Cascadia Rising: Practicing for the Big One

CAMP MURRAY, Wash. – When Gov. Jay Inslee, surrounded by government disaster experts and military leaders, proclaimed Tuesday a great day not to have an earthquake, it was a pretty hard position to argue against.

But with the Pacific Northwest some 316 years into a 300- to 500-year cycle for a cataclysmic rupturing of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, it was a good day to prepare for one.

One that measures 9.0 on the Richter scale, which would shake the Puget Sound and coastal areas for as long as five minutes and could be felt as a deep rumbling in Spokane. One that would generate a tsunami as tall as an eight-story building in some spots, and start inundating coastal communities from Vancouver Island to Northern California starting about 15 minutes after the shaking stopped.

“Bridges will fall. Electrical grids will fail. Hospitals will be unusable,” said Inslee, kicking off the Cascadia Rising exercise in front of National Guard headquarters. Behind him was one of the Guard’s Stryker vehicles equipped with gear to detect chemical, nuclear and biological contamination instead of weapons.

The only way to get from Eastern Washington to Western Washington for weeks will be by air.

To practice for what Washington National Guard Adjutant Maj. Gen. Bret Daugherty called “a catastrophe like nothing we’ve ever seen,” federal, state and local officials assembled what may be the largest disaster training exercise in U.S. history, with about 20,000 participants, mainly on the ground or in the water in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and British Columbia.

Guard units from other states arrived at Camp Murray and other locations around the Northwest, including Fairchild Air Force Base, which would be a military command center if the quake knocks out communications from Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Some rescue activities would be coordinated out of the state’s Emergency Operations Center, near the Guard headquarters, built with shock absorbers below the foundation and flexible water, sewer and power lines.

“We are guardedly optimistic this building will be standing,” said Lit Dudley with the state Emergency Management Division.

It was at the EOC that the exercise started a few minutes after 8 a.m. Tuesday with the report of the big quake off the Oregon Coast. That would be comparable to the one that hit Japan in 2011 and killed nearly 16,000 people.

In the EOC, everyone did a “drop and cover” drill for five minutes, then evacuated the building and checked to make sure all were accounted for. Then they went back in to begin getting reports of the simulation, among them the size of waves coming ashore. Thirty minutes in, Port Alberni in British Columbia was swamped; 10 minutes later, a smaller wave hit Port Townsend, Washington. Eventually, waves would come ashore as far south as Crescent City, California.

“The tsunami is the thing that is the most dangerous,” Inslee said, adding he might ask the Legislature for additional money for tsunami preparedness and evacuation plans.

Dudley said the effects of a possible Cascadia Subduction Zone quake have been studied for years. They can project, for example, that 25 percent of the bridges will fail. But they can’t predict which 25 percent, and details like that were plugged into the exercise for military and civilian workers to wrestle with for the rest of the week.

While representatives of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the military joined people from three states, 24 cities, 21 counties and nine tribes in working through different problems from Cascadia Rising, Inslee said it was a good time for all Northwest residents to do their own disaster preparedness. Talk to family, friends and neighbors about a place to gather if disaster strikes. Put aside bottled water and nonperishable food in a disaster kit, along with flashlights, batteries and an emergency first aid kit.

Even if a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake doesn’t happen for another 200 years, such preparations would be valuable for some of the other emergencies Washington has faced in recent years, from landslides to catastrophic wildfires, Inslee said.