Cascadia Megaquake - Asking around

This goes back to the previous round of writing. If you will recall, I said I had written to the emergency manager for my work to ask about our contingency plans, but also that there were other places I wanted to write. I did that.

This is in keeping with the realization that personal preparedness - while very important - is insufficient for the region. Thinking about what would be needed for recovery, I was primarily focusing on what would be needed to keep the workforce functioning so we could avoid the economic collapse predicted by The New Yorker.

What do businesses need? They need electricity, obviously, and that led to utilities in general. It may be more obvious that no one in the building can work without electricity, but if you have power without water, there are hygiene issues with opening the building. If you have power but no heat, because the heat is gas, that may be a health risk, depending on the time of year. That was a good reason to check with PGE, NW Natural Gas, and Tualatin Valley Water District. I know there are other utility companies in the region, but these are the companies my household writes checks to, so I wrote to them.

There were two other things that came to mind where I did not write. One is internet. Yes, electricity will get the computers turned on, but so much of what they do now is web-based that connectivity is huge. I could still write to Comcast and ask for the sake of my household, but I was focusing on business needs, and I don't know enough about what companies they are likely to use, and if there are ways in which the connections are different. It's worth looking into.

The other message I didn't write was to the garbage company, because it felt like a big part of their ability to function would depend on the roads. I wrote to ODOT instead. Then, because that got me into government, I decided to check in with Metro, because their whole thing is getting different parts of the region to function together, so they could be very helpful in getting regional preparedness going.

Most of the answers were very positive.

Metro
Metro does coordinate with local and state governments and emergency preparedness agencies to plan for disaster relief efforts. We are a member of the Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization and have been working on a disaster debris plan for many years. We are also involved in the Cascadia Rising earthquake simulation exercise in June 2016 which will test the coordination and emergency response efforts of many organizations.

Tualatin Valley Water District
They were my favorite. Not only are they partnering with Hillsboro to develop a third water supply for backup, obtaining portable distribution systems, strengthening infrastructure and participating in drills, but when I wrote they were working on an article to send to their customers to keep them informed. That is what I call doing everything right. You can read more about some of their work at

www.OurReliableWater.org. 

ODOT
Also a favorite. They are also participating in drills and planning, working with their employees on individual preparedness so that their workforce will be ready, and thinking strategically with locating supplies where they will have access regardless of transportation issues. One thing they pointed out is that with a lot of their normal responses to landslides and storms, they are dealing with similar situations to what an earthquake will create. They are also looking at getting the infrastructure more earthquake ready.

NW Natural Gas
They were my least favorite. They kept returning to their personal preparedness information, and then to what to do during an earthquake, when I was specifically asking about recovery. Eventually they said that they could not predict recovery time without knowing how big it ended up being, but forecasting is how you prepare. I do appreciate that they have procedures in place for keeping everything from burning up, because that is important, and fires would make recovery worse, but the final answer and the process for getting it were both frustrating. 

PGE
Actually, the automated form did not understand my question. I should have followed up and called, but since at that time I knew  I was going to wait for "Unprepared" to start writing about earthquakes again, I put that on hold.

Are we perfect regionally? No, but we knew that. What the article missed is that there are people working on it, and they can do some pretty impressive things. If everyone works on it, we have a pretty good shot.

These questions are good for finding out information, but to get everyone working together on preparedness, it may also take some reaching out to exert pressure. More on that next week.