The three-day Cascadia earthquake discussion exercise partially replaced a much bigger planned dress rehearsal that was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Either way, the scenario was the same: a Magnitude 9.0 full rip of the offshore Cascadia fault zone followed by a tsunami. The exercise assumed 鈥渓ots and lots of destruction鈥� in Western Oregon and Washington, including blockages on Interstate 5 and buckled highways to the east.
The at the Washington National Guard's Camp Murray near Tacoma resembled something out of a war games movie or a giant game of Risk. Planners moved stanchions representing resources such as search and rescue, security and air support across a basketball court-sized map of Oregon, Washington and Idaho.
From tables arranged around the map鈥檚 perimeter, state emergency management leaders raised questions about the capacity of proposed staging areas, typically east of the Cascade Range. Federal Emergency Management Agency and military officials offered possible solutions such as deploying Army logistics battalions.
鈥淲e've got the experts down there right now talking about what's real, how long it's going to take, what roads may be available, what's not available," said FEMA Regional Administrator Willie Nunn, looking down on the exercise from an overhead balcony.
Nunn said walking through the earthquake and tsunami response in detail, technically known as a 鈥淩ehearsal of Concept,鈥� should yield learnings that will be incorporated into an updated federal Cascadia Subduction Zone plan.
鈥淲hat we鈥檙e doing right now is critical,鈥� Nunn said. 鈥淥ur priority is lifesaving and life sustaining, as always. But we also have got to enable recovery. So, we鈥檙e going to have to make hard decisions.鈥�
The exercise reinforced for Oregon Office of Emergency Management Director Andrew Phelps how long it might take for quake relief to reach people in disaster-stricken parts of Oregon and Washington state. He said residents should prepare to be self-sufficient for at least a week, if not two or three weeks.
鈥楰nowing we鈥檙e not going to have water, knowing we鈥檙e not going to have sewer, we鈥檙e not going to have communication or energy, what are the things you and your family need to be disaster survivors and not disaster victims,鈥� Phelps said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a really important piece of this puzzle.鈥�
Nunn said the coronavirus pandemic forced FEMA to scrub the larger-scale Cascadia Rising 2022 earthquake drill, originally set for June 13-16. That event would have involved more than 22,000 participants, the majority from the military, practicing such things as amphibious landings, parachute supply drops, mass casualty care and air bridge quake relief delivery.
The 2022 edition of Cascadia Rising would have built upon lessons learned from an initial full-scale Cascadia Rising drill held in 2016. That in communication interoperability, sustainment in the absence of fuel supplies and electricity and relief supply ordering and dispatch problems.
鈥淚t really became crystal clear that much of the Cascadia response is going to be a huge logistics challenge,鈥� Washington Emergency Management Division Director Robert Ezelle said at a media briefing Wednesday. 鈥淗ow do we move critical supplies from the rest of the country into the impacted area?鈥�
鈥淭hat鈥檚 a lot of what we are working on,鈥� Ezelle said. State emergency management agencies and interested nonprofits are planning their own exercises next month in place of the full-scale, regionwide drill.
Ezelle said the COVID-19 pandemic response gave emergency managers another type of stress test that could strengthen the response to a catastrophic earthquake. He specifically mentioned improved coordination between state and federal agencies and more practice than anyone could have wished for using virtual meeting software, such as Microsoft Teams.
Geologists and emergency planners consider the Cascadia Subduction Zone fault among the most significant disaster threats in the U.S. The offshore fault last ruptured in January 1700, spawning a tsunami that reached all the way across the Pacific to Japan.
Researchers digging in coastal marshes and offshore canyon bottoms have also found evidence of earlier great earthquakes and tsunamis. The radiocarbon dating of those events makes it possible to estimate the recurrence interval of Cascadia megaquakes at between 250 to 800 years. That puts the present day well within the return window.