Earthquake update as of Tuesday morning

Inspections of Napa buildings damaged in Sunday’s 6.0-magnitude earthquake are about 75 percent complete as of Monday evening and a total of 70 buildings have now been declared uninhabitable, city officials said.

City officials have been conducting inspections throughout the day, and red-tagged an additional 21 buildings since Monday morning, Napa community development director Rick Tooker said at a news conference.

More than 200 buildings have been yellow-tagged, meaning that residents and owners can return to clean and collect possessions but are unable to stay there for the time being, Tooker said.

Some red-tagged buildings may be re-inspected and may not be completely uninhabitable, while some yellow-tagged buildings may need simple repairs and cleaning to be inhabitable again, Tooker said. As inspections continue, more buildings will likely be added to both lists.

An American Red Cross shelter was established Sunday at the Crosswalk Community Church at 2590 First St. and 15 people spent the night there that night, city officials said. Officials expected a similar number Monday night.

City Manager Mike Parness said that “significant progress” was made Monday, including repairs to 30 water lines that had been reported leaking of a total of 90. Water service will be shut off for residents periodically as water lines are repaired, and Parness recommended that residents boil or run the water before using it after a shutoff.

All power has been restored to PG&E customers in Napa except in red-tagged buildings, Parness said. About 70,000 lost power immediately after the quake and 17,000 were still without power Sunday afternoon.

Street closures are continuing in the areas surrounding buildings at risk of collapse, but officials are working on building barricades surrounding those buildings so that portions of the streets can reopen.

There have been no additional injuries reported beyond the previous total of 208 and officials are not anticipating any more earthquake-related injuries.

Schools

Napa Valley Unified School District campuses will remain closed today while authorities continue to inspect the schools for damage from Sunday’s 6.0-magnitude earthquake, school officials said Monday.

There are 19 elementary schools, five middle schools and five high schools in the district and all will remain closed following the quake at 3:20 a.m. Sunday.

School officials will determine today whether the campuses will remain closed later this week as well.

Justin-Siena Catholic High School, a private school in Napa, is reopening today, school officials announced on Facebook.

The school’s Facebook post thanked “the overwhelming support and clean-up efforts of so many” in helping to get the campus ready for reopening today.

Wineries assessing damage

The Napa Valley Vintners trade association said it is still assessing the effects that Sunday’s earthquake had on Napa County’s wine industry.

Napa Valley Vintners is serving as a centralized resource for its 500 members and is planning an information workshop later this week, group spokeswoman Cate Conniff said.

“The earthquake did not impact vineyards or grapes on the vine, and the majority of Napa Valley’s wineries are open for business,” Conniff said.

“It is too early to provide damage or loss estimates for wine, equipment or facilities,” she said.

Some wineries did sustain damage to their barrel storage areas, wine inventory and production equipment over the weekend, but details are not yet available, Conniff said.

“The majority of the wine that is at the wineries right now is from the 2012 and 2013 vintages — the two most abundant vintages ever,” Conniff said.

Some individual wineries may experience shortages because of the quake, but it’s not expected to have a significant impact on Napa Valley wine inventory in general, she said.

There were no reports of wine industry employees injured in the earthquake, Conniff said.

Resources are being made available to those that did suffer equipment or facility damage, including temporary tanks and other equipment to get vintners through the next few weeks, Conniff said.

There were no reports of significant injuries or structural damage in Sonoma County and most wineries, shops and restaurants there are open for

business, said Ken Fischang, president and CEO of Sonoma County Tourism.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with our Napa Valley neighbors. It will only be a matter of time before all of Northern California’s famed Wine Country is fully back in business,” Fischang said.

Aftershocks

There is a 25 percent chance of a strong and potentially damaging aftershock in the next seven days following Sunday’s 6.0-magnitude earthquake

near American Canyon, U.S. Geological Survey officials said Monday.

The “South Napa earthquake” struck at 3:20 a.m. Sunday northwest of American Canyon about 7 miles below the earth’s surface, USGS officials said. It was the strongest earthquake in the Bay Area since the 6.9-magnitude 1989 Loma Prieta quake that killed 63 and injured 3,757.

