government provided -- almost $1 million from fema. i think altogether there was $3 billion in action put together by congress and other businesses so there were a lot of state and federal things came together. but it became clear that a lot more needed to be done to generate rebuilding on this scale. and the private sector and government secondors to meet needs otherwise not met. we have a great panel of speakers this morning who are leaders and represent different geographic areas that were affected by the loma prieta earthquake and folks on the front line helping their community. s -- helping their communities. and to plan working together.

first up is barbra garcia. i first became aquainted with barbra and her work when she was the director of a health clinic that provided services to folks in the watsonville area. she was creative in administering needs to the farming community. this was a group that wouldn't initially qualify for a lot of main stream programs. so we were able to provide assistance to them. after the earthquake barbra continued to be involved in the process of rebuilding the watsonville community, particularly focusing on the health and well being of the community. the red cross and other clinics throughout rural california. as the public health director and previous health director

she is conducting a -- an intense -- and housing. barbra will work with the needs and services and the aftermath of the earthquake and beyond. barbra? >> good morning. the loma prieta earthquake was probably a redefining of my career in 1989. i learned through crisis, it can create opportunity and conflict can bring collaboration and even friendship. and i was about -- i lived about five miles away from the epicenter of the loma prieta earthquake and our clinic was about seven miles from the epicenter. loma prieta means dark mountain.

and we would always say during the earthquake we were kind of on the dark side of the mountain. san francisco did an incredible job but to give you a little bit of background to the city. i think this experience also brought me to city government. i had worked in the non-profit field for over 25 years. the city of watsonville was not prepared to communicate with the 60% spanish-speaking community. the city was in a political conflict with its mexican-american leadership ruling by the supreme court to go from citywide elections to city elections that were to occur three weeks after the earthquake with the hope of its electing their first latino councilmember in years. neither the county nor city had a strong relationship with the spanish-community organization and after the hospital and the

foundation was damaged, our county health department headquarters was about 14 miles away and we quickly knew that we were on our own. and our clinic staff right after the earthquake continued to provide medical services right across the street at a plaza right in the park. and a fire captain coming by saw what we were doing and provided me with a radio. thank you, chief. that i used to -- i did a little bit of radio work when i was a ranger and i heard what they were asking for so i took this radio from the police -- from the fire department and listened all night to hear that they were asking for things so i thought wow. this would be great. so i asked for a generator and a large stadium light and extension cords. this allowed us to provide services for the next 24 hours.

for the next seven days since we knew the hospital was in and out of service. well, the next day after i had been calling for things, because i started asking for fuel for the generator and water the city officials came and took my radio away and said because we are not officially part of the e.o.c. i didn't know what the e.o.c. was so that's when i knew we were on our own and since then watsonville has elected over five latino mayors and council members. the response recovery and recovery relationship needs start now not after disasters as i learned when i tried get re'em bursement. i was denied three times. paul worked on that until the state did. because i did not have a -- with the city to provide those

services. so i made it a point that all of our community-based organizations have contracts with us vand m.o.u.'s with us to provide. and they are all disaster workers. managing disaster response donations and items and goods should be planned before to take advantage of the goodwill of individuals and communities and businesses to help with the response and recovery process, our company learned well that we were going to do dwop our own program. we were able to use this for grants for home repairs. if any of you have seen the pictures, all the houses looked like they leaned in to each other. we lost thousands of foundations. we repaired 1,000 water heerts and -- heaters and other home

repairs. we had donations to give to needy families. the city of watsonville was not prepared for donations and at the freeway entrances, the police at the freeway entrances basically telling trucks to go away because it did not have the capacity to manage donation s. how we managed our donations, especially, was we basically sent out -- we had all these campaigns going on for the voters. we took the campaign workers and made them into disaster workers and had them go out to do needs assessments for families and then from there we were able to meet carpenters, meet with housing and we were able to basically find people who wanted to volunteer and found people who wanted the services. recover begins with disaster response so city and county involvement with small businesses, nonprofits are essential and it was talked a

lot about that and talked about are the fact that we were all on our own. i saw one county person about five days after the disaster. and yet we were still providing services for over -- ended up basically continuing to provide medical services. and then as people -- food banks came back up, we were able to stop our food service. as the salvation army began doing some more of the services, we were able to drop some of the services we were doing but that was after coordinated efforts wall of the community-based organizations. and any of the time i have been talking in san francisco about disaster preparedness and what we saw in watsonville was that the first night of the -- after the earthquake we found over 3,000 people in parks and open space and we ended up with thousands of people continuing to be in parks and open space for months ahead -- after the earthquake. and so in a concentrated place

