9A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, JUNE 10, 2016
Megaquake: About 800 soldiers practiced rescue operations
Continued from Page 1A
At Camp Rilea in Warren-
ton, the staff at the County
Emergency Operations Cen-
ter practiced communicating
and coordinating efforts with
local agencies and military
personnel.
The team leveraged social
media for the irst time during
an exercise, and conducted
successful ham radio oper-
ations with everyone they’d
intended to — including
Arch Cape and a citizen in
Lewis & Clark — plus some
they hadn’t: Federal Emer-
gency Management Agency
Region X headquarters in
Bothell, Washington, and
Paciic County Emergency
Management.
In addition, they used the
county mass notiication sys-
tem, ClatsopALERTS!, to
communicate with other par-
ticipants in the training exer-
cise, notify community leaders
that the EOC had been acti-
vated, and advised Arch Cape
and Falcon Cove residents that
the military would be conduct-
ing aerial assessments in their
area.
These latest measures fol-
low steps the county has taken
to raise awareness of Cas-
cadia, including the installa-
tion of signs directing peo-
ple out of the tsunami zone
and local high schools add-
ing Community Emergency
Response Team training to the
curriculum.
“We only have so many
resources to throw at this,
and I think we’re moving in
the right direction in terms of
whole community planning,”
she said.
“There’s also no end to
the list of things that we need
to be looking at, improving
upon.”
Erick Bengel/The Daily Astorian
A triaged earthquake “victim” unable to walk awaits medi-
cal care at Camp Rilea during Cascadia Rising, a four-day
series of exercises intended to prepare local and state
agencies for the “Big One.”
Erick Bengel/The Daily Astorian
Soldiers from the Kentucky Army National Guard practice moving a reinforced concrete block
with metal bars and woodblocks at Camp Rilea’s Cascadis Rising disaster training site.
‘Cycle of improvement’
How did communication
between the county’s emer-
gency operations center and
military personnel go during
Cascadia Rising?
“It went great,” Brown
told a group of local oficials
and community leaders tour-
ing the military base Thursday.
“Did it go like we thought it
was going to? Yes and no. We
knew there would be problems
talking to one another, systems
that didn’t jive. But that’s the
nature of exercising.”
Most of those problems
happened on the irst day,
before the teams had found
their “battle rhythm,” she said.
“When it came time to
send our requests to the state,
the way we had practiced and
understood that it would be
happening was not the way
it ended up happening, and it
took us several hours to sort of
readjust and get that moving in
the right direction,” she later
elaborated. “And it’s no one’s
fault, it’s just the way things
played out that morning that
weren’t anticipated.”
Sometimes a communi-
cation hiccup boiled down to
human error. Other times it
was a technical dificulty, like
a nonfunctioning fax machine.
“You can have all the sys-
tems and the plans and the lat-
est and greatest equipment,
but, at the end of the day, you
still have human beings run-
ning it,” she said.
Making mistakes and igur-
ing out how to correct them is
precisely the point of training
exercises, she said: “Mistakes
are good in this world. And
it’s counterintuitive to a lot of
people, but mistakes are what
we’re looking for.”
“We write a plan, we exer-
cise it to identify the gaps and
vulnerabilities, we take cor-
rective action, we update our
plan, we exercise our plan, and
we continue that,” she said,
“and, in this way, it’s a contin-
uous cycle of improvement.”
Meanwhile, the agen-
cies build relationships and
get used to working together
under pressure.
“If you participate in an exer-
cise, you always have the oppor-
tunity to improve relationships,”
she said. “That may be the most
important thing that comes from
them in many cases.”
Disaster relief
During Cascadia Rising,
about 800 soldiers comprising
a dozen military teams assem-
bled at Camp Rilea and ran
through a series of simulated
rescue operations, including
saving people in a collapsed
inner city.
After touring the County
Emergency Operations Cen-
ter, some local leaders — and
a few international dignitar-
ies from partner agencies in
Vietnam and Bangladesh —
headed to the training site to
observe the mechanics of a
relief effort.
The
VIPs
witnessed
National Guard soldiers mov-
ing and breaking up heavy
boulders from a rubble pile
to reach victims; attending to
wounded or deceased (played
by actors in Hollywood-style
makeup) at a casualty collec-
tion site; checking the area for
chemical, biological, radio-
logical, nuclear and explosive
materials while decontaminat-
ing people suspected of fac-
ing exposure; and triaging and
treating the survivors.
Maj. Gen. Michael Stencel,
the adjutant general of Oregon,
told local leaders — includ-
ing Astoria Mayor Arline
LaMear, Gearhart Mayor
Dianne Widdop and Cannon
Beach Mayor Sam Steidel —
that under the worst-case sce-
nario, a 9.0 earthquake, most
life-saving efforts in the irst
36 to 72 hours will depend on
local responders, able-bod-
ied citizens and well-prepared
neighbors.
“We expect that the casu-
alty rate’s going to be phenom-
enal, and even a lot of your
iremen ... aren’t going to be
there right away,” he said. “We
don’t know what the condi-
tion’s going to be for your hos-
pitals and their ability to take
patients.”
Though outside forces will
come, the mobilization may
take a while, he said. “They’re
going to be anxious to get here,
but it’s going to be a struggle.”
Stencel asked the oficials
to do everything they can to
help their citizens prepare for
Cascadia.
