StandardNET www.standard.net What damage would an Ogden earthquake do? Friday, March 03, 2000 By JOEY HAWS Standard-Examiner staff EMMITSBURG, Md. -- Five seconds was all it took to turn a relatively routine day for Weber County and Ogden City emergency management workers into five hours of sheer chaos. Until 11 a.m., life was pretty normal for all concerned. Emergency 911 dispatchers handled the usual calls of job-related accidents, car crashes, crime and other emergency calls. Public works employees took calls from people reporting missing street signs and broken water lines. Then it hit. Police and firefighters started reporting the effects of a major earthquake in the Weber County area: gigantic chunks of Harrison Boulevard caved in, parts of Interstate 15 near 31 st Street were raised 2 to 3 feet, and city water lines destroyed. But the most disturbing news was that the old, unreinforced masonry walls of Ogden schools had completely collapsed, leaving hundred of students, faculty and staff buried in the aftermath. Eventually the casualty count at this site alone would reach 278 injured, with 72 seriously hurt, 25 dead, and five missing. Fortunately, the devastating quake that measured 6.5 on the Richter scale was only an exercise conducted by instructors from the Emergency Management Institute in Emmitsburg, Md. The custom-designed emergency preparedness course, run by the Federal Emergency March 3, 2000 Management Agency, involved nearly 70 Ogden and Weber County employees , as well as several representative from relief services. Five hours later, the exhausted crew was able to take a break from the constant pressure of responding to county-wide devastation and panicked residents needing help. But few bemoaned the work involved. Earl Morris, director for Utah Emergency Management who worked in the policy group during the exercise, said that after his experience with the Riverdale canal break and Salt Lake City tornado last summer, a community can never do too much training to prepare for a disaster. "I can see how critical this relationship (between city and county agencies) can be when there is a disaster, because ultimately something will happen where they will be forced to work together," Morris said. "These kind of training exercises help you know who the people are that you'll have to call and who you'll have to work with. "These folks here, after going through something like this, will be much more autonomous than most communities in the state of Utah, or any where else in the nation." These people had been eagerly looking forward to the chance to sharpen their skills, strengthen their knowledge and learn the ins and outs of how to respond to a disaster that would leave much ~ if not all ~ of the community in ruins and on its own for several days. Around the time city and county emergency managers found out they would participate in this course, a group of instructors from the course came to Ogden to look for potential hazards that would cause emergency personnel headaches if something ever happened. As the instructors toured the area, they found many hazards that could turn deadly on a large scale. Lt. Klint Anderson, public information officer for the Weber County Sheriffs Department, said that with two major interstate highways running through the valley, two dams in the Upper Valley and a major railroad line the area presented limitless possibilities for disasters if the area experienced a sizeable earthquake. 292