Sunday’s earthquake moved the earth several inches along the West Napa Fault, the most seismically active fault mapped between the Rogers Creek Fault to the west and the Concord-Green Valley Fault to the east, according to the USGS.

A 5.0-magnitude quake in the Yountville area in 2000 happened on the same fault and also damaged Napa, while a 6.3-magnitude quake in the Mare Island area in 1898 was along the fault as well.

Most of the damage was concentrated in Napa, northwest of the epicenter, as the rupture sent most of the quake’s energy in that direction. Dozens of aftershocks recorded since then have also sent energy in that direction, USGS officials said.

Seismic researchers are continuing to collect information about the earthquake and are working to improve an early warning test system that alerted the USGS a quake was coming within five seconds and estimated its magnitude at 5.7 within three seconds, soon enough to provide warning to

Berkeley, San Francisco and areas farther south.

Caltrans receives $2 million in repair funds

Caltrans will receive $2 million in emergency relief funds to repair infrastructure damage from Sunday’s earthquake, Rep. Mike Thompson said.

Caltrans has identified damage to bridges and roads with preliminary cost estimates of $10 million, said Thompson, the state’s Fifth District Congressman.

All bridges are safe and open to traffic, and the state’s primary focus is determining whether bridge joints should be repaired or replaced,

Thompson said.

“This earthquake severely damaged a lot of our infrastructure and these funds will go a long way towards helping our community recover,” Thompson said.

The quake caused surface cracking on state Highway 121 north of the Sonoma-Napa county line at Cuttings Wharf, and significant stress to joints on bridges, including the Napa River Bridge on state Highway 29, Thompson said.

Local agencies also will benefit from the funds for infrastructure repair, Thompson said. The funds come from the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Highway Administration.

Vallejo buildings red-tagged

Seven commercial buildings in Vallejo, including the post office at 385 Santa Clara St., have been red-tagged as uninhabitable following Sunday’s 6.0-magnitude earthquake north of American Canyon, city officials said Monday.

Thirty commercial buildings in Vallejo have been yellow-tagged for partial specified use, including clean-up, city officials said.

There were 13 water main breaks in the city but water has been restored to all residents.

Some businesses on Mare Island are without water because of internal structural damage.

The Solano County Health and Social Services offices located at 355 and 365 Tuolumne St. are yellow-tagged and closed to the public. County employees will contact clients who had appointments in Vallejo and reschedule or divert them to a Fairfield office.

Georgia Street from Sonoma Boulevard to Marin Street and Indian Alley remain closed until proper assessments of the 400 block are completed.

Nimitz Avenue on Mare Island remains closed between Seventh and Bagley streets remains closed, city officials said.

Residents with brick masonry fireplaces or foundations that pose safety concerns should call 911 to request a fire department inspection.

A large portion at the top of a Vallejo church needs to come down after a brick wall separated in Sunday’s 6.0-magnitude earthquake, a police lieutenant said Monday.

A pastor walking through the First Baptist Church at 2025 Sonoma Blvd. noticed that the wall of a large tower in the front section of the church had separated itself from the front, Vallejo police Lt. Sid DeJesus said.

Streets in the area have been evacuated and emergency responders planned to use a crane to pull down part of the top section of the church to

keep it from falling, DeJesus said.

Sonoma Boulevard has been closed between Capitol and Florida streets since about 3:15 p.m. and will remain closed until work is complete, which was expected to take most of Monday evening, DeJesus said.

Some homes nearby have been evacuated as well.

The church was not one of seven buildings that had been declared uninhabitable by Monday afternoon but inspections are continuing in the city.

Non-emergency structural damage issues can be reported to the Emergency Operation Center by calling (707) 648-4423 or emailing

Earthquake2014@ci.vallejo.ca.us.

Vallejo residents can follow the city’s post-earthquake status updates on Vallejo’s Facebook and Nextdoor feeds and at www.ci.vallejo.ca.us/EarthquakeStatus.

BART warning system in place

A new earthquake early warning system in testing since 2012 has helped BART keep trains running in the event of an earthquake and could have broader applications for the public, officials said Monday.

The new system can give BART up to 10 seconds of notice before an earthquake, enough time to stop a train going 30 mph and significantly slow a train going 70 mph, preventing derailments, injuries and deaths, BART Director John McPartland said at a news conference at the agency’s Embarcadero station in San Francisco Monday afternoon.