like san francisco with the housing shortage i'm always pressed to tell people to learn how to shelter people for a long period of time, how to deal with the fact that -- especially in san francisco, at least in watsonville people were living in their back yards and front yards for months at a time. here in san francisco we do not have that luxury so open space will be prime housing for a period of time. we also work with an international community and like in watsonville we had a very difficult time convincing people to come out from the shelter -- from the open space into the shelters because we had thousands of aftershocks and people knew because they lived in other countries that buildings would be -- are the major killers and they did not want to come back into any shelter. so it took us a long time to convince people that the shelters were safe. and lastly, i think what's important is defining what milestones recovery would be achieved after a disaster, we should do that now because it helps with expectations of our

communities like the essential priorities, what government functions will happen in the recovery process, what nonprocess groups like food banks, mental health clinics, when we hit and they become active, that's a milestone of recovery rand businesses. i think about the time that we had to talk to the red cross and the kind of food they were providing and the mobile trucks that they had and trying to convince them that maybe hiring some of the local restaurants in the community would be a much better idea. and which they did. and it reminds me of off-the-grid kind of restaurants that we have in san francisco. those would be in excellent position to be able to provide food ethnically specific food for communities around the city and provide the opportunity for the ability for these businesses to be able to survive. you won't believe the

billion-dollar industry there is in response, and if we can keep the billion dollars -- because there are organizations around -- and businesses around the country who make money off disasters. trying to move that back in the community to a local level so that our local businesses are disaster responders that can help them in the recovery process is very essential. thank you very much for your time. [applause] >> thank you. that's great. it brought back a lot of memories. our next speaker is mayor bates. first elected mayor bringing a lifetime of service including four years as alameda county supervisor and two decades a california legislator representing berkeley. he worked to build berkeley into an international powerhouse and because of these

efforts berkeley has been named the third most sustainable city in the united states in the peer review study by a major environmental organization. i would be remiss that i wouldn't mention that mayor bates was part of loma prieta. he and his wife worked hard to make the city of berkeley a national center of disaster resilience. mayor bates will discuss the importance of citizen awareness as loma prieta engaged with the city to address emergency preparedness headon. let's welcome mayor bates to the podium. [applause] >> thank you, paul. thank you very much. it's a pleasure to be at this beautiful building and i was reflecting back and i was at the baseball game 22 years ago.

how many of you were at the baseball game? i am the only one. two of us. i was sitting underneath the -- canned really stick park underneath second deck when the earthquake happened. the whole deck was like moving over us. i was thinking, that close from being killed because if it came down it would have been a disaster. the trick was trying to get back to berkeley. i come on public transportation and a friend of mine had a tv. as you can imagine one of these portable tv's. we realized that it wasn't running and the bridge was down. so it was quite an adventure getting back. what actually happened, i was able to get a bus that was headed down the peninsula and i asked them if they would give me a ride to the airport. i walked to the airport and rented a car and ended up going

around san jose to get back. a lot of my friends did not get back for a day or so. it was quite an eye opener to me. i have been an elected public official for a long time. during that time i have been very interested and concerned about disaster and disaster preparedness and how we can mitigate and plan and demand so when it happens we're prepared. and at berkeley -- i won't give you the whole litany -- but berkeley is one of those communities that is highly educated. we have 22 nobel prize winners from brerkly. the gentleman from fema, we have more people take "the new york times" percent-wise than new york city. we also take "the chronicle" in higher percentage than people? san francisco. i don't know. people in berkeley have been extremely generous. we have one of the highest tax rates in the nation. you know, not just in the state

but in the nation, and people have still said it's important for them to deal with disaster preparedness and to make steps -- earthquake our schools. so the citizens of berkeley have actually approved $362 million in bonds to strengthen our schools, all 16 schools have been strengthened or re paired or reconstructed. the city now has an earthquake-safe emergency command center. they've given us money to be able to -- what i really like, it's a really cool thing, an emergency water supply where they take it down to the bay and drop it in the bay and they can pump water all the way up to the hills if need be. or they can go to the lakes behind the city and tap in there and bring water. so when the earthquake occurs, we don't have any water, well, we will have some water because we're going to be able to do that. we'll be able to use that

