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.”