires approval from the levy Commission and the Army Corps of Engineers, which is a time consuming process.

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He also had an outstanding SBA loan from Hurricane Laura, which had gone to collection weekly repayment was being garnished from his paycheck and when his insurance payment came in, he paid off the outstanding loan amount to clear the lien on his property.

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In hopes of allowing him to rebuild. Once the lien was cleared, however, he could no longer afford to rebuild without assistance.

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After each disaster, he had depleted his savings in order to return to the community and some semblance of normalcy.

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This is where we're at today. Well, these pictures were taken yesterday. You can see on the right side of this image is the camper trailer that he has been living in for the past three years.

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You can also see one of the eight out of 40 homes in the community that survived Hurricane Ida.

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Those homes, the ones that survived, had been rebuilt by the Mennonite Disaster Service following Hurricane Katrina.

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So how did we get to this place? Very quickly gathered data.

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And engaged in a localized disaster case management program. And we were able to get the Mennonite Disaster Service to come in and build in the town.

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They will build five houses this year. Between November 2024 and March of 2025, And if we can find funding, we'll build another five next year.

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In order to get him to this place, we had to understand his context in terms of land ownership.

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Available money to contribute outstanding debt federal and state assistance received and understand his other barriers to recovery.

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In the case of almost everyone in this community, land ownership was a considerable hurdle. Many of the homes in the town were built on family land without any clear provenance.

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The names listed as owners go back three or four generations.

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The South Louisiana Legal Services provided free legal service to help clean up the land issues, allowing rebuilding to occur.

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In order for MDS to do any rebuilding in any place, they require clear claim on the property.

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So let's take a step back and look at the strategies that allowed us to dive into this community's housing recovery.

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First, any positive outcome requires participation in emergency management planning and execution.

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So in this case, participation looked like partnering with the redevelopment community group in this area.

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Although members of that group were very fluent with the parish politics.

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They were also challenged because they were inexperienced in disaster recovery And they partnered with some very strong nonprofits who were very strong in organizational development.

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But also had no experience of post-disaster housing. Or recovery.

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Because we were up against a clock with the end of the state and federal programs for supporting recovery from Ida.

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Occurring December 31st of 2024. We were not able to craft a purely participatory program.

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We saw the ill effects of this. Several of the community leaders complained that they were uncomfortable with the speed at which The stalled recovery jump-started and in fact um ended up trying to slow it down, which there wasn't the time to do.

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It obliged them to make plans and decisions very quickly. We also were able to share knowledge through those trusted community members.

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In this community's case, the town was very divided with some of the residents aligned with the religious institution and others the civil.

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And those in between felt unrepresented. To overcome this, we met with each faction.

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And with the uninvolved. In each case gaining access through trusted community members.

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Designing a bottom-up community generated program allowed this to happen. And using those cultural brokers facilitated understandings and sharing of knowledge among the community members And among us the subject matter holders.

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It also allowed us to identify the community's needs, assets, vulnerabilities, and capabilities.

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We are still in the midst of this community's recovery but have been working with each of these factions to develop baseline metrics and indicators to assess the success or failure of their recovery.

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Interestingly, the divided factions are not agreeing on baseline metrics, nor will willing to work to fill in data gaps with one another, but it is a process.

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All of these hurricane programs are translatable to post-earthquake recovery. The tools are the same.

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Build relationships deep in the community. Make an effort to include the most marginalized parts of the community in preparation and mitigation planning.

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It's messier at first, but it yields better results. Use culture brokers who know the community and who can act as translators and facilitators.

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Cultural brokers often take the form of organizations like Silver Sneakers for the Elderly.

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And by the same token, create an organization that reflects the community it is working in.

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Communicate plans, policies, and processes across and within your area using culturally compatible language.

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Identify needs and assets as well as pre-existing vulnerabilities and resiliencies.

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Build and use assessment mechanisms which require identifying and agreeing upon variables and metrics.

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And on sharing data. It is a messy process to get people to agree on these, but well worth it in the long run.

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If the outcomes of resilience programs cannot be shown, they are difficult to fund and to replicate.

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And finally, build resiliently to multiple hazards. I don't believe that we can have genuine recovery these days without adaptation.

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If people are going to weather more extreme events, our built systems need to assist in that.

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If you're interested in further exploring this issue, the next four slides is the literature, gray matter reports and books used as references in this presentation.

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And thank you for listening. This last image was taken by my husband from our bedroom window as we were evacuating from the sunset fire last week.




ADD BELOW TO doc on work computer!!!!!!!!!!!





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Thanks so much, Mikel and I'm very sorry for your recent experience there with the fires and thanks for being with us

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despite all that. So next we've got Melanie Gall and she's going to present on her study about disasters in education, school closures disrupt more than learning.

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Thanks, Melanie.

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Hello and welcome to a conversation about disasters and education and particularly with a look at how school closures disrupt people's lives, children's lives, and I think with the years we spend through COVID, we are all very familiar how that impacts us.

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Here I'm presenting the findings of a study we conducted after the 2015 flash flood event that affected South Carolina in 2015.

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On the right-hand side, you see a map showing the overall rainfall totals that fell over short period of time, so October 2nd through the 6th.

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And what I'm showing subsequently focuses solely on Richland County, Columbia that you see here on the map in central South Carolina is located in Richland County and you see the county outline.

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So this was a really catastrophic event for the state because South Carolina atmospheric rivers are rather unusual 

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along the southeast, I'd say. And this atmospheric river formed as a combination of the remnants of Hurricane Joaquin and the strong upper level low.

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And in the short period of time, we had more than $2.2 billion in damage and 25 people died. And we also had a presidential disaster declaration.

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Only 10 counties out of the entire 46 counties in the state did not receive a declaration. So aside from Richland County

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being massively impacted, the state as a whole really suffered during this event.

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The numbers that you see here on the slide are representative for the state as a whole.

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But what I want to point out that for Richland County itself, what really triggered the school closures was not necessarily the damage to buildings or the road and bridge closures, but it was the water treatment facility that was shut down and the fact that we didn't have water

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in our homes, in our schools for several days and that triggered the school districts especially Richland, one, to not just close some schools, but close the entire district.

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So the purpose of the study was to capture indirect losses for the 2015 flood event in Richland County.

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But what I want to talk about here today is the portion that we looked at of the study that focused on what were the losses, the economic losses people experienced due to the school closures specifically and as part of the study, we also looked at what are people's attitude towards school closures and

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late starts because we also have several days of late start.

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Here's a chart of where our study kind of falls. You see it's in this arena of indirect but quantifiable losses. So usually direct losses, quantifiable losses is property damage, you can observe it directly, infrastructure damage. So damage that the event cost immediately.

00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:51.000
Or losses that occurred because you had disruption of some kind?

00:26:51.000 --> 00:26:58.000
Due to the event, maybe power loss was similar. The business can't operate because the building is not safe.

00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:12.000
What's important to note is that this study, we are looking at essentially the effect of school closures on productivity and that's something that's usually not captured. So we're not looking at lost income 

00:27:12.000 --> 00:27:17.000
B ut lost productivity.

