Around Town in South County (Week-End Edition): An #Outsider Newsflash From Laguna Niguel

 

Here in our hometown, Laguna Niguel, our  City Hall was the scene for the Document Shredding Event earlier today whereby members of the Community under the watchful eyes of Police Services, Sheriff Explorers and PACT Team volunteers drove through to safely shred their documents.   As of 9:00 AM today, over 400 vehicles had visited City Hall from throughout South Orange County.   

This was also to continue the on-going preparation for a major incident to practice the Incident Command System (ICS) developed and enhanced in the aftermath of 9/11  in the event that it occurs as underscored by the City's Emergency Services Manager during discussions with the team.   The need to be prepared is ever so vital especially as the Earthquake Early Warning System continues to be stalled and the Nooner' Scott Lay noted this in his Daily Nooner DeBrief that we just received here @ #outsiders as we went to press:

ADVANCE WARNING: California should help pay for quake early warnings, state lawmakers say [Rosanna Xia and Rong-Gon Lin II]:

Hours after a magnitude 6.4 earthquake destroyed buildings and took lives in Taiwan, four state lawmakers said they want California to help fund an earthquake early warning system that has been stalled by a lack of money."

"The total cost of building the system across the West Coast has been etsimated at $38 million, plus $16 million a year to operate it. For California alone, the cost is $23 million to construct the network, and $12 million annually thereafter."

It's the state's policy not to use state General Fund money to pay for it, a precedent during the era of large deficits. But, $23 million one-time and $12 milllion anually ongoing is budget dust in a $122 billlion General Fund. The cost of a large earthquake to state and local governments would be enormous (for rescue operations--can't really alert buildings to take cover). With SMS technology, Japan's system gives an alert for earhquakes that the computer system predicts of a magniture or greatere. The alert arrives a few seconds before the quake to over a minute to take cover take other precautions.