Cascadia Rising exercise

This showed up on my FEMA feed. The exercise is done, but it an interesting look at how the FEMA will react to a major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake.

https://www.fema.gov/blog/2016-06-07/live-blogging-cascadia

The various agencies and entities that took part in this large exercise have been compiling their After Action Reviews (AAR). Seattle Times has an interesting article: Washington state's plan for megaquake 'grossly inadequate', study finds. The article has links to several of those AARs.

Everyone with half a brain realizes that the PNW is nowhere near ready for such a disaster. The good news is that we are getting a handle on where the biggest gaps are, and at least some steps are being made to mitigate those gaps.

Besides identifying weaknesses and strengths in preparations, these sort of exercises are invaluable in giving staff from various agencies a chance to work together. These previous interpersonal contacts have been proven to be very helpful when real deal events, both large and small, happen. You learn who the person is on the other end of the comms link, and something about what their organization can do and how they do it.

Thank you for this very interesting and thoughtful document. I noticed the proposal to train wilderness search and rescue teams in "light urban rescue." The WSARs certainly have a lot of skills to bring to LUR, but as a former member of a fairly competent WSAR team, I can remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable when our sheriff mobilized us for potential LUR (a spectacular warehouse fire). The environments and hazards are quite different. This only happened once.

The report was interesting reading also because of the CUOA (copious use of acronyms) throughout.

For a nice article on the Cascadia Rising exercise, with links to both the Oregon and Washington AARs, as well as one from FEMA see Northwest States Write Up Wake Up Call For 'The Big One'.

As always, lots of areas for improvement were noted. Which is, of course, the reason for holding these exercises.