00:27:17.000 --> 00:27:36.000
In this study, we only looked at temporary school closures related to obviously the flash flood event. So why do schools close temporarily? It's a life safety reason so, there's imminent risk to people or the property before the event or after the event

00:27:36.000 --> 00:27:56.000
maybe there are challenges with the infrastructure, no power, no water, maybe buses are used for evacuation purposes or the school facility itself might be used for staging or sheltering purposes and then we all know well because of COVID, school closures also occur for public health reasons.

00:27:56.000 --> 00:28:05.000
And most of the research that exists when it comes to temporary school closures focus on the impact on the student, so mental health issues, 

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:21.000
or test scores, or the use of school closures for public health reasons and there's really very, very little research on the socioeconomic impacts of school closures beyond the student itself.

00:28:21.000 --> 00:28:37.000
Of the studies that look at socioeconomic effects, we can see there are studies that look at obviously, the economic impacts than issues related to food insecurity, how students skip meals when they don't have access.

00:28:37.000 --> 00:28:42.000
Then students are cut off from services, especially students with disability services.

00:28:42.000 --> 00:28:57.000
Need access to disability service cases of child abuse increase, and there's a recent study that also shows that there is really aggregate and intergenerational effects related to the economic impacts of school closures.

00:28:57.000 --> 00:29:02.000
So for this study, we deployed an online survey via SurveyMonkey.

00:29:02.000 --> 00:29:09.000
The survey was open for a long period of time. So again, the event happened in October of 2015,

00:29:09.000 --> 00:29:17.000
and we administered the survey by a snowball system so we contacted POs.

00:29:17.000 --> 00:29:27.000
PTOS, neighborhood association, use social media because one of the big challenges that we had was that, and I'm going to talk about this in a little bit.

00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:38.000
The school district was not willing to distribute our survey. So we got 208 completed surveys back.

00:29:38.000 --> 00:29:46.000
A representative sample would have been 380 completed surveys and 75% of our respondents had school-aged children.

00:29:46.000 --> 00:29:58.000
We used the human capital model to capture lost productivity. So we are not really looking just at

00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:08.000
lost wages because a salary worker will have been paid throughout the time of the event.

00:30:08.000 --> 00:30:18.000
But we really looked at what is a worker paid either a salary hourly paid as a salary hour wage, and then how many hours were lost.

00:30:18.000 --> 00:30:25.000
And then to get to this idea of what people's attitudes were towards school closures and late starts.

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:31.000
We deployed a choice experiment and used a multinomial logic model.

00:30:31.000 --> 00:30:40.000
To capture essentially people's willingness to pay to avoid school closures or late starts.

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:57.000
As I mentioned before we had a challenge in terms of distributing our survey. So we ended up with a sample that overrepresented white respondents and respondents that had a college degree.

00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:04.000
So our respondents median income was higher than a representative sample for Richland County would have shown.

00:31:04.000 --> 00:31:27.000
But we post-stratified our results to account for that. As I mentioned, we focused on Richland 1 for the school districts, Richland County itself has three school districts, Richland 1, 2, and then Lexington-Richland 5, and Richland 1 was the school district that was

00:31:27.000 --> 00:31:48.000
the most heavily affected by the flash flood event so Richland 1 students in that district experienced seven days of school closures and had six days of late start. Students from Richland 2 school district had two days

00:31:48.000 --> 00:32:01.000
fewer of closures but the same number of late starts and you see the students in Lexington-Richmond 5 had no late starts and they only had three days that the school was closed.

00:32:01.000 --> 00:32:07.000
Here's simply a screenshot of one of our survey questions on how we captured lost productivity, so we asked respondents.

00:32:07.000 --> 00:32:16.000
For every day during our study period why people might have lost the ability to work.

00:32:16.000 --> 00:32:26.000
So either because the school or daycare was closed, maybe their workplace was closed, they were road or bridge closures or other reasons.

00:32:26.000 --> 00:32:40.000
In addition to the time lost, we also captured additional expenses people might have had in order to go to work. So maybe they paid for additional childcare or they paid for activities where a caretaker could go with the children.

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:52.000
Or they left children with family or friends. In here, we refer to unpaid childcare or they even took children to work.

00:32:52.000 --> 00:33:09.000
So here is an overall summary of our findings and you can see here in the second to last row that overall the households in the unweighted sample missed 36 hours during the time period.

00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:26.000
And when we post stratified on race people missed about 44.7 hours throughout that two week time period or if we post-stratified on homeownership households missed 33.7 hours during that time period.

00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:36.000
And you see in the last row, this then translated into dollars for instance compared to more than $2,000.

00:33:36.000 --> 00:33:48.000
For a household when we post-stratify on race or 1,300 for the unweighted sample and close to $1,500 for the sample post-ratified on homeownership.

00:33:48.000 --> 00:33:58.000
So this is a substantial impact on households.

00:33:58.000 --> 00:34:07.000
So in this study, we found that for the time people lost being able to go to work or working from home

00:34:07.000 --> 00:34:14.000
essentially half of it was driven by the school closure itself because they had no caretakers or

00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:26.000
subsequently had additional expenses. So you see here the numbers for the different samples if it was post-stratified on race, we had 13.3 hours that were lost due to the school closures.

00:34:26.000 --> 00:34:38.000
And we also saw, we asked people's preference or willingness to pay for schools to stay open. I mean, these were fictional numbers for our choice experiment.

00:34:38.000 --> 00:34:43.000
But what's interesting, and maybe we all can personally relate to this, people don't like late starts.

00:34:43.000 --> 00:35:04.000
It makes it really difficult to work for some and then in addition, we also calculated a standard value for schools that's rather unusual, it doesn't exist, We're proposing this. We also know that our sample was not fully representative, so there should be clearly additional studies but i do think

00:35:04.000 --> 00:35:20.000
for benefit cost analyses that FEMA runs related to and here I'm using air quotes, traditional infrastructure FEMA might be considering how important it is and the economic value that school provides when they stay open.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:34.000
Because we found that for the raceway that it sample that schools provide a dollar of $180, a value of $180 per household per day.

00:35:34.000 --> 00:35:46.000
Our study comes as all studies do with some limitations. So one obvious limitation was that our sample was not representative, which we tried to remedy through post-stratification.

00:35:46.000 --> 00:36:02.000
And the reason for the lack of the representativeness and the low sample size was because we tried to work with the school district to have the school district administer the survey or allow us to distribute it through

00:36:02.000 --> 00:36:09.000
Newsletters, etc. from the school district, but the district refused collaborating with us because we included these demographic questions,

00:36:09.000 --> 00:36:14.000
and if we had excluded the demographic questions, we would have been able to distribute it.

00:36:14.000 --> 00:36:32.000
But then we would have challenges coming up with our estimates for lost productivity based on these differential demographic and income levels. Then limiting factors, if you think about taking the study elsewhere, is that there is really no easily accessible data set

00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:36.000
on school closures why school closed and how long they close.

00:36:36.000 --> 00:36:48.000
There was a really good data set that the CDC collected as part of the H1N1 school dismissal monitoring system in 2009, and you can see actually weather-related school dismissals are quite frequent.

00:36:48.000 --> 00:36:58.000
So if you think about doing this study somewhere else, you really need to collect data on how long schools are closed and for what reasons.

