The Loss Of Dahon
 

Yesterday's rumbling reminder inspired me to show the people outside of a disaster zone why at first glance an unrelated event that does not directly impact their own little piece of the world actually does. If you look at the links below, you will see Dahon's own headquarters in North America and how close it is to the epicenter of yesterday's earthquake.

This is the actual location of Dahon. It is a warehouse located in a run down section of the San Gabriel Valley.

Dahon Headquarters In Duarte CA

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=e...=16&iwloc=addr

Here is another map showing the distance between yesterday's epicenter and the Global Headquarters o f Dahon.

Chino Hills to Duarte

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&sadd...=UTF8&t=h&z=11

As you can see, it is not far at all. There was damage from the earthquake reported much farther away-60 miles to say the least. What doe this has to do with 99% of the readers on this forum? Plenty!

Dahon's employees probably are scattered across the basin. They may not be able to get to work for days, maybe weeks assuming that the warehouse is not heavily damaged, looted, or destroyed. That means no bikes or parts shipped out or in. And new models of Dahons will not be designed for the next year and the years to come on time.

Roadways, train tracks, shipping lanes, airport runways might be damaged or destroyed. Same thing as above-no bikes, no bike parts.

Thor USA and other out-of-disaster zone Dahon Stocking Dealers bike shops attempt to fill in the gap left by the temporary or permanent loss of the headquarters-and the Port Of Los Angeles. Depending on the amount of inventory available within their own shops, they will also suffer eventually.

And other corporations that have nothing to do with bikes will suffer as well. Food, clothing and other both locally produced and imported goods will disappear from all over the country in various degrees. This will mean higher prices on top of the other increases seen since January. So don't laugh it off.

Here are some videos of how Dahon will probably look like after the “Big One.”:

http://www.sandimas.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=248&Itemid=1


http://www.wikio.com/video/340858

While these videos were actally taken at the Incycle bike shop located in San Dimas, the results are still the same.

Damn, that sucks. I hope they survive this!

Yes we all are rooting for them and of course any other victims. Daho's commitment to folding bikes is second to none.

Thanks for such an informative post FF.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Where's my bike???!!! NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!! MY BIKE!

/tantrum

Actually, reports from Duarte are not that bad. Loss of power, some broken glass at the grocery stores, water sloshing in the pool.

Still waiting for my Dahon MU P24

Sorry, but according to local news (and many friends who live right near where Dahon is/ I am also an LA native, although not there right now), this was a roller, rather than a shaker and there was very little damage reported. The epicenter was out in San Bernardino county some 45 miles east... why post such a doomsday thread? I'm sure the Dahon warehouse is fine and that the employees are at work today; I just sent an email to Dahon to check how they are doing as well...

This is a scary thought. What if the same thing happened in the UK and Brompton was affected? It could well happen!!!? We had a major earthquake last year (It was on all the national news shows) and at least 2 roof tiles fell off a house!!!

You ever get the feeling that the natural world is more frighting outside the UK's borders?.. :twitchy:

as far as I know everything is very normal. shipping orders like every day ....


you guys in Ca are used to earthquakes,,, dont ya. ?
this was not such a big thing really ..... we had one in Illinois a couple month back which was about the same strength... barely woke up ...( annoying if it happens at 5 am ...lol )


thor

I agree with oboeterry. The OP exaggerated too much. The earthquake was moderate (5.4 - 5.8), so there was 0 to little damage. The videos the OP also proof there was not much damage, just a bit of shaking (I didn't see the building crumbling, just a few stuffs falling down. If it was a 7.8 like the one in China, then it would be different. I also believe structures in CA are better built than in China.

Well, being a Southern California guy, I got the joke right away. :) Very funny post. For those of you many miles away, the quake knocked a few bricks off some unreinforced buildings and loosened some wall hangings and broke a couple of water mains.

Incidentally, Duarte is not "run down."

http://www.thorusa.com/dahon/warehouse.htm
this is how bikes are usually stored in warehouse situation like Dahon .....

Not like in the bike shop
( where his display crates should be better secured to the ground in my opinion )
and where his employees need a training, as it is usually NOT the best idea to frantically run outside
( but who am I .......to know everything about earthquakes )

But it is certainly not a loss of anything Dahon related

thor

Wow.:twitchy:

This earthquake is simply a reminder to me of what is to come. I am not saying this particular earthquake is the Big One. Only that it is a wake up call and a reminder of what people and business should think of and plan ahead for the eventual one that actually has brewing for over 100 years. It is not a "doomsday" thread, only a call to arms for Dahon, it's people, Local Bike Shops in the area, and everyone else to prepare for the expected quake-in-waiting.

I am not intending to "scare" someone out of the area of So. Cal. Just making sure that we remember that in each place man has called home, there is a natural disaster that must be addressed and prepared for, not just earthquakes.

I can tell you as a native of Los Angeles and has been through the 1971, 1987, 1994, and the present, you never get used to it. I have seen people panic in my building during the 1987 earthquake and almost trampled anyone who got in their way. So preparing and planning ahead saves lives (and businesses).

Disclaimer: Please read my 1st post more carefully. I was going through a probable model of behavior based on years of experience and research, not what has happened yesterday. Dahon is fine as well as most everyone here in Los Angeles is.

Well to be honest some places people have chosen to live are much more of a risk for natural disaster than others. Where I live thousands of Kms from any earthquake threat, at 1 km above sea level and 1000kms from the ocean we are pretty much immune from natural disasters short of a giant asteroid smacking the planet or another ice age - possible, but I won't lose any sleep over it.

