GARDENA, Calif. — Preparing for a natural disaster is a way for Cindy Matsuda, one of the founding members of the Tri-City Community Emergency Response Team Association, to help others. She said it was the 1994 Northridge earthquake that made her realize the need to be prepared.

“I was really afraid because I thought the building was going to collapse,” Matsuda said. 

After taking a 20-hour CERT training course, Matsuda said it opened her eyes to what she could do to prepare. That’s when she decided to bring the course to her church, the Gardena Valley Baptist Church, for others to get prepared.

“Having a go bag not only in my car or in the garage or somewhere like that, but I have something underneath my bed because in an earthquake glass will shatter,” she said. “And so you need to be able to protect your feet.”

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Since then, Matsuda said the Tri-City CERT Association has trained more than 1,000 people with 100 current members in Gardena, Hawthorne, Lawndale and throughout the South Bay. While her team prepares, Bob de Groot with the United States Geological Survey Earthquake Science Center in Pasadena said new upgrades to the ShakeAlert system will better detect the magnitude of an earthquake with the use of the Global Navigation Satellite System and Global Positioning System data from ground sensors.

“Let’s say an earthquake starts way down by the Salton Sea, and it starts moving along. Our seismic sensors or seismic stations pick up that earthquake and start doing their thing. The ShakeAlert system is activated,” de Groot said. “Then what happens is when that earthquake continues to grow in the information about that earthquake is updated up to two times per second by the ShakeAlert system, so that we can know how big that earthquake is getting.”

With the thought of another major earthquake in California, Matsuda said it’s important to prepare.

“Most people want to get training and they want to learn how to do these things, but I think there are other things that come and distract them like family and different things,” she said. “But we just have to do our part.”

Matsuda noted that the city of Gardena will host a free Quake Heroes Expo at the Nakaoka Center on Aug. 10 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.