00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:06.000
So in conclusion, schools are really critical for the economic resilience of students and their caretakers.

00:37:06.000 --> 00:37:14.000
We know from prior research. when schools are open, people have a sense of normalcy and they feel like they're on the road to recovery.

00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:32.000
When schools are closed, we are really imposing a economic burden on households, on students that the household has to bear. There is no way for them to recoup these losses. So I can't encourage school districts and emergencies emergency managers enough to consider that

00:37:32.000 --> 00:37:38.000
when they think about using school resources, school infrastructures, or are considering school closures.

00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:53.000
And well obviously it's not always possible to avoid school closures, I think school closures should be really limited or minimized in places where you have a high percentage of school-age children.

00:37:53.000 --> 00:38:06.000
A lot of working caretakers, a lot of children who are on subsidized school meals, and when there's really no other option for paid leave or remote work 

00:38:06.000 --> 00:38:16.000
depending on the economic sectors that drive these communities.

00:38:16.000 --> 00:38:22.000
Many thanks, Melanie. For bringing this aspect to our attention.

00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:31.000
As far as sort of the overlooked value of schools. Next, we move on to Brian Lowe.

00:38:31.000 --> 00:38:41.000
with PG&E, Pacific Gas and Electric and he's going to think about or think through earthquake resilience energy for all.

00:38:41.000 --> 00:38:48.000
Hello, my name is Brian Lowe. I'm the seismic Engineering Manager in our geosciences group at PG&E.

00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:55.000
Been at PG&E for 17 years, primarily focused in electric transmission line and substation engineering,

00:38:55.000 --> 00:39:08.000
and my background in civil engineering. Today, I'm going to talk a little bit about earthquake resilient energy for all. So the ideas around what we're doing at PG&E, where we could use help, and what to look forward to.

00:39:08.000 --> 00:39:18.000
Right. Where we can work together. As far as the agenda today, talk a little bit about the PG&E energy systems, I'll be talking about the electric system and its resilience.

00:39:18.000 --> 00:39:25.000
As well as some questions for the future, some other things for us to consider as a group.

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.000
A little bit about PG&E, so Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:39.000
Really sole driving purpose, right, is to provide safe, reliable, affordable, and clean power to our customers, right. Whether that's gas or electricity.

00:39:39.000 --> 00:39:47.000
Serves 70,000 square miles of California from northern and central California, Eureka to Bakersfield;

00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:54.000
16 million Californians are served by PG&E; 27,000 of us actually live and work for PG&E,

00:39:54.000 --> 00:40:05.000
or within the PG&E territory and a lot of solar on our energy system and a lot of EVs in our territory as well.

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:16.000
A little bit about the electric energy system maybe in simplest terms, power is generated, power is transmitted, and then power is distributed to customers and businesses.

00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:33.000
So you think about power generation, right. You have power, wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, gas powered plants, you have different sources of power that generate electricity generally between 13 to 25 kV.

00:40:33.000 --> 00:40:51.000
That power is then sent to a substation, which transforms that energy into 60, 115, 230 or 500 kV and then transmits that power over long distances on transmission lines. So kind of the big towers, the big poles you see on the side of the freeway with the wires, that's the transmission system.

00:40:51.000 --> 00:41:05.000
Transmission system comes to another substation closer to the communities and that transforms the energy again into 4, 12, 17, and 21 kV to send out on the distribution system to all of our customers.

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:17.000
And then once we kind of get to that last mile, that's when you talk about the local connections to homes and businesses, which is at 120 to 480 volts.

00:41:17.000 --> 00:41:23.000
All these different voltages require different structures, different equipment, different wire sizes.

00:41:23.000 --> 00:41:32.000
And all of them have to work together energy, electricity is not stored. Electricity is made and used in the same instance.

00:41:32.000 --> 00:41:37.000
So just being able to understand how our distribution system performs.

00:41:37.000 --> 00:41:45.000
Our transmission system performs and how our generation system performs. Is critical to understanding how the electric system performs.

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:53.000
So just knowing that there's different elements that need to be considered and how they interact together.

00:41:53.000 --> 00:42:08.000
Talk a little bit more about distribution and kind of those individual communities. So community energy resilience, understanding our customers. Here I've got the community microgrid. So a little bit of a different idea, but it kind of paints the picture of a community or neighborhood.

00:42:08.000 --> 00:42:15.000
And understanding, you know, the homes where people live, the grocery stores where people shop,

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:22.000
businesses, police stations, fire stations, gas stations, all those things you need to go about life.

00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:28.000
and they're all interconnected by distribution lines in that neighborhood.

00:42:28.000 --> 00:42:36.000
But the interesting thing is like, as you think about an earthquake, right, it's going to impact the entire neighborhood. It's going to impact the community.

00:42:36.000 --> 00:42:40.000
And as the power goes out, as equipment is damaged, what do we do?

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:46.000
What becomes the priority to restore to be able to recover after an earthquake?

00:42:46.000 --> 00:43:05.000
So within a community is different needs, right. Whether it's emergency first responders, right. Single family homes where we live, critical business enterprises like grocery stores or entertainment and leisure, right and understanding how important are those things after an earthquake? How quickly do we need to be able to recover those elements

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.000
to restore our communities is a critical piece of what we do.

00:43:09.000 --> 00:43:20.000
Functional recovery, right. That's really that restoration piece, right. A performance state in which the electric system can support its basic intended functions associated with pre-earthquake level of servers.

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:26.000
Kind of two key ideas. What level of service is needed and how long does it take to restore?

00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:39.000
Once we start to understand the community that we serve. Then we can start to understand what are the improvements we need to make in the system or what are the plans that we need to make to be able to restore quickly.

00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:49.000
So understanding our community and its energy resilience is really a key component to understanding earthquake resilience.

00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:53.000
As far as what we do today, we assess the electric system,

00:43:53.000 --> 00:44:01.000
and it's resilience today for seismic risk for earthquakes. We think about assets, we look at assets, perform maintenance inspections.

00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:22.000
We replace equipment. We keep equipment spares in preparation. Right. Of when the next event comes, when the next hazard approaches. Organizationally, right, we do damage modeling. So we'll take our existing systems model them with a scenario earthquake to understand where impact will be greatest, where

00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:29.000
resources will be needed or perhaps where we can make improvements, right. And kind of make the system better.

00:44:29.000 --> 00:44:44.000
We do emergency planning, right. So we have the company emergency response plan as well as many others just addressing all the hazards that exist, including earthquakes. And we have situational awareness tools.

00:44:44.000 --> 00:45:00.000
DASH is a homegrown tool, dynamic automated seismic hazard homegrown tool takes in USGS ShakeMaps and compares it against our assets and helps us prioritize where to respond after an earthquake.

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:10.000
So we're working on it, right. We're working on it. To respond and recover.

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:15.000
I'm not done yet. Still more to do. And I think this is where we need help.

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:22.000
We're sharing what we do. We're trying to draw a standard, right, that we can all approach.

00:45:22.000 --> 00:45:41.000
We're trying to understand the data that we have. And how we can incorporate the changing dynamics of the energy system. And we're trying to work on our communication across different entities. So these are some questions that I've posed. I'll dive in a little bit deeper.