It got very windy around my shed last year and blew a bit of plastic off the roof. I've taped down some new plastic with duck tape (what part of the duck is the tape made from? Come to think about it, what part of a turtle makes turtle wax..?).

I'm going to be prepared for the worse though after FF has warned me.. where did I put that tape and binliners? :rolleyes:

Thank you. But I really feel that I cannot take full credit for this. I was always wondering why my father picked my first folding bike-the Boardwalk S1 over all other bikes when he was very sick and in the hospital. Now I am beginning to see why. He always looked for his own vehicles that you can get proprietary parts for with relative ease. Dahon itself-or one of it's Stocking Dealers-being located close enough to bike to is so important in good and bad times to get parts in a real jam. He is not here to help me anymore. But I think he felt that Dahon will be.

folder fanatic, sorry if my reply sounded harsh, I'd just woken up (after only 4 hours sleep and couldn't get back to sleep :( ) I am fairly used to earthquakes, and most SoCal residents know that the rolling types rarely do as much damage as the shakers. The topic title is where I thought it seemed kind of "doomsday" like... I apologize if I offended.

I understand the long sleepless nights that you are going through, oboeterry. I went through with it with my father during his long illness. I want you to sleep better knowing that no damage beyond smashed bottles and turned over shelves happened-this time, but I just wanted people to be aware that what I discussed above not only could happen but did in the past. Not only in LA, but in other places to think about and prepare for being at the least bothersome, at the most loss of products or people.

Well, I don't know about never getting used to it... I'm an L.A. native too, and earthquakes always seemed normal to me. (And for my first few weeks after moving to New York, I kept thinking subway rumbles were foreshocks.)

Besides the usual earthquake preparedness stuff (have water on hand, know how to turn your gas off, etc.), I don't know of a way to prepare for The Big One any more than you'd prepare for All The Other Ones. What kind of additional preparation would you like to see people do?

How in the world do you crazy cowboys out west live in this sort of chaos? How do water mains and subway/car tunnels survive the constant onslaught? I've never thought of it before, but I suppose this is why they don't have basements and water towers out there.

If the ocean deserves fear and respect when it gets ornery then how much more the hard earth? Now excuse me while I go make my home on an active volcano. :twitchy:

The newer things (like subway tunnels and more flexible skyscrapers) are engineered for it. Building codes in Los Angeles have become gradually more earthquake-compatible since the 1930s. Current buildings can ride out a lot of energy.

Older things (like, for instance, the 1930s-vintage cast-iron Santa Monica feeder, a major water line that runs under Sunset Boulevard) sometimes break. But that happens even when there's no earthquake. The lines simply get shut off at the nearest valve and repaired.

Here's some more info:

http://www.westworld.com/~elson/larail/red.html

Scroll down to "Earthquake and Fire Safety."

At the risk of adding to the Chicken Little tone of this thread, there are several things one can do to prepare for the "big one".

Recently I completed Los Angeles Fire Department CERT training (that's Community Emergency Response Team). The course is invaluable to anyone seeking to become more prepared, and includes general disaster preparedness, first aid, light search and rescue, etc.

While the State of California and FEMA have their own ideas, the LAFD recommends that a 21 day supply of food and water be maintained at all times. That's a minimum of two liters per person per day. For a family of four, that's 42 gallons. And two liters isn't much. 21 days of food means, of course, non perishables. Why 21 days? If the earthquake damages the aqueduct, water will have to be trucked in. Before anything can be trucked in, every bridge in the affected area will have to be inspected by engineers. That's how it was explained to me.

It's also important to maintain a decent first aid kit. The most likely injuries to be suffered as the result of an earthquake are head lacerations (falling objects) and foot lacerations (broken glass) so the kit should be weighted for those types of injuries.

It addition to knowing how to turn off your gas, you want to know how to turn off your water. Flashlights, batteries, a battery operated radio, maybe a tent and other camping gear, blah blah. I have a little generator, just big enough to run the fridge and a TV.

Keep a little kit at work - walking shoes, a dust mask and goggles, water, energy bar, radio, flashlight, etc. Be prepared to walk home in any weather.

The most important thing though, and something that the instructor pounded into us over and over, is that when the big one hits, the fire department is NOT coming to help us. Their policy is to do the greatest good for the greatest number of people, and after an earthquake they get in their trucks and do a survey of their area, beginning with schools, hospitals, high rises, and other areas of high population density. If you are in your car, sitting on the side of the road alone, having just careened into a phone pole, they're going to drive right by without helping.

As far as the loss of Dahon, as hyperbolically postulated by FF, is concerned: I can't see that the weeks needed to relocate the facilities of Dahon California after an earthquake could add much to the glacially slow response time that so many of us who have tried to get parts from them have experienced. . . :notamused:

They way FF has blasted Dahon's throwaway bikes and blatant copying of the Brompton fold, I would have though she was more interested in seeing Dahon sink and Brompton fill the void. ;)

It might actually get faster.

what you need by tomorrow morning 8 am ( or shortly thereafter ) ???

Thor, there are precious few dealers who stock spares. I know that you do, and it is appreciated! Thanks.

and even I dont always have everything in stock
( mostly because I diodnt reorder fast enough , but sometimes it is thse suppliers who are out as well and let you hang .... )

Anyhow .. jus wanted to chime in as it is not THAT difficult to get stuff .. think about 10 years back before the internet really took off..... we all even survived those years.... when you either had a shop in reach or you dont ...lol

a great weekend to everybody
Im gonna go sailing... worked my butt of last week ... :-)


thor