Compared to Japan — a
country that had spent about
50 years preparing for an
earthquake and tsunami, yet
lost more than 15,000 peo-
ple during the 2011 disaster
— “we’re behind the curve,”
Brown said.
“We just need to do more of
this,” she said. “And my hope
in all of this, despite what any-
one did or didn’t learn in the
exercise, is that it helps them
recognize the importance of
it, and makes them want to do
more of it.”
J UNE 18 to ASTORIA
J ULY 3, 2016 MUSIC FESTIVAL
F IRST W EEKEND
CELEBRITY SOLOISTS OPENING MATINEE
Saturday, June 18 at 4:00PM
FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA GALA OPENING
Saturday, June 18 @ 7:30PM
SYMPHONIC SUNDAY MATINEE with THE RED VIOLIN
Sunday, June 19 @ 4:00PM
M ID -W EEK M USIC
BACH BY CANDLELIGHT
Tuesday, June 21 @ 7:30PM
Grace Episcopal Church
3 LEG TORSO
Wednesday, June 22 @ 7:30PM
Edward Stratton/The Daily Astorian
Jesse Miller, left, and Alex Autio are Clatsop Community College’s Students of the Year.
Students: ‘It’s the best feeling in the
world, knowing that I will be able
to be the role model she deserves’
Continued from Page 1A
Then Miller said he spi-
raled downward between
2009 and 2012, becoming
addicted to drugs. “It was just
choosing the wrong people to
hang out with,” he said.
Miller said he was sen-
tenced to three years in prison
for committing identity theft
to support his habit. He spent
time at East Oregon Correc-
tional Institute in Pendleton,
Mill Creek Correctional Facil-
ity in Salem and South Fork
Forest Camp near Tillamook.
“The South Fork Forest
Camp was a very good transi-
tion for me and a lot of other
people in my situation,” said
Miller, who worked trails and
fought ires alongside other
inmates in the minimum-se-
curity camp.
The Christmas before he
was released, his aunt and
uncle Mary Jean and Jon
Englund of Astoria visited
Miller and offered him a place
to stay away from his bad
inluences.
“We were hopeful,” Mary
Jean Englund said of why the
couple extended the offer.
“We knew he had the drive.”
Miller, who said moving
to Astoria was a life-saving
decision, was released in May
2015. He hit the ground run-
ning, taking a full-time job at
Bio-Oregon, saving up money
and inding his own apart-
ment the summer before he
started college, where he has
another year to earn an asso-
ciate’s degree in welding.
Since rejoining school, Miller
said he has earned straight As
every term, after never hav-
ing earned an A in any grade
before.
Miller would like to join
the boilermakers’ union, and
eventually counsel others in
the same situations he’s faced.
He’s also waiting for his irst
child, a daughter, who he said
is due on the Fourth of July.
“It’s the best feeling in the
world, knowing that I will be
able to be the role model she
deserves,” he said. “It’s just
heartwarming.”
Leaving home
Autio, 20, said he didn’t
know what to expect from col-
lege after a lifetime of home
schooling, but was pleasantly
surprised.
“We have a good academic
community,” he said. “We’re
really friendly with each
other and supportive. Being
in home school became an
advantage for me, something
to be proud of.”
While at college, he
enmeshed himself in the cam-
pus arts and literary scene,
being published in and help-
ing design RAIN Magazine,
the college’s literary publica-
tion, and traveling.
“Having Alex in classes
for the past two years has ele-
vated the educational expe-
rience for all of his peers,”
said writing instructor Nancy
Cook, who oversees the mag-
azine. “I feel really grateful to
be his teacher.”
Autio graduates Friday and
heads to Oregon State Uni-
versity, where he will major
in business administration
and minor in music. An avid
musician, Autio said he would
like to marry his love of the
arts with the business world
and be able to support the
family business, Autio Co., a
food processor manufacturer,
if need be.
“CITY GIRL” CLASSIC SILENT FILM WITH LIVE MUSIC
Thursday, June 23 @ 7:30PM
S ECOND W EEKEND
CHAMBER MUSIC with CARY LEWIS and the FESTIVAL ALL-STARS
Friday, June 24 @ 7:30PM
HAPPY HOUR with SERGEY and FRIENDS
Saturday, June 25 @ 4:00PM
SYMPHONIC SHOWCASE
Saturday, June 25 @ 7:30PM
VERDI’S IL TROVATORE
Sunday, June 26 @ 4:00PM
Y OUNG A RTISTS W EEK
FESTIVAL CHAMBER PLAYERS
Wednesday, June 29 @ 7:30PM
Venue:Astoria Masonic Center, 1572 Franklin Avenue
LITTLE WOMEN
Friday, July 1 @ 7:30PM
Saturday, July 2 @ 2:00PM
in the Clatsop Community College Performing Arts Center
S PECIAL C OMMUNITY E VENTS
•
•
•
•
FESTIVAL AWARDS DINNER
YOUNG ARTISTS COFFEE CONCERT
KMUN TROLL RADIO REVIEW
NORTH COAST SYMPHONIC BAND “AMERICAN HEROES”
14th Annual Summer Celebra� on
SYMPHONY • OPERA • CHAMBER MUSIC • FILM
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Except as noted, all performances are at the
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astoriamusicfestival.org 503.325.9896