“We will not be able to rescue you.”
If you take nothing else from this week’s story about the Cascadia Rising exercise , take those eight words.
Rick Wallace is not trying to scare you. And while he has no time for federal officials who think it’s helpful to use words like “toast” when discussing the eventual fate of our beautiful but volatile Pacific Northwest, he is also a realist.
Monday mornings will always come; the media will never stop talking about the Kardashians and the Cascadia Subduction Zone will rupture — all of these things are true whether we want them to be or not. So how do we accept the realities of a monster earthquake and its inevitable aftermath without simply throwing up our hands in fatalistic futility?
Wallace’s focused, matter-of-fact practicality is like a master class in the Zen of disaster preparedness. Balancing hard and sometimes frightening truths with a to-do list is really quite the trick.
Yes, it’s easier to believe it won’t happen in our lifetimes and yes, it’s just as easy to believe that there’s nothing we can do about it no matter how prepared we try to be, so why bother?
Anyone who remembers the horrific aftermath of Hurricane Katrina knows that Wallace isn’t joking when he says that we should not expect to be rescued. There are no super-heroes; our responders will be dealing with all of the same issues as the rest of us and may even need rescuing themselves.
So we cannot sit back and let others prepare and plan and practice for us.
As overwhelming as it feels to think about what we need to do, isn’t it preferable to be in a position to help rather than be the one who needs it?
Clearly there are factors we can’t control no matter how prepared we are or try to be. But optimizing our chances for a more positive outcome just makes sense.
Along with the various hands-on tasks that Wallace recommends, we should also voice our support for those working to fund an operational Earthquake Early Warning System as well as pre-disaster mitigation projects.
The warning system can save lives, prevent injuries and reduce damages. Despite the enormous toll of the Tohoku earthquake in Japan in 2011, it is believed that the casualties would have been unimaginable if there had been no warning. And it has been estimated that over half of the $69 billion in resulting costs — $20 billion in damages, $49 billion in economic losses — of 1994’s Northridge, California, quake were due to knock-down injuries. Imagine the savings if there could have been a 10 to 50 percent reduction in those injuries because of an early warning system.
Unfortunately, the current federal budget sequestration has imposed hard caps on appropriations, making it impossible to adequately fund these important ventures. This is something that those of us living as we are, perched on the edge of the Ring of Fire, should consider as we move toward 2016.
