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2A • June 3, 2016 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com Police, ire crews ‘may not be able to respond’ ater Cascadia Emergency preparedness forum to stress self-suiciency By Erick Bengel EO Media Group Immediately after a Cas- cadia Subduction Zone earth- quake, emergency respond- ers, including those from Cannon Beach, will likely be as paralyzed as everyone else. “The city may not be able to respond at all,” Astoria City Councilor Drew Herzig said. Residents and visitors un- lucky enough to be on the North Coast when the “big one” hits should plan to take care of themselves, he said. “We’re not trying to terrify people, but we’re trying to be honest with them about what they can expect from city ser- vices,” Herzig said. “And the reality of our situation with a Cascadia event is that there’s going to be very little service left.” Later this month, a panel of four experts — Althea Riz- zo, geologic hazards program manager at Oregon Emer- gency Management; Tyree Wilde, warning coordination meteorologist at the Nation- al Oceanic and Atmospher- ic Administration; Patrick Corcoran, coastal natural haz- ards specialist with Oregon State University; and Neal Bond, protection unity forest- er at the Oregon Department of Forestry — will speak at the Liberty Theater on Asto- ria and Clatsop County’s state of disaster readiness. The Community Emer- gency Preparedness Forum May 31 covered a range of natural disasters facing the North Coast, from winter storms to wildland ires to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. “Even though it may be tough to take in, it’s some- thing we need to start facing up to. Knowledge is power, particularly in something like this,” Herzig said. “It’s go- ing to happen, we just don’t know when. So the more we can prepare for it, the better.” JOSHUA BESSEX/EO MEDIA GROUP Safety and survival equipment are shown in the back of a truck during a tsunami drill with the Coast Guard in January. AP FILE PHOTO In this March 11, 2011, ile photo, ocean waters of a tsunami surge from a Japanese earth- quake hit the shoreline in Seaside. Up and down the coast of the Paciic Northwest, com- munities have been intensifying their eforts to protect lives when the region is hit by a killer quake and tsunami, which seismologists say is inevitable. Devastating to infrastructure Astoria does not face the same tsunami threat as Seaside and Cannon Beach because the city is several miles upriver from the coast, although it still faces signif- icant waterfront inundation from rising sea levels, Astoria Fire Chief Ted Ames said. The primary threat is the earthquake itself. “If we were to face a seismic event, like … the 9-point-something-magni- tude earthquake off the coast — that nearshore event — we know that it will be devastat- ing to infrastructure,” Astoria Police Chief Brad Johnston said. Bridges will fail. Build- ings will fall. Large swaths of earth will liquefy and pro- duce landslides. City roads and streets — crushed, col- lapsed or covered in debris — will be impassable. Even with the best of intentions and most pro- fessional of forces, Astoria police and ire departments will have severely dimin- ished — perhaps nonexistent — rescue capabilities after a megaquake and tsunami. Make sure you are prepared for big one Cascadia Rising, a re- gion-wide functional exercise takes place June 7-10. As an emergency preparedness ex- ercise that encompasses all as- pects of emergency response, the exercise brings together Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Federal Emergency Man- agement Agency to prepare for a mega earthquake. Major Oregon cities, 23 counties, nine tribal nations, 17 state agencies and departments, the American Red Cross, and two private sector partner organi- zations have signed on to par- ticipate. Emergency operations and coordination centers at all levels of government will ac- tivate to coordinate simulated ield response operations with- in their jurisdictions and with neighboring communities, state, federal and a variety of military resources. Ju n e 17, 18 & 19, 2016 “If we have that scale of an event, you will not see irst responders rolling up in their patrol cars. It’s not going to be possible,” Johnston said. “When you think about As- toria and the geography and the nature of the roadways, there’s a good chance it’s going to be very dificult to get places (with) things other than horses, mountain bikes, dirt bikes, ATVs and those kinds of things.” The ire department will be in the same situation: “I don’t think it’s realistic to think that we would be driv- ing ire trucks around town trying to help people,” Ames said. Self-suiciency “I can’t sit here as ire chief and tell you exact- ly what’s going to happen, ‘cause I don’t have a clue,” Ames said. “I just don’t think that it’s a real great outlook when we think about a major event. “I’m probably scaring the hell out of people, but that’s the way it is,” he added. Corcoran said that, as soon as high-magnitude earth- quakes occur, power lines fall and arc, and gas and water lines break. “So now you’ve got gas ires starting all over the place and no water to put them out,” he said. “People’s current sense of, ‘Well, when my house is on ire, the entire ire department comes to help me,’ is wrong.” Johnston advises citizens to prepare themselves, men- tally and materially, such that they could survive without irst responders and even help their neighbors. “It’s really important for people to have that ability to care for themselves in those initial hours because it’s go- ing to be tough,” he said, adding that emergency man- agement specialists now tell people to plan for a period of self-suficiency lasting at least 14 days. “It will be some time before government is able to re-establish that infra- structure, and the people are going to have to be prepared for that.” “Professionals don’t like to say — especially cops and iremen — that they’re not going to be there for you,” Corcoran observed. “So, when they’re telling us that they’re not going to be there for us, I think you really need to pay attention to that.” A reminder Focusing on emergency preparedness is one of the City Council’s goals for the year. “We’ve been lagging behind places like Cannon Beach and some others. They’re much more exposed to the tsunami, so they’re much more aware of the dan- ger,” Herzig said. “In Astoria, pretty much most of us are safe from the tsunami, but the preceding earthquake is go- ing to be devastating, and we need to start becoming aware of that.” It takes a serious men- tal effort for many people to imagine themselves in an emergency as dire as Casca- dia, let alone how they would act, he added. “Nobody wants to go there.” Corcoran sees this resis- tance to contemplating nat- ural disasters as a product of evolutionary hardwiring; creeping threats, whether Cascadia or climate change, tend not to register as import- ant. Of course, this condition makes preparing for these threats all the more challeng- ing. “In general, preparing for hazards is something, as human beings, we tend not to do,” he said. “We have to remind ourselves to do that once in a while.” The emergency prepared- ness forum, he said, is intend- ed as such a reminder. “We haven’t been around the block before on (Casca- dia). We have to share what the research says, what hap- pened in Japan, other kinds of places,” he said. “When it happens again, I guarantee you, we’re going to wish we would’ve done more.”