Deseret Morning News, Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Out of service
Electricity, water unavailable for days
By Lee Davidson
Deseret Morning News
Editor's note: New estimates for what a 7.0 earthquake could do to the
Wasatch Front are scary: I could kill more than 6,000 people, injure 90,000
and cause a $40 million economic hit. In a five-part series, the Deseret
Morning News describes such a future quake — as if worst-case scenarios
proved to be true.
As the ground stops shaking after the great Utah 7.0 earthquake of 2008, about 286,000 homes along the Wasatch Front are without water and sewer service, and 240,000 are without electricity.
"In Salt Lake County, that means virtually everyone is without water and power," Bob Carey, earthquake specialist for the state Office of Emergency Services, predicted correctly in 2006 about the effect of such a big quake.
The violent quake shook Utahns on a snowy, busy weekday — Friday, Feb. 1. And residents will be without such utilities not for just a few minutes. It will be at least days for most. In many cases, it will be weeks. And in some cases, it even will be months.
"It will show the importance of personal and family preparedness" for stored water, food and fuel, Carey said in 2006.
As with water and power, damage to other utilities is also extensive. Much telephone service is out, as is much cell phone service. Natural gas breaks are common, but too many people needlessly (and foolishly) turn off gas to their homes as a precaution, cutting off heat to homes in the freezing weather of the day.
Meanwhile, some small dams are scaring officials, although major dams survive the quake without significant damage. If such a quake had hit 20 years earlier — before recent and extensive seismic upgrades — many big dams would have failed, unleashing floods on Salt Lake City, Ogden and Provo, and decimating water supplies.
While that sort of disaster was averted, many Wasatch Front residents are still roughing it with no or limited utilities — and that will continue for what will feel like a long, long time.
Water
Computer modeling by state emergency services in 2006 offered a bleak forecast on how fast water and sewer service might be restored.
Of the 286,000 or so homes predicted to be without water service initially, forecasts said 230,000 still would not have it fully restored even after a month, giving new importance to whether residents stored any water on their own. But the projections predicted that all customers would have service restored within 90 days.
However, LeRoy W. Hooton Jr., director of Salt Lake City Public Utilities, predicted in 2006 that restoration of at least emergency water service would be much quicker, at least in areas served by his agency, because of extensive preparations it had made.
He said his agency for years studied and practiced how to operate its system if key components were to be knocked out, a possibility deemed important before the 2002 Olympics because of the threat of terrorism. The agency uses that expertise now to route water around breaks, out-of-service pumps and reservoirs and other problems.
With key pump stations down because of power outages, another piece of preparation by Hooton's agency now comes in handy. It purchased numerous mobile generators for just such a problem.
"We've gone through and wired our pump stations and other facilities with plugs so we can drive up with mobile generators and simply plug them in," he said in 2006.
To provide emergency water service to hillside areas with localized outages from pipe breaks, Hooton said his agency worked out methods with hoses and pumps to use fire hydrant systems to pump water to higher zones.
His agency also stockpiled a variety of pipes and other supplies it figured might be needed in such disasters so it would not need to wait for delivery. It also signed many emergency contracts beforehand with outside contractors to allow them to quickly help with repairs.
Over time, the city also installed pipes that it figured could better handle earthquake shaking. "We use a ductile iron pipe on the east side that has enough flexibility that it seems to hold up well," he said. In areas with corrosive soils, "we use a plastic pipe that seems to react well under earthquake conditions."
Learning from California, where a recent earthquake shook some large steel tanks off concrete pads and led to their collapse, Hooton said his agency has anchored similar tanks it has to help them survive quakes. Also, water treatment plants and offices received seismic upgrades.
And Hooton's agency bought satellite phones in 2006 to help ensure smooth communications, because he said they were "about the only form of communication that worked well in Hurricane Katrina" in 2005.
Maybe the biggest improvement to help in the disaster is that water agencies in Salt Lake County no longer depend on just one east-side aqueduct to deliver water from canyon treatment plants or Deer Creek Reservoir to local water agencies. The Jordan Aqueduct also provided a west-side alternative, in case either aqueduct had outages.
Hooton also said that a new treatment plant and aqueduct at the Point of the Mountain would allow sending water in any direction around the valley from three different water plants. Also, he said his agency had access to numerous wells and other sources of water, again providing redundancy to help deliver supplies even if some major sources or pipelines go down.
Despite all those preparations, Hooton said in 2006 that it is always a good idea for residents to have some water stored. "Everybody needs to have a 72-hour kit and needs to supply themselves with water. They should have a gallon per day per person, plus some more for pets. You don't need an earthquake to need that. Something simple can happen like the water being off for a main break."
Dams and reservoirs
Related to water service is how well dams perform. Fortunately, federal and state actions over the past 15 years brought seismic upgrades to the major dams perched above Utah's populated areas.
"I am pretty comfortable that they could handle the seismic loading" from the big earthquake, state dam engineer Dave Marble observed in 2006.
But if a 7.0 had occurred before recent seismic upgrades, Marble said many might have failed and caused devastating floods downstream. Pineview Dam could have threatened Ogden, Mountain Dell could have threatened Salt Lake City and Deer Creek could have threatened Provo. Now all are considered seismically sound.