00:45:41.000 --> 00:45:46.000
And then I'll resummarize for you. As far as standardization, right.

00:45:46.000 --> 00:45:51.000
The thought being what earthquake hazard level and hazard map should the community align performance to?

00:45:51.000 --> 00:45:57.000
What is the bar we're trying to achieve? What level of resilience do we need? What earthquake do we need to consider?

00:45:57.000 --> 00:46:04.000
What is society's acceptable outage time? How does this shift with earthquake hazard level?

00:46:04.000 --> 00:46:16.000
What are the standardized tools and data to estimate risk for lifelines. Some fundamental questions of what is the bar we're trying to achieve? What is acceptable to society?

00:46:16.000 --> 00:46:29.000
And there's been work in that space through FEMA, through NIST. There's recommended options for improving the built environment for post-earthquake reoccupancy and functional recovery time, which was developed in January of 2021.

00:46:29.000 --> 00:46:41.000
Which really calls out earthquake hazard level and kind of the expected recovery time associated with different priorities of facilities.

00:46:41.000 --> 00:46:49.000
And there's this initial framework to design lifeline infrastructure for post-earthquake functional recovery which was published in March of 2024 through NIST.

00:46:49.000 --> 00:47:00.000
And, you know, that really speaks to the governance around it, right. What is the goal we're trying to achieve? What are the policy and plans in place how do we assess that systemically?

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:05.000
So we have an initial framework, we have a recommended option.

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:16.000
Right. And it's like, how do we build to that standardization of this is the bar that we all attain to help society recover after an earthquake.

00:47:16.000 --> 00:47:30.000
As far as data, maybe I'll go over this picture first, TSO (Transmission System Operations), DSO (Distribution System Operations), DER (Distributed Energy Resources).

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:37.000
Traditionally, the grid operated generation to transmission to distribution to the customers.

00:47:37.000 --> 00:47:49.000
The dynamics changing, right. We have solar on homes. We have battery systems, we have other energy sources in the distribution system now.

00:47:49.000 --> 00:47:57.000
Could possibly feed back into the grid, right. And help bring back the grid faster.

00:47:57.000 --> 00:48:12.000
How do we start to incorporate those distributed energy resources? And system redundancies into our modeling and restoration plans, how we start to take credit for all these other sources on the grid that could help us restore power after an earthquake.

00:48:12.000 --> 00:48:18.000
It's a lot of data. How do we process it? What are the tools to use?

00:48:18.000 --> 00:48:41.000
Then finally, communication. Probably one of my favorite diagrams here just the interdependency of all utilities, right. I'm speaking to power and gas but there's telecom, right, that's necessary to communicate there's transit regional roads that are going to be needed to get the supplies and the equipment to the locations of damage and

00:48:41.000 --> 00:48:46.000
provide restoration. All these elements are tied together.

00:48:46.000 --> 00:49:06.000
And how do we overlay with each other? How do we fit together? Are we sure we're going to have what we think we'll have in that moment so that we can recover. That's a question to be asked, right. So how do we coordinate all our lifelines together to understand our interdependencies, right. Are there any gaps? Do we have it?

00:49:06.000 --> 00:49:13.000
Do we have it all planned out to a T? Or are there gaps that we still need to close?

00:49:13.000 --> 00:49:26.000
So bring it back, right. It's like we're doing work, right. We've talked a little bit about kind of PG&E as a whole. We've talked a little bit about the electric system and its resilience. We talked a little bit about communities and all the different

00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:33.000
needs within a community and what PG&E does to assess those today.

00:49:33.000 --> 00:49:40.000
And perhaps the call that I'll make to all of you is just we're not done yet. There's still more to do.

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:53.000
And honestly, we need your help, right. We need to help figure out how to standardize what good looks like. We need to figure out how to be able to ingest all that data that's available today. We need to figure out how do we engage

00:49:53.000 --> 00:50:02.000
and have the right stakeholders in these conversations so that we can get better, right. And we can find our gaps before they appear.

00:50:02.000 --> 00:50:07.000
So with that, I'll leave you with these questions and I'll leave you with my contact information.

00:50:07.000 --> 00:50:19.000
And if you have thoughts, if you have ideas, if there's something that you've been wanting to do and haven't had a chance to my name is Brian Lowe. I'm here. This is my email address and you can reach me

00:50:19.000 --> 00:50:24.000
any time of the day and I'm happy to engage and we will get better together.

00:50:24.000 --> 00:50:29.000
Thank you.

00:50:29.000 --> 00:50:35.000
Thank you. Thank you, Brian. I like the way we're all in this together.








00:50:35.000 --> 00:50:42.000
So we're into the discussion part of this session 

00:50:42.000 --> 00:50:47.000
and Monica, did you want to kick this off or shall I put something out there?

00:50:47.000 --> 00:50:57.000
I think you posed a great question in their tying Brian's presentations together with Melanie's presentation.

00:50:57.000 --> 00:50:59.000
So why don't you start with that one?

00:50:59.000 --> 00:51:14.000
Yeah, Brian, my question was along the lines of how do you consider schools in the restoration of power after hearing Melanie's presentation?

00:51:14.000 --> 00:51:28.000
I don't think I have a good answer for that, but I'll preface for earthquakes specifically, I don't have a good answer. I think we talked about PSPS and kind of all the other mitigations that

00:51:28.000 --> 00:51:50.000
utility companies do, understanding who the end customers are for when proactive public safety shutoffs occur is I think that's a piece of the puzzle. So being able to disseminate that information I think from that group throughout PG&E to all the other groups is probably the piece that's missing.

00:51:50.000 --> 00:52:05.000
I feel like, you know, for schools specifically, right, is how do we start to, how do we start to assess those relative to the others, like I think about emergency services, I think about homes, I think about utilities, right.

00:52:05.000 --> 00:52:19.000
Where do schools fall within that ranking, right. Maybe that FEMA guide, FEMA P-29 might be the best place to start as at least listing them out together, right, and being able to prioritize

00:52:19.000 --> 00:52:29.000
in a, I'm trying to find a better word than fair, but being able to prioritize in a reasonable fashion.

00:52:29.000 --> 00:52:36.000
Thanks, Brian. It sounds like the communications are not standardized.

00:52:36.000 --> 00:52:43.000
Or are they kind of they vary by region perhaps in relationships?

00:52:43.000 --> 00:52:59.000
That's a SPUR question, isn't it? Yeah, I would say definitely by regions. You can think about it. There's the Oregon Resilience Plan, right. I think somebody had mentioned SPUR. That's actually a unique one. And you had mentioned in the chat. 

00:52:59.000 --> 00:53:11.000
I think the unique thing is like it happened in 2014 and here we are in 2025. We haven't done it again, yet right, so it's that continued conversation. It's not just you do it one time and you're done, right. Like you have to continually have that conversation as we learn more.

00:53:11.000 --> 00:53:16.000
So I see Melanie's hand, got up. Thank you.

00:53:16.000 --> 00:53:25.000
And, you know, it's like What I find fascinating, it's when I find fascinating when, like when you look at when we did the study, it was pre-COVID.

