Keep Emergency Supplies Here

North County Times Editorial: Revisiting move shows officials are paying attention

It is one of those quirks of geography that while the L.A. Basin is undercut by a zigzag of major fault lines, San Diego County is relatively removed from the faults likely to produce the Big One.

So a recent proposal to move a 12.5-ton stockpile of emergency medical supplies designed for San Diego County to the L.A. area made almost no sense. When a major earthquake strikes Southern California, as it surely will (although we don't know when), the transportation infrastructure is far more likely to be badly damaged in Los Angeles than it will be in San Diego.

Storing those supplies in L.A. will put them in danger of being unavailable when most needed. If they're stuck in an area where the overpasses and bridges have all been destroyed, how will those supplies be distributed to first responders?

More to the point, there is already a similar stockpile of supplies designated for L.A. that is there right now. Why on earth move supplies procured and designated for San Diego out of the area?

To their credit, local Reps. Brian Bilbray and Susan Davis have joined forces to convince federal officials to reverse this ill-advised order and find a new home for the depot here in our county.

With numerous military bases and other government properties in our region, surely finding a large enough space to house these supplies will not be a problem.

Dr. Jake Jacoby of the UC San Diego Medical Center is the commander of the federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team in San Diego, the group those supplies are supposed to keep in operational mode for up to three days without resupply. Last week, Jacoby told a reporter for this paper that moving the San Diego supply depot out of the region puts the residents of this county at risk.

During the most recent round of wildfires, both north-south freeways into San Diego County were cut off by the fires. Bringing those supplies back to the area where they should have been all along wouldn't have been an option during that emergency.

Who's to say it will be for the next, either?

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