supply. so that's been good. but the other thing that's happened is that we have recognized for a long time, look at -- as they indicated earlier, 72 hours is what you are going to be on your own. so we have to figure out ways in which we empower those communities and the nonprofit sector to take charge because it's going to be a long time before the city is going to be able to help them. so we have now about 60 caches. these are emergency stashes we put out in the community that's all over the community and they are in people's garages. they're available to that immediate neighborhood. in addition to having those stashes available things like emergency supplies. you can break in doors and open cars and have plans to cut off utilities, to be able to stop the gas lines so people know exactly how to do that. god help you if i -- i will

give you a splint and things like that. but people are thinking along that line. in 2005 berkeley said we need a mitigation plan, a recovery plan. so we're the first city in the nation to actually have that plan and we continue to upgrade that plan because it's important to not just to have it but continue to upgrade it and for people to be able on the alert. then lastly, i'd like to mention what berkeley has done which i think has been remarkable was that the people in the city council had the wisdom to say to people when a home changes hands or building changes hand, part of the real estate transfer tax can be used to strengthen your building. to use that money that can be available for people to be able to use the money to make the retrofits to tie the building down, to put it in the sheer walls. to do the things that are really required. and as a convery against, they

tell me that over 6 -- and as a consequence, they tell me that over 60% have been retrofitted for emergencies and hopefully when the big one comes we'll be in a situation where we'll see that our buildings do survive if they're strengthened enough to survive. i was amazed when i had a beautiful home in the south part of berkeley. it's on the flats. we had our home earthquake safe in the early 1970's and i talked to this guy and he was saying, you know, a lot of homes are earthquake safe but they really didn't do a very good job. they did it but they thought they were bolting things and make the right kinds of things but in some cases it doesn't -- really wasn't what it was supposed to have been. i said, why don't you come take a look at my house? sure enough, he goes in my house and said, come down here and climb down here and take a look. it's bolted but not bolted very well. you can see the sheer walls are

not strong as they should be. in fact, the front of your house, the way it comes out you need to put in a concrete -- a retainer along -- in the basement to tie that end or else you'll lose the front of my house. i ended up spending a lot more money but i feel very confident to the extent, of course, california has earthquake insurance. i was in the legislature when it passed, and i voted against it. i thought it was too expensive. you can actually put the house back on -- deductible. in north ridge, we know -- when the north ridge earthquake occurred, it was cheaper to put the house back on the foundation than take advantage of the deductible. i canceled my insurance policy and now i'm sitting there hoping i did the right thing but i'm sure i did. we tried to -- we are trying to make sure that people keep

vigilant. it's a big problem. i look forward to the panel. there's some dynamite questions. i hope there's enough questions. i don't know if i can answer any of them. but, anyway, i just want to conclude by saying, we're lucky here. we do have an informed public and public that cares about things, cares about making sure we provide the necessary services, is concerned about the future and concerned about the economic health. when we have that we need to take advantage of that and need to keep people on guard and alert because we know it's not a question of when, you know, if, it's a question of when. with all these issues happening now with climate change and global warming, it can be any number of things so we need to really keep our vigilance up. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, mayor bates. our next is kevin carroll part

of the fisherman wharfs community ben fict district. it's a nonprofit that markets fisherman's wharf and work through public planning, bustification programs. the fisherman wharf community benefit program has a peer safe program to prepare for and respond to disasters. the organization has partnered with the san francisco fire department to host a neighborhood emergency response team trainings that resulted more than 400 community members being certified. kevin will look back how the loma prieta earthquake affected the important commercial and residential area around the fisherman wharf's area to form the community benefit district serving the neighborhood to this date. >> good morning. 22 years ago i was working in

hayward, california, and i thought i was prepared. when the earthquake hit, growing up in california i learned to dive under my desk, which i did, and walker in the parking lot and didn't know what to do next when people were telling us what happened and we were trying to figure out what to do. i had $1.25 in my pocket and i had about a gallon of gas in my car and i sat for seven hours at the san mateo bridge before i realized it wasn't going to happen and i turned around to find a place to stay that night. i am talking about a business district and the work we do to prepare because so many of us will be at our place of work when disaster strikes. the fisherman wharf's community in 1989, i wasn't working on the wharf but i talked to some of the people that were. again, people ran out in the streets. they didn't necessarily take the most -- the best safety precautions as far as what was happening. and we have a unique situation

like many of the areas within san francisco at any given time we get tens of thousands of visitors who may have no combrd how to handle an earthquake situation or other disasters and it's up to us as a district to be prepared. one of the things people told me is they did come together, like many communities, and find a way to make things happen. when you think of fisherman's wharf, you have the boats, you have restaurants, you have hotels. you basically have a lot of the things that you would need, but the communication between the areas was something that was identified that needed to be helped upon. the fisherman wharf's community benefit district, for those that doesn't know, it's a business improvement district. it's called a community benefit district. it's a self-assessment that's voted in for a district to work on what we have been talking about, public safety, public realm, marketing of the wharf and anything that's important. when the district was formed it was realized we needed to do more for disaster preparedness. we started a peer safe program.

