June Cascadia Rising drill will teach agency cooperation
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, May 18, 2016
Island, county, state and federal agencies will come together with National Guard soldiers during the second week of June to participate in Cascadia Rising, a major, region-wide disaster exercise based on the potential full-margin rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone that would create an earthquake and tsunami.
The four-day exercise will run from June 7 to 10 and will involve local organizations such as VashonBePrepared, Vashon Island Fire & Rescue (VIFR) and Vashon’s Community Emergency Response Team (CERT). These groups will work with 80 unarmed National Guard soldiers on Vashon, along with county emergency response agencies and FEMA to conduct a simulated response to a pre-determined disaster scenario. The soldiers will provide humanitarian aid, such as distribution of food and water, and will help coordinate logistics with resources on the mainland — called Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS).
National Guard Lt. Col. Kristin Derda is in charge of the local portion of the National Guard’s operations for Cascadia Rising. She said in an interview earlier this month that soldiers from her battalion will begin arriving on June 5. This initial group of 20 will come over on ferries and will be joined on June 6 by 60 soldiers who will come in to Jensen Point via watercraft with 17 tactical vehicles. The National Guard has rented out the park for the exercise. The 80 soldiers will camp at Sunrise Ridge during the entirety of the multi-day event.
“It’s a good opportunity for the National Guard and emergency agencies to interact and see how we respond,” Derda said as she explained that each agency has its own different language that is important to know in order for them to help each other. “We will be coming into Jensen Point, and you will see us around the island, but no one will be armed. This is all just an exercise in our ability to communicate.”
Communication is being stressed by every agency involved. According to FEMA’s Cascadia Rising webpage, the primary goal of the exercise is to train and test a “whole community approach” to a complex disaster. The success of rescue operations will depend on “effective coordination and integration of governments at all levels.”
VashonBePrepared’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) team lead Rick Wallace, created a disaster scenario for Vashon that will be the basis of the exercise on the island. Included in his scenario are the loss of both ferry docks (one to landslide and one to dock rupture); the loss of power due to a substation that goes out; a fire station collapse that crushes a fire truck and medic vehicle; a landslide that destroys 45 homes, and casualties that include seven dead and more than 100 injured. Without the ferries, getting supplies to the island and removing injured off the island will take organization and coordination with government entities on all levels.
Wallace said that in the event of a disaster such as the one being simulated, the grocery stores will likely run out of food in three days, fuel will run out in one week and medical supplies will need to be re-stocked after 24 hours.
“When it comes to disasters, most people think of those first 12 to 24 hours, but the thing that keeps me awake at night is how we will find the materials we need: food, medicine and fuel. It will all run out,” he said.
The answer to how the island will receive these crucial materials is via marine transport, an exercise Wallace calls Operation Lifeline, which the National Guard will be responsible for. The operation will simulate the transport of necessary goods from the mainland to Vashon. But Wallace stressed the exercise is only a simulation.
“You will not be walking by and see giant pallets of food and fuel and medical supplies,” he said. “They’re not actually bringing anything. We’re just going through the process of requesting goods, having (the National Guard) find them and stage them before finally transporting.”
Vashon’s CERT volunteers will also practice how to load patients into medevac helicopters from the helipad at Sunrise Ridge.
“We’re trying to spread that knowledge of how to get injured people off the island,” Wallace said.
While Cascadia Rising will provide the opportunity for multiple agencies to come together, both the National Guard’s Derda and Wallace said it is important to remember that if a real disaster occurred, the response would not be as quick as is being demonstrated. Derda explained that in a real-world scenario, local emergency agencies need to declare an emergency to the governor, who will then activate the National Guard, which takes time.
“Some people think this is how it will actually happen,” Derda said. “You create a certain impression, but it’s not how it will actually happen. In reality, cities will always be the focus.”
The Cascadia Rising exercise has been in the works for many years, but gained more attention locally after a July 2015 New Yorker article outlined the destruction that could come from an earthquake along the 700 mile-long Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Ocean.