McPartland said the system operated as intended before a 6.0-magnitude quake hit at 3:20 a.m. Sunday and caused significant destruction in Napa and Vallejo. BART trains were not running at the time of the quake, however, necessitating no action by the transit agency.

The system has applications beyond warning BART of impending earthquakes and Richard Allen of the UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory called Monday for state or federal funding that would create a public early warning system.

Allen said while such a system could have many applications it could not give more than seconds of warning, it could be enough to stop motorists from driving onto a bridge, slow down traffic or even inform an eye surgeon that it’s time to stop.

The state Legislature passed a bill that was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last September calling for California’s Office of Emergency Services to

develop an early warning system, but said funding for the system could not come from the state’s general fund and would have to come from other sources.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, said in a statement Monday that two bills moving through Congress could send resources for an early warning system.

Allen said that the system can detect small amounts of energy radiating from epicenters prior from the quake. Sensors all over California stream data into the system, which can detect the energy and send an early alert.

Officials from the U.S. Geological Survey said Monday that the test system provided a five-second warning before Sunday’s quake hit, and within three seconds had estimated the magnitude of the quake to be 5.7.

BART’s use of the system is the first of its kind for a transit agency as it remains in testing, but BART officials said Monday that it is only a part of a massive seismic retrofit project that has improved earthquake safety systemwide over the last decade.

Solano Supervisors Declaring Emergency

The Solano County Board of Supervisors will consider a resolution today that would declare the county under a state of emergency in response to

a 6.0-magnitude earthquake that struck near American Canyon early Sunday morning.

County officials estimated $750,000 in damage at county facilities in Vallejo.

“Our tour of the County facilities in Vallejo showed they sustained minor damage and we’re working diligently to restore County services as quickly as possible,” Supervisor Linda Seifert said in a statement.

The Board of Supervisors will consider adopting the resolution that would ratify a proclamation of a state of emergency made on Sunday by the County Administrator.

In accordance with state government code, the County Administrator’s declaration is effective for seven days unless ratified by the Board of Supervisors.

If the resolution is approved the Board must review it every 30 days or until the state of emergency has ended.

The resolution would also allow the county’s Auditor-Controller staff to prepare and process paperwork for reimbursements of resources used by the county to respond to the earthquake, county officials said.

Touro University ceremonies continue

Just hours after Sunday’s 6.0-magnitude earthquake centered in southern Napa County, more than 200 medical and pharmacy students at nearby Touro University in Vallejo went ahead with one of the most important ceremonies of student life.

The event was the white coat ceremony, in which first-year students don the short white lab coats that symbolize embarkation on their professional careers.

Provost Marilyn Hopkins said she gave the signal to proceed at 7:30 a.m. Sunday after she and other administrators determined that the 3:20 a.m. temblor caused only minor damage on the university’s Mare Island campus and that it would be safe to hold the event.

To her surprise, Hopkins said, not only the students but hundreds of family members and friends were able to come to the campus to attend the ceremony.

“We had a full house. There was a kind of excitement. We were happy we were all alive and healthy,” the provost said.

Hopkins said about 600 people attended a 9:30 a.m. ceremony in which about 100 College of Pharmacy students received their white coats. Another 800 people came to the 2 p.m. ceremony for 135 first-year students in the College of Osteopathic Medicine.

The white coat, she said, is not just a uniform but “a symbol of being in a caring profession.”

“It shows you don’t only need to be smart, but also need to be a caring person,” she said.

Hopkins said that after concluding the ceremony could proceed, officials “blasted out the news” on the university’s emergency notification system, web page, Facebook and Twitter.

She said earthquake damage on the campus included cracks in some walls and tiles and some burst water pipes that saturated carpets. Many of the campus’s library books fell off the shelves.

The provost said the university’s librarian sent out a call for help on Sunday morning. About a dozen students, staff and teachers showed up to help librarians reshelve the books and the task was completed by Sunday afternoon.

Hopkins said the remaining damage can be fixed and repairs have begun, but may take a while.

Meanwhile, she said, “We have good spirits, feeling fortunate that the damage wasn’t greater and no one was hurt.”

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