00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:43.000
We worked on analyzing our study and publishing our study during COVID and you're like, oh my god isn't this so obvious, and it's so obvious also obvious to us because we all had to deal with kids not being able to go to school at some point, I'm sure. So

00:53:43.000 --> 00:53:47.000
to me, this is one of the most glaring aspects in, I think, emergency preparedness.

00:53:47.000 --> 00:53:56.000
That we have not covered. I think it's one of those things that we just accept as a given without really thinking through what all the ripple effects are and the repercussions.

00:53:56.000 --> 00:54:07.000
So with regard to like power restoration, how many schools do you know that have a backup generators? You know where the generator can run the whole school.

00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:31.000
Or that have water supply, like if we were to really think about hardening schools, like we think about hardening other sort of critical emergency management services we wouldn't be at where we are right now. So I think there's a lot that we could do with regard to hardening schools and not just like earthquake retrofitting.

00:54:31.000 --> 00:54:34.000
But also power generation, etc.

00:54:34.000 --> 00:54:58.000
I think one of the challenges is that there is no list of critical infrastructure per se, because what is designated as critical infrastructure for a public safety power shutoff is different than the list for an earthquake is different than a list for some other event. And so now you have all of these different lists potentially competing and

00:54:58.000 --> 00:55:08.000
what's where, when creating those challenges. In your presentation, Brian, you talked about kind of that need to look across infrastructures.

00:55:08.000 --> 00:55:22.000
As well as that concept of understanding what are acceptable outage times there's a lot of variability in that like an outage time for school might be different than for somebody else.

00:55:22.000 --> 00:55:34.000
And so how do you see kind of that understanding of outage times and the acceptability of timeframes there merging into this understanding of infrastructure.

00:55:34.000 --> 00:55:55.000
I love it, Monica. I feel like we hit it a little bit with Melanie's comment as far as just like we do the structural reinforcement of schools, but do we do the functional reinforcement of schools and making sure those things come back online? Maybe giving them similar systems to what hospitals have, right, a backup battery or backup power.

00:55:55.000 --> 00:56:07.000
When I think about what are the timelines for these elements, right. I think about immediate, right. Like never turned off, right. I think about minutes, I think about hours, I think about days, I think about weeks, months.

00:56:07.000 --> 00:56:16.000
Depending on what level you have designed your building, it could be a long duration of time before you're able to get back into it.

00:56:16.000 --> 00:56:33.000
The merging of the elements together, right, across all the different lifelines I feel like we do a lot of work,  I'm going to speak from my perspective as a civil engineer. We do a lot of work in ASC7. We're trying to implement functional recovery in ASC7, codify it today.

00:56:33.000 --> 00:56:39.000
And then we go to lifelines. We have a recommended practice. We have an initial framework. We have a ways to go.

00:56:39.000 --> 00:57:03.000
And the idea of, yes, all of the lifelines are overlayered with each other like as you speak about how do we interact, how do we communicate with each other like it just reminds me of, I think about Mikel and everything in Southern California, right. And you think about not being able to have water, and you know power, what what gives water pressure?

00:57:03.000 --> 00:57:17.000
How does a pump get energy right, from electricity, right. Like, all these pieces are connected and like if I don't know, if I don't know which pump is connected to which line, which one's most critical, which one supplies that fire water system.

00:57:17.000 --> 00:57:25.000
How am I supposed to make sure that that line is reinforced for whichever hazard may appear, right?

00:57:25.000 --> 00:57:38.000
I think to me that's where the standardization comes in right of I love my buildings. I love ASC7. I love having a standard to strive for, right. And figuring out how to help close that gap with lifelines is really

00:57:38.000 --> 00:57:51.000
I think where we can start to have these conversations more frequently, right? It's not the one-off SPUR conversation. It's not the one-off organization resiliency plan conversation. It's a continual review of where we stand.

00:57:51.000 --> 00:58:04.000
Yeah, I think that kind of captures some of the challenges and shifting over to Mikel, you talked about kind of that whole of community, the importance of building relations 

00:58:04.000 --> 00:58:27.000
on that. Taking this concept of understanding timelines of outages and all of that. How do we go about learning from the different aspects of community what that means for them on what's acceptable, what's kind of that range of tolerance.

00:58:27.000 --> 00:58:36.000
Here's what we can deal with an outage of two minutes is an issue or we can deal with an outage of a day, but we need to have advanced. How do we learn about that?

00:58:36.000 --> 00:58:47.000
That's actually a very interesting question, Monica. Sarah and I met working on a power outage project in Northern California, and it actually is very applicable here.

00:58:47.000 --> 00:58:52.000
So a lot of the information for that was gathered from public complaint sessions.

00:58:52.000 --> 00:59:13.000
They were all recorded and it was what communities were excluded from the power startup after a planned power shutoff for a storm which ended up damaging infrastructure and they had to replace some transmission equipment.

00:59:13.000 --> 00:59:34.000
I was going to ask Brian, how often do you go into community groups before as you're doing this planning? Do you go down to that level or are you guys really looking at more formalized organizations that deal with power?

00:59:34.000 --> 00:59:41.000
Sorry. And it all comes back to me today.

00:59:41.000 --> 00:59:42.000
Power runs everything.

00:59:42.000 --> 00:59:48.000
It's critical, right? We should have something that guides us.

00:59:48.000 --> 00:59:54.000
I think about engagement with the communities is that was probably a piece of PG&E that was lacking for a long time.

00:59:54.000 --> 01:00:16.000
And I'd say that that has significantly changed. As far as having like a regional service model folks that are intertwined with the community and organizations within a community so there's PG&E, like 27,000, 28,000 people. I myself do not enter into the community, but there's definitely a team, a community outreach organization that maybe I could drop a link in the chat.

01:00:16.000 --> 01:00:27.000
That's their sole purpose is to engage with the community, understand what the needs of the community are, and make sure that we're serving in the best way possible.

01:00:27.000 --> 01:00:40.000
I just, I dream of the day where we could take all those public complaints and turn it into, this is where we need to be, right. And establish that limit. As an engineering mind, like this is what I need to achieve, and now I can try to achieve it.

01:00:40.000 --> 01:00:46.000
Whereas if I don't have the goal, like I'm working, but what am i working towards?

01:00:46.000 --> 01:01:08.000
It's very hard to do when it's at the complaint stage and sort of easier in the mitigation stage when you're trying to plan for these outages and you know where the particular blackout, the schools in one district, which was the more affluent district, were re-energized in the schools in the not as affluent district weren't re-energized

01:01:08.000 --> 01:01:21.000
And it was based on a policy that made sense. It was where there was the greatest amount of outage, they got there first and what was the easiest for the lineman to fix one of them had a more complicated outage.

01:01:21.000 --> 01:01:34.000
But in fact, the impact to the schools in the less affluent district was the childcare, the food, all of the things that a community relies on for schools that are outside of education.

01:01:34.000 --> 01:01:46.000
That didn't come into play with the more affluent and that's the kind of information that has to come out before something goes wrong or else it's very hard to fix on the fly.

01:01:46.000 --> 01:01:52.000
Yeah, and that really builds into kind of Melanie, I think you raised your hand and aligns with your presentation.