and people across the district came together that was interested in the topic. it was key. channeling into the people that personally is interested within the corporations and within the district to really help build the organization itself. we have representatives from the hotel industry, the shipping industry, the fishermen themselves, the actual restaurants and then the major properties. when you think of the square, pier 39, people visiting when things might happen. the organization -- the pier safe committee meets every month. they have pulled people for a lot of reasons but especially with disaster preparedness and that's been helping us out as part of it. communication was key. we started a fishnet radio program every tuesday when you hear the sirens go off at noon, 20 of our properties across the wharf do a radio check with our organization to make sure that

they're checking in and we report on that monthly to find out who is and who isn't checking in. it serves as a great reminder. things obviously change and people switch within organizations so if we see that an organization is not checking in we double back with them to find out what's going on and make sure we can have them as part of it. the emergency preparedness group also works on a drill every year, and we just had our drill this last friday in partnership with the san francisco fire department, the department of emergency management, first 72 hours. we had a drill so the community members that live near the wharf as well as the businesses and employees could come by and learn more about what they can do both personally and professional to prepare. i have to say the nert, and i see shelly sitting up here and aircrafta, the actual -- aircrafta the actual nert is part of it. if you think of a hotel as a small city in and of itself, if you have have an emergency response team and find people

to be prepared has helped us. as has been mentioned, we have trained in partnership with the fire department, our hotels have hosted the trainings that have resulted in over 400 people being trained. we do feel like there's still things we need to work on. one -- communications, while they've improved, we still need to do more. i think that's the key message i'd like to leave is that i don't think there's ever a point we'll be completely prepared. we're always going to have new people come into the district. we are always going to have visitors. how can we stay on top of it, using social media, p.d.a.'s? one of the things we did is pull together all the different property owners, all the security teams within the properties and where he published a list for all of our employees and for all of our businesses. it's a business card that actually opens up and it has all the different organizations to contact and then on the back we actually added emergency earthquake information, fire, what to happen if things happen

within your district. so i'd just like to say that for us we think it's something that is obviously changing. i think we can always do more, but i think we have a good, strong groundwork to continue to work forward. at least we are talking to each other all year long so it's not like we are meeting for the first time after a disaster. thank you. [applause] >> thanks, kevin. our last speaker is charles eddy who has more than 25 years of public agencies and consulting experience in planning and redevelopment at u.c. santa cruz and the cities of santa cruz and watsonville. i very much admire charlie's extensive experience in land use planning and development. after the loma prieta earthquake, charlie was a project manager of the santa cruz downtown recovery plan and he also played a key role in helping watsonville in addressing recovery issues.

he's lectured and consulted internationally. most recently in new zealand after the earthquake and written extensively about planning and disaster management. charlie will discuss the extraordinary efforts that will taken to rebuild and restore the business community in santa cruz after the earthquake. and, charlie. [applause] >> well, i guess in keeping with the confessionals on where were you on october 17, 1989, i have to confess, i was at home. i left work a little early that day. you can guess why. so my wife and i were there and the earthquake hit and we got up and stood under the hallway, archway and, you know, i remember it shook for that 17, 14 seconds, whatever it was. and we were actually in pretty good shape. our house is up on a ledge.

hard rock. so the waves pass right through. everything rocked and rolled but it was pretty ok. my wife's frame of references was the 1972 north ridge earthquake so in that earthquake, and this should have been a warning to me fuelly, her house collapsed on her family. and they were ok but, you know, it was a new house, relatively new house. so, anyway, we walked -- the shaking stopped and we looked around. pretty good. and kim said to me, you know, that wasn't too bad. and then we walked outside and we're up on a marine terrace and overlooking the city and the bay and we looked down there and there's this cloud of yellow dust rising up from the downtown in santa cruz and at that point we both realized that santa cruz had changed foreved