Stanford escaped Tuesday night’s 5.6 magnitude earthquake with virtually no damage to any of its buildings and no serious disruption of its services. But the possibility of major disruptions following “the Big One” necessitates that the school’s Environment Health and Safety Department (EHSD) have procedures in place for the worst-case scenario.

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Shams Shaikh

Professor Anne Kiremidjian, Dept of Civil and Environmental Engineering, explains to another faculty member why the seismograph located outside the library on the mezzanine level of Terman Engineering Center failed to record the 5.6 richter-scale earthquake which rocked the Stanford campus on Tuesday. According to Professor Kiremidjian, the seismograph’s magnification was decreased to make it less sensitive to shaking caused by construction work.

According to Keith Perry, training and communications director of EHSD’s Emergency Management division, emergency earthquake procedures went into action immediately following Tuesday’s tremor in order to assess its effect on the campus.

“In responding to the event [Tuesday] night, our procedures worked quite well,” Perry said. “The response team reacted literally within minutes.”

Though the initial earthquake — whose epicenter was located in the foothills nine miles northeast of San Jose — caused no major damage to the campus, Perry said that Emergency Management will be on heightened watch throughout the next week out of concern that additional seismic activity could occur. The aftershocks that might follow an earthquake such as this one, he said, could be even more severe than the original 5.6 magnitude quake.

“The [U.S. Geological Survey] issues estimates of potential aftershocks,” Perry said. “We certainly are on alert status because there certainly is a possibility of aftershocks.”

As of press time, there were 41 aftershocks with an epicenter in Alum Rock, CA, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The highest recorded aftershock had a magnitude of 3.7

The 7.8 magnitude San Francisco earthquake of 1906 destroyed many parts of the campus, including parts of the original facade of the Quad, and was the single most devastating earthquake in University history. If a similar quake were to happen today, there would likely be an entirely different set of complications altogether.

In such a case, communications would probably be disrupted throughout most of the Bay Area.

“In the large earthquake, we would expect reduced service for both landline and cellular phones,” said Perry, who also recommended that students with family in the Bay Area try to establish an emergency contact elsewhere, as contacting someone in an area not affected by the earthquake would probably be much easier.

The Emergency Management team has also developed an emergency exercise scenario to establish a guideline for handling whatever needs could possibly arise following a disaster. Perry said that, following a major earthquake, the emergency team would establish a central emergency response center with satellites spread throughout the campus to deal with problems as they arose.

He added that Emergency Management is in the process of evaluating how their response teams reacted to Tuesday’s moderate quake so as to reevaluate procedures for more damaging earthquakes.

“We are collecting info from everyone who participated in the event,” he said, “to assess if any changes need to be made.”

Students expressed varied degrees of awareness regarding proper earthquake protocol following Tuesday’s earthquake.

“I’m on staff and I’m a Bay-Area resident, so I knew about duck and cover and the assembly point,” Grace Hsu ‘08 said. “I think that some of the out-of-state residents were a little freaked out.”

Perry recommends that all students try to formulate a personal response plan for what to do in the event of a major earthquake. He claimed that “small ones like this are a very good wakeup call to people” and suggested students think about how they will contact their families following a major earthquake, as well as about having emergency supplies on hand and securing their living areas to prevent damage and injury.

“I guess upon reflection I realize that using my cell phone would be a bad idea because all the lines will be tied up,” Evan Miyazono ‘10 said. “I figure that as long as the earthquake is here, my first priority should be my safety and that my family will probably get in contact with me eventually.”