Disaster Planning

Like a lot of people, the recent series of disasters in Japan has prompted Mandy and I to take a hard look at our own disaster preparedness and adjust our plans and expectations. One of the greatest lessons from the terrible tragedy is that disasters rarely come alone; after a hurricane, you will probably get flooding; after a quake, in our area at least, you may expect a tsunami. After any widespread disaster, you can expect fire, disease, and the ordinary depredations of seasonal weather that many of us subconsciously tune out in our electrically-powered, environmentally-controlled bubbles of habitation. It takes a particular degree of unlucky to have a nuclear plant melt-down thrown into the mix, but utilities and industry in general may experience any number of secondary catastrophes that could impact surrounding areas. So on top of suffering damage, you may find it necessary to evacuate further, without any significant degree of assistance. As we saw with Katrina and as we are seeing on the Sanriku Coast (I only know it's called that because I am watching Japanese TV right now... the coverage throughout the disaster has been excellent and they are running an instant retrospective at the moment), that assistance can take significantly longer to arrive than the government claims.

The Tohoku Quake is in many ways a good model for some of the likely disasters we face here in the Pacific Northwest. The most likely major seismic event we face is also from an off-shore fault at a similar distance and depth; we have water and large population centers in close proximity. So the quake/tsunami combo is something we want to be ready for, and there are some hard lessons learned in Japan that we are working to assimilate.

The biggest one of those is the size of the wave. Our plan, while house-sitting up here in Hadlock, had involved climbing the nearest hill. Turns out it's only about forty feet above sea level; predictions for the wave that might be generated by the Cascadia fault range up to a hundred feet. That's at the coast; even if it's only half that here, though, we're still ten feet under water. So we've had to re-think our evacuation route. Complicating matters are a lack of models for that sort of information. We haven't been able to find any information from NOAA or the USGS about how big waves here might be, or just as importantly, how long they might take to get here. To get to any hill higher than that forty footer, we have to go down first; the only thing worse waiting on a hill too small would be getting caught in a valley too soon.

There's not much we can do about that and there are no certainties in most disasters anyway, so we're working with what we can control.

We have long maintained two medium-sized bins with emergency supplies. I've always felt that the three days/three ways mantra preached by local government is a little lightweight (they do say, in the fine print, that government assistance "may not be available for several weeks or more" which is more realistic) so we have packed up enough gear and supplies to be able to rebuild civilization brick by brick should that become necessary. While here in Hadlock (we don't take the bins to the boat; in a way, the boat is an oversized bin full of emergency supplies already) we have been keeping them up on shelves at the shop, on the theory that keeping them further inland might keep them safe should something happen to the house, or if in fact what was most damaged was the shop itself, then at least we might still have everything that is already in the house itself. The Tohoku incident showed the folly in this. The shop probably isn't going to be any safer from a wave than the house. Worse, the shelves would likely collapse from the quake or at least disgorge all their contents into a jumble on the floor, which we then would have to spend precious time digging through to get the disaster bins out. So, we have moved them (and our portable generator) down here to the garage, where they can be chucked into the back of the truck and we can be out of here in two or three minutes.

Of course, that's assuming we can get out of the garage. I figure the power will go out first thing, so the automatic door openers aren't going to work. There's a manual override, but what are the odds the tracks are going to be bent out of alignment if there was a severe earthquake?

Even if all that goes well, there may be trees down across the driveway or other roads out of the area. So we're looking at being on foot. The smart folks have backpacks to carry along with them rather than bins, but I like the durability of the bins and the capacity, so I have come up with a plan B for taking them along on foot as well... wheelbarrow! I actually tested this for the first time while bringing the two of them down from the shop to the house. It was surprisingly easy to push both of them along in the wheelbarrow, one atop the other, even down the bumpy gravel driveway. Although, come to think of it, that's all downhill; I should re-do my test going the other direction sometime.

The thing that seems to have got most people nervous right now is the nuclear incident and at first glance, that doesn't seem like a major concern here. The only working nuclear power station in the state is in Richland, well away and downwind from here. Upwind, there's just ocean. So we haven't been tripping over ourselves to get in on the rush for potassium iodine tablets. Still, when the furor dies down, I think we will get some; right out the front windows on any given day we often see submarines or aircraft carriers tied up over at the naval station on Indian Island. That's right: portable nuclear power plants, right on our front porch! And they are all right upwind of us, too. The US Navy has perhaps the safest nuclear program in the world, a program that produced our greatest president: Jimmy Carter. But accidents still happen. A quick review of Wikipedia's list of military nuclear accidents reveals quite a sordid history of mishaps, from which the Pacific Northwest has not been immune: there are at least two warheads laying around loose somewhere below waters we sail in fairly frequently. And these are just the ones we know about.

Incidentally, I think that all makes a pretty good argument for the comparative safety overall of nuclear energy; for all the incidents and the many, many accidental releases of radiation, there have been damn few documented long-term environmental hazards... far less than, say, the Exxon Valdez spill or the recent Deepwater Horizon incident. For that matter, they have generated fewer human fatalities. It may be years before we find out the full story of everything that has happened in Japan this month, but I wouldn't find it surprising at all if there were more deaths, short and long term, attributable to the refinery fires that broke out than from the nuclear accident.

Still, we're getting the pills.

You might ask why we're not more concerned about being right next to a major ammunition depot in the first place, either while we are staying here in Hadlock or when we anchor out near here. The answer should be obvious: if something goes wrong over there, it will be quick and there will be little we can do about it. Actually, I think we're pretty safe. Other than on vessels in transit, it's unlikely that there are any nuclear weapons over there, and although a conventional explosion may be significant, I think we're situated to avoid the worst of the blast. And once it's done, it's done... no waves to worry about, no significant destruction of local infrastructure.

Apart from the pills I am fairly happy with how we are stocked up with the bins. We don't have as much water as recommended, but a filter, and in the Pacific Northwest there is never a source very far off. While we have plenty of food, much of it is dehydrated, which could still put a strain on the water supply, particularly if for whatever reason we are on the move. So I've also been looking into picking up some MREs, which are fully hydrated but still relatively lightweight and well-preserved. That would also help me avoid the onerous task of sorting and replacing expired food products in the bins every couple of years... in this environment, an MRE could stay good (for a certain value of "good") for thirty years or more. So I have been looking into buying some of those.

Turns out MREs are really popular with certain folks. There is a whole website dedicated to them. You can pretty much only get them by the case, though, and the whole thing would come to around a hundred bucks with shipping, which gets me more than I want for more than I want to spend. I'm thinking of going in with some other folks on it, though.

Of course our most fervent hopes are that none of this is ever needed and that this is mostly just an exercise in planning, but I feel somewhat better for the fact that in the wake of the Tohoku event, we at least know what questions to be asking even if we don't have all the answers yet.