01:01:52.000 --> 01:02:11.000
Yeah, I just wanted to quickly add, and I didn't have the time to Google it. I'm like, oh, does it still exist? And maybe it exists in California. So you tell me. But I recall I used to live for several years in Louisiana and I remember the city of New Orleans had compiled a database of power

01:02:11.000 --> 01:02:29.000
households that have power dependent health equipment. So because I think it's really hard for you know, like PG&E to be the one reaching into the community and trying to collect that information. So there, I want to say it was in the Office of Emergency Management 

01:02:29.000 --> 01:02:44.000
who developed and hopefully still maintains that kind of database? Because I think this information a tells you where maybe you have a lot of vulnerable populations, maybe where you really need to provide assistance and kind of plan for this.

01:02:44.000 --> 01:02:54.000
It's, you know, I think it's not just there's not just a need for the power or the utility companies to know where these residents are. I think if you think about disaster preparedness and response.

01:02:54.000 --> 01:03:00.000
There are more entities that need to have this information.

01:03:00.000 --> 01:03:08.000
There's often a lot of information out there. We just don't necessarily know it exists or where it's at and how to connect with it.

01:03:08.000 --> 01:03:13.000
Before we move on, I see a hand up among the participants, Albert.

01:03:13.000 --> 01:03:28.000
I just wanted to help Brian out a little bit. I think one of the things that first of all, in terms of lifeline customers, we've learned that and we have that great database now for PSPS events. And we're learning a lot about responding to power outages.

01:03:28.000 --> 01:03:36.000
For PSPS events and wind events. I think the big outstanding question in my mind is how does that translate to earthquakes?

01:03:36.000 --> 01:03:43.000
Because the challenges that we see for those other outage events may not be the same that we're going to see for an earthquake.

01:03:43.000 --> 01:03:51.000
But anyways, it's been a good conversation. Thanks, Brian.

01:03:51.000 --> 01:03:56.000
Thanks, Albert. Albert's going to do the next presentation.

01:03:56.000 --> 01:04:01.000
Well, since it went back to Brian, can I ask, I had a question about the Lifeline Council.

01:04:01.000 --> 01:04:12.000
Regarding the interdependency problem. I just wondered if you had participated in the San Francisco Lifeline Council and you know, what you've been able to get out of it.

01:04:12.000 --> 01:04:34.000
I did not participate in that SPUR report from 2014, so not me specifically. PG&E was a part of it, there's a big part of our organization, I think that came around and wasn't directly involved within that SPUR report. There's a lot of call out specifically to PG&E and electric and gas infrastructure.

01:04:34.000 --> 01:04:56.000
We've been engaged with the City of San Francisco and the resiliency office and we still have ongoing conversations I would say nothing nearly as in-depth as what was done for that lifeline interdependency study.

01:04:56.000 --> 01:05:01.000
Kind of tossing out a question to all three of you.

01:05:01.000 --> 01:05:22.000
And tying together your areas of expertise with kind of has earthquake hazard mitigation activitie.  In that sense, how can the work that's being done in mitigating earthquake hazards also be used to reduce the impacts of like school delays, closures

01:05:22.000 --> 01:05:28.000
impact to the different communities, kind of taking it through your lens on that sense.

01:05:28.000 --> 01:05:35.000
So is there one of you who wants to chime in first?

01:05:35.000 --> 01:05:36.000
Yeah, we can loop back around again.

01:05:36.000 --> 01:05:52.000
I can give you a shot and kick us off. So I, you know, we talked about this like earlier you know, Brian also mentioned it, I think this on the school side is certainly being able to keep them functional.

01:05:52.000 --> 01:06:01.000
Because I think this, we've seen how important they are and I think maybe something I didn't mention before too.

01:06:01.000 --> 01:06:14.000
So there's research out there. When you think about recovery schools, return to school is one of the early indicators for people to getting a sense of normalcy.

01:06:14.000 --> 01:06:32.000
And getting back to however you define normal. So their functionality is not just obviously important for the students to get education, etc., etc., but in terms of community recovery, it's one of the key indicators that you're on, you know.

01:06:32.000 --> 01:06:40.000
On the road to recovery. So I think hardening schools is really important. Like, you know, earthquake retrofitting, etc.

01:06:40.000 --> 01:07:02.000
Raising funds for it. I think there's also probably very little awareness, I would say maybe among parents you know it's not something necessarily that parents advocate for in terms of the facility of the school, you know, maybe they want a basketball court or something else, but nobody really thinks about sort of the risk profile of their school and if the students are safe.

01:07:02.000 --> 01:07:20.000
I mean, obviously in our space, we probably all think about this, but I think, you know, your general parent might not have that awareness. Is my kid actually safe in school, safe from an earthquake compared to where they live?

01:07:20.000 --> 01:07:34.000
And I think that's actually statewide. I mean, in California, we have requirements from the Long Beach earthquake in the 1930s where you had to harden schools to a certain extent and then when Northridge happened and the three big earthquakes

01:07:34.000 --> 01:07:46.000
Each time schools were focused on, but it's also very limited. It's that the buildings don't fall down, but not that the sort of essential service of the schools is maintained,

01:07:46.000 --> 01:07:54.000
Which is sort of needed to sort of get back into your real life, to go back to work and all the other things that come with it.

01:07:54.000 --> 01:07:59.000
Would it be a bad idea if I tried to share my screen?

01:07:59.000 --> 01:08:01.000
I'm going to look to maybe John or Ann. I don't want to ruin this thing.

01:08:01.000 --> 01:08:06.000
Yeah, you can try. Brian, you can try that. Sure.

01:08:06.000 --> 01:08:12.000
It might be a bad idea. I don't know. I'm just going to share this note because the school thing.

01:08:12.000 --> 01:08:17.000
I just got, it just raised something in my mind. My screen is sharing.

01:08:17.000 --> 01:08:25.000
Can you all see my mouse? Like, look at that. Schools!

01:08:25.000 --> 01:08:38.000
So like, I guess I think about this in terms of, I think in this conversation, right, schools is top priority. I think that's what we're most familiar with. That's what we're discussing.

01:08:38.000 --> 01:08:52.000
And the idea of just speak about buildings and the structure resiliency and like we want to go farther. We want to go to functional recovery. We want to go to the idea of you can recover a school in days to weeks. Is that okay? Is days to weeks the timeline?

01:08:52.000 --> 01:08:57.000
Or is it really like I need it in a week I can't take weeks. You're allowed one week.

01:08:57.000 --> 01:09:14.000
Right. And like. Until we actually have that conversation of what is the expectation and we are able to prioritize schools and other facilities against emergency response, against grocery stores, against other things, leisure, right? Like it's going to be hard.

01:09:14.000 --> 01:09:28.000
It's going to be hard to get there because we're not We're going to keep working in our right and keep digging deeper into it But bringing it all back together, right, to get a collective group headed in a direction I think

01:09:28.000 --> 01:09:32.000
to me is the challenge that we got to work ourselves work through.

01:09:32.000 --> 01:09:42.000
We're in the infancy of conceptual and it's just working to this is the bar that we're trying to achieve.