Breaks by any of them, of course, also would have devastated local water supplies.
Marble said a few smaller dams, which had to wait for upgrades while money went to higher-priority dams first, still would give officials anxious moments in an earthquake. But he thought in 2006 that most of them would also handle an earthquake.
He said that even if some of the dams that worry him the most did break, they are small enough "that they would not be catastrophic."
Electric power
Projections in 2006 also foresaw long restoration periods for electricity.
Of 241,000 households that initially lose service, projections said 176,000 would still be without it after three days; 100,000 would be without it after a week; 31,000 would still be without it after a month; and about 300 would still be without it after 90 days.
Dave Eskelsen, spokesman for Utah Power, said in 2006 that the key to how long power would be out is whether some large, custom-manufactured items like certain transformers failed or not.
"Often, you only need one — so the manufacturer builds it for you," so Utah Power would not buy many spares for emergencies, Eskelsen said. If such major components do go out, power in some areas would be out for extended periods.
Otherwise, Eskelsen said, "The network itself is able to weather some kinds of ground shaking pretty well."
He said some problems, such as downed lines or conductors being knocked down, "can be repaired in fairly reasonable amounts of time, depending on locations and the kinds of ground shaking."
Eskelsen said in 2006 that one advantage locally is that "all our major sources of generation are off the Wasatch Front," mainly coming from coal-burning plants in central Utah and Wyoming. So earthquakes along the Wasatch Front are not likely to damage them.
He said Utah Power does have a few smaller generating plants along the Wasatch Front, but they are used mainly for voltage regulation and providing extra peak-period power. He said ground shaking would trip circuit breakers and shut them down initially, and it could take some time to restart them.
Eskelsen said Utah Power often has exercises on how to handle such emergencies and also has plans in place to bring in workers from other states to help handle any large-scale disaster.
Carey, with state emergency services, says many people do not realize what such an extended power outage may really mean.
For example, he said credit cards could not be used because card readers need power, as do ATM machines.
He said people should keep an emergency supply of cash because of that. But he added that some stores might not be able to sell supplies anyway, because they rely on bar code readers for all pricing, and readers may not have power for extended periods. This is one reason emergency supplies of food have long been suggested.
Also, without power, blowers for furnaces would not work, gas stations cannot pump gasoline, electric stoves will not cook, many phones (such as those that have answering machines and have an extra power plug for them) will not ring, and traffic signals will not work.
For such reasons, emergency officials had long suggested such things as Utahns always keeping gas tanks in cars at least half full and having a supply of fuel — including perhaps a camp stove and propane to allow cooking.
Natural gas
State projections back in 2006 did not specifically forecast how many residents would lose natural gas service in a 7.0 quake, or how long it would take to restore it. But they did predict about 2,000 breaks in gas pipelines.
Darren Shepherd, spokesman for Questar, said in 2006 that the company felt its network would perform fairly well in a 7.0 quake. He noted that the company had replaced most of its old, brittle cast iron pipes in the 1990s, and newer piping was designed better to survive ground shaking.
His company also had practiced through the years about how to route gas around leaks and problem areas. A benefit to Salt Lake Valley, he said, is that Questar has seven different "gateways" to the valley for natural gas supplies through different pipelines, offering flexibility to help route around problems.
One of the bigger concerns Questar had — which turned out to be valid for the 2008 quake — is that people would automatically run to shut off gas to their homes after the quake. People should do that only if they smell gas, hear it leaking, have significant structural damage or have a fire.
"In the San Francisco earthquake (in 1989), 166,000 customers shut off their gas — and only 2 percent of them needed to. That left a lot of people without gas for weeks," Shepherd said.
That's because turning gas back on should be done by the gas company, a heating contractor or a plumber, and in a disaster when companies are busy with bigger problems, that takes time.
Utah's 2008 quake occurred on a freezing, snowy February day. So people who turned off gas without needing to left themselves without heat for a long time.
The other concern Questar had — which again turned out to be valid — was that hot water heaters could cause problems if they were not anchored well. Severe ground shaking indeed tipped over many, breaking both gas and water lines and igniting dozens of fires.
Shepherd in 2006 urged residents to ensure that hot water heaters were secured to walls or anchored well. He also said having an adjustable wrench handy is a good idea in case true leaks or damage required shutting off gas after a quake.
Communications
State predictions in 2006 also did not specifically guess how much telephone service might be knocked out by the quake, but officials estimated it would be significant — and that much cell phone service would also be knocked out because of damage to towers or loss of power to networks.
Robert Shroder, lead disaster preparedness official for Qwest, said his company held exercises annually for years on how to handle such disasters, and the company took many preparatory steps to help reduce any damage and allow quick recovery.
For example, key equipment was anchored and reinforced to help it survive quakes, and central offices also were built to be earthquake-resistant. For loss of power, the company had emergency generators available plus back-up battery power.
He said that immediately after such a big disaster, teams would be brought in from other states to help make repairs.
But because communication could be difficult in disasters, emergency preparedness officials had long urged residents to develop a family plan on where they might meet if they could not get messages to each other.