01:09:42.000 --> 01:09:46.000
I'm going to try to stop sharing my screen and not ruin everything.

01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:57.000
So just to chime in, Brian, so I actually did some, you know, document Googling too before our session to see again where schools are actually mentioned in the FEMA lifeline documents.

01:09:57.000 --> 01:10:15.000
And I would swear there was a time during COVID where schools actually showed up in that there's the first lifeline safety, I think public safety or something like that and there was a time when they were mentioned. Now, again, I only see government services.

01:10:15.000 --> 01:10:25.000
And not an explicit calling out of schools. So look in your documents and see where you find them. I think they're sort of like an add-on. There's a list of this and this and this and this,

01:10:25.000 --> 01:10:35.000
but I think there is very little focus. I think on sort of schools and maybe related infrastructures like Libraries, for instance.

01:10:35.000 --> 01:10:47.000
And when we talk about heart infrastructure, schools, libraries, etc., are not included in that. The infrastructure that we need you know to make communities livable and resilient. 

01:10:47.000 --> 01:11:05.000
I mean, Brian, you brought up the great point on we focus on the physical infrastructure of hardening the school but that's not necessarily functional resilience and I know often post event or so they're used for shelters and they're used for

01:11:05.000 --> 01:11:09.000
other services and activities.

01:11:09.000 --> 01:11:26.000
So then their function as a school gets pushed a further and further back or the impact on the teachers and so you have these cascading impacts that make it not functionally resilient, even if the buildings are all perfectly standing.

01:11:26.000 --> 01:11:32.000
All that. We have a question from the audience. Somewhat audience. Hi, Sarah.

01:11:32.000 --> 01:11:34.000
Go for it.

01:11:34.000 --> 01:11:44.000
So Melanie started to answer this question in the chat, but I wanted to put a question out to everyone. So, okay, so you have a captive audience of earthquake hazards resource out here.

01:11:44.000 --> 01:12:01.000
And you've identified a lot of critical needs that need to be addressed, preferably mitigated before the next earthquake happens So to each of you, what would you like the earthquake hazards research community, what you most want them to look at
 
01:12:01.000 --> 01:12:16.000
to learn, to be able to your communities so that you can help mitigate the hazards that you have identified.

01:12:16.000 --> 01:12:21.000
I'll go because I was just talking about this yesterday.

01:12:21.000 --> 01:12:29.000
If I had my druthers, I would love standardized earthquake scenarios tied with probability of occurrence.

01:12:29.000 --> 01:12:39.000
And I want standardized geohazards, I don't want a different model for every location. I want you to just give me a standard that I could try to attain across 70,000 square miles of California.

01:12:39.000 --> 01:12:55.000
Right. And then I can assess things relatively to each other. Then I can start to fold in schools. Then I can start to fold in these other elements. If I keep getting this shifting goal. I can't go to the next step. I'm stuck. I keep going in circles.

01:12:55.000 --> 01:13:03.000
I think for earthquake hazard research, that would be my ask. I was just looking at the USGS scenarios, right.

01:13:03.000 --> 01:13:09.000
There's some. I could definitely use more.

01:13:09.000 --> 01:13:18.000
Yeah, and also to support a risk analysis.  Yeah.

01:13:18.000 --> 01:13:33.000
Well, since we are kind of in that Northern California component looping in the HayWired scenario, I think one of the things that's unique about that USGS scenario is it starts looking broader than just the physical impacts of the earthquake.

01:13:33.000 --> 01:13:47.000
It started really looking at the socioeconomic impacts and the broader critical infrastructure impacts and so what does that mean for recovery And so as we're looking at these scenarios.

01:13:47.000 --> 01:13:57.000
How do we take that bigger picture? On that because it's easy to here's how it's going to damage these buildings we're pretty good at that.

01:13:57.000 --> 01:14:05.000
And how do we branch out into some of these other areas? Like Melanie, since your research,

01:14:05.000 --> 01:14:16.000
Which is now almost a decade or decades since that flood . How have you seen the research in terms of schools and earthquakes or disasters evolve?

01:14:16.000 --> 01:14:22.000
In terms of taking that consideration into it.

01:14:22.000 --> 01:14:34.000
So, you know. Disclaimer or preface, whatever you call it. I broadly sort of a hazard mitigation researcher so schools are not my focus.

01:14:34.000 --> 01:14:39.000
The reason why I started looking at schools is because I was impacted myself when this happened.

01:14:39.000 --> 01:14:50.000
I actually dragged my kid, who was just a year at that time with me to do field research. So I saw it in the chats earlier. We're used to taking our kids to work, etc.

01:14:50.000 --> 01:15:01.000
So that impetus, you know, to even think about schools was completely like selfish. I'm like, okay, if I am impacted How are other people impacted?

01:15:01.000 --> 01:15:18.000
That triggered the study. And then as you see, we just published the study two years ago, and so we actually continuously looked at the emerging research especially with COVID, we're like, there has to be more research on that. And there is not.

01:15:18.000 --> 01:15:27.000
So when you look at COVID, there is still two big tracks when you look at the impacts related to school closures, it was educational attainment.

01:15:27.000 --> 01:15:32.000
How did it affect the learning of children? And then is it an effective public health measure?

01:15:32.000 --> 01:15:37.000
So what I was shocked by when COVID hit us,

01:15:37.000 --> 01:15:41.000
and based on the research that we've done that we were working on 

01:15:41.000 --> 01:15:51.000
is the CDC had a database for a limited time period related to the swine flu where they were actually tracking school closures.

01:15:51.000 --> 01:15:58.000
And when you investigate, so the CDC did research with that data and they published studies from that database.

01:15:58.000 --> 01:16:06.000
And they saw in their database most closures were related to weather events.

01:16:06.000 --> 01:16:22.000
And I think we are just not we could do a lot, I think, in trying to document and capture how often do schools actually close and what is the impact? There's just very little. Like I try to advocate and you saw it in the presentation

01:16:22.000 --> 01:16:34.000
to really look at schools also in cost-benefit analyses that FEMA does. So if you're a community and you have to advocate for the resources to do risk mitigation 

01:16:34.000 --> 01:16:43.000
you always have to do these calculations. You know, is it worth the investment? Do we get a better benefit from any mitigation projects.

01:16:43.000 --> 01:16:55.000
And I think it would be exceedingly difficult for a community to advocate to do, you know, harden the infrastructure or, you know.

01:16:55.000 --> 01:17:13.000
buy a generator for school you know like who's responsible for that who pays for that. So trying to even get proposals across the finish line and make the case We need this. There's very little data to support this. And this is why I was so insistent in our research group, like, okay 

01:17:13.000 --> 01:17:24.000
let's put it out there and let's calculate this value, what is a standard value for having a school open? What does that mean socioeconomically 

01:17:24.000 --> 01:17:42.000
for a community. And I think there is just so much more room to provide data and information for jurisdictions to like advocate, you know, apply for federal funds to get some of these mitigation projects off the ground because I would venture to say

01:17:42.000 --> 01:17:47.000
that we're a little bit stuck in the type of mitigation projects we're doing.

01:17:47.000 --> 01:18:02.000
A, we're not doing enough mitigation, but I think also the type of mitigation that we put forth are somewhat prescribed based on the system in which we operate, you know, like, oh, we've always used these kind of applications, these kind of projects 

01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:14.000
let's put them forth you know easy to evaluate. But I think we need to get a little bit more creative what other types of mitigation projects we need and how do we make it happen that they get implemented 

01:18:14.000 --> 01:18:16.000
beyond schools.

01:18:16.000 --> 01:18:23.000
I think that really tied together a lot of these components. So thank you for all of that, Melanie.

01:18:23.000 --> 01:18:31.000
Before I kind of go and check in with the...

01:18:31.000 --> 01:18:32.000
Oh, you know.

01:18:32.000 --> 01:18:36.000
I want to answer the question about the earthquake information and also in response to the previous conversation.

01:18:36.000 --> 01:18:57.000
I think that what I would love is data sharing, which is across all of it. So power outages, when you're trying to gather data on that, a lot of it is tied up in lawsuits if you're trying to look at historical, but if data could be shared among different types of researchers, I think it'd be a 

01:18:57.000 --> 01:19:03.000
 great help for what I'm doing with this stuff.

01:19:03.000 --> 01:19:08.000
Particularly what kind of data can you use.

01:19:08.000 --> 01:19:20.000
Really like power outages. So really trying to gather the data so the earthquake data I've been able to gather, although I don't know, I can't follow the engineering part of it.

01:19:20.000 --> 01:19:38.000
But knowing how we can plan for certain areas in certain regions down to very small blocks so that we're able to really look at populations where they are because sprinkled throughout the city, the strengths of the populations are very varied.

01:19:38.000 --> 01:19:46.000
And sort of what they're receiving is varied.

01:19:46.000 --> 01:20:03.000
So in the last few minutes that we have. I want to kind of toss out a final question to each of the three of you and it's a two-part so the first part is if you could ask a single question for the audience or the participants to

01:20:03.000 --> 01:20:18.000
muse on into the future. What would it be? And then also, is there any final tip or guidance that you want to share as they think about kind of their own work going into the future.

01:20:18.000 --> 01:20:34.000
And as they're thinking about that, are there any final questions from the participants kind of that you didn't get answered or as has been occurring on the side, you know, sharing of some resources. If you know of some good contacts, some good

01:20:34.000 --> 01:20:39.000
information sources. Feel free to drop those in the chat.

01:20:39.000 --> 01:20:46.000
We have the opportunity to mutually share among all of the participants on the call as well.

01:20:46.000 --> 01:20:56.000
So turning back to the three of you, is there one of you who would like to kind of start off first.

01:20:56.000 --> 01:20:59.000
Otherwise, I'll just call on one.

01:20:59.000 --> 01:21:00.000
Okay, I'll give it a shot, Brian, because you've always been in the hot seat here.

01:21:00.000 --> 01:21:03.000
I'll do it.

01:21:03.000 --> 01:21:10.000
So, and I want to extend, I'm just going to take the liberty to do this because, you know, we amongst us.

01:21:10.000 --> 01:21:35.000
So what I would really would like to throw out because my background is very much, like I said, risk reduction, loss accounting. How is it that disaster losses and not a quality of life metric. How is it that when we look at communities, we look at crime rates, quality of schools.

01:21:35.000 --> 01:21:45.000
How is that not on people's radar.

01:21:45.000 --> 01:21:52.000
It's a good one.

01:21:52.000 --> 01:21:56.000
So Brian, you have been on the hot seat. What if we go with Mikel first.

01:21:56.000 --> 01:22:13.000
I would really look at how i would really look at how we can use all of our different knowledges and skills to create risk sharing insurance that everyone can have access to. We're going to have sort of more and more

01:22:13.000 --> 01:22:37.000
and larger and larger disasters. How can we create systems without using words that get that get us in trouble that can continue to create resilience like insurance. How can we make it open and possible in a greater risked world?

01:22:37.000 --> 01:22:52.000
I had a list of five questions, so I'm looking at the list and picking out which one I like best. But maybe I think for this audience specifically, I think about a USGS audience is what earthquake hazard level and hazard maps should our community align our performance to?

01:22:52.000 --> 01:22:53.000
What's the standard? Can we get a standard? So that would be my ask.

01:22:53.000 --> 01:22:57.000
Yeah.

01:22:57.000 --> 01:23:08.000
My beg. And then final tip or guidance, I think. About your own work going in the future is communication, right.

01:23:08.000 --> 01:23:11.000
I saw some things in the chat. We got this 2024 new scenarios.

01:23:11.000 --> 01:23:23.000
Just continuing to spread the word, continuing to have these forums where we can engage that conversation across disciplines, right. So that we all can kind of move cohesively together

01:23:23.000 --> 01:23:29.000
Three great final points and questions for us to contemplate and use as we go forward.

01:23:29.000 --> 01:23:53.000
Into this you know kind of adding on from my own experience in this arena I'll toss out the kind of question on what assumptions are we making about the planning that we are doing that we're not necessarily cognizantly aware of that we're assuming kind of those hidden assumptions that are driving and changing 

01:23:53.000 --> 01:24:06.000
how we perceive and analyze information, the decisions we make. And Anne, I'll toss it over for you to close. We're pretty close to the top of the hour.

01:24:06.000 --> 01:24:12.000
Oh, I thought you had a second part to your question. I can close.

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But may I take the liberty to ask Mikel about her fire experience and any thoughts she's had about the recovery of populations that are characterized as ALICE.

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That's actually an interesting question because the perception of this fire is that it hit relatively affluent communities.

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Even Altadena, their average home cost is about 1.3 million is how the houses are valued.

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And yet there's large populations of analysts sort of spread within there.

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And it's still forming the first thing that I've noticed happening is trying to reopen the schools. There were four or five schools that were burnt in each of the big fires, and they're now partnering them with other schools and trying to get that started.

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The hitting the ALICE populations, I'm actually not sure how the fire recovery is going to actually do that. They're using a lot of the nice words that we always use and sort of reaching across to communities.

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But they haven't really started doing any recovery yet. That timeline is you know a year or so out before they're really doing active recovery.

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There's been a very active group looking at day laborers and domestic workers who are impacted in the fire in economic recovery, but not in housing recovery.

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Yeah, thanks for the update. And all the best 

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down there. And thanks to everyone. I love the way we all kind of cross paths with each other in this conversation.

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Wow, that was an amazing session. Thank you so much. Thank you to our amazing speakers, Mikel, Melanie, Brian. That was so informative and I think it gave us all a lot to chew on. Thank you so much to Monica and Anne for moderating it. [big hand]

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And. Okay, next is everybody's favorite part.

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A break. They have a 15 minute break before we come back for our exciting first round of Thunder Talks.

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I feel nice. A sugar response.

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So everybody who isn't giving a thunder talk in the force group could go off, take a little time to relax and bring themselves back together. But if you are in the Force Thunder Talks.

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Max, Taylor, John, Sue, Loy. Alex, Teresa, Yeehah.

01:26:49.000 --> 01:26:54.000
Chris, Rob. John. John Louie and John Wendell.

01:26:54.000 --> 01:26:56.000
And more, please stick around and we'll get you all set up to go.

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See you