Cascadia Earthquake:
The First 48 Hours
By Armadeus Davidson, EMPACT Northwest
It will happen mid meal. It will happen mid commute, mid sentence, or mid breath. It will happen while you wash the fire engine, or on your fifty eighth priority run to Mrs. Smiths house because she forgot her insulin. True to its warnings, the Cascadia subduction zone will rupture once again. Over the course of five minutes, streets will turn to liquid and building foundations will ripple and crumble. Skyscrapers will sway, and joints will tear. Roadways will collapse, homes will dance from their footprints, gas and water lines will burst, and fires will rage, and for the first 48 hours, the on-duty fire responders will be alone to determine who to save and who to let die.
The Cascadia earthquake will find and take advantage of every human weakness. “Kicking the can” to the next generation of lawmakers, managers, and responders will end in a costly game of musical chairs. Every failure to plan, prepare, and act in the years leading to the quake will present as plain truth in the aftermath. Thousands of unreinforced buildings built at the turn of the 20th century will crumble into piles of brick, timber and years of failed action. Fatality predictions with frightening margins of error will be distilled to reality. In the end, the accuracy wont matter to the entombed. For these unfortunate souls, the survival clock will begin immediately. They will be pinned and alone as aftershocks and thirst terrorize them. As the first 48 survivable hours slowly merge with unconsciousness, life will ebb away from rubble piles throughout the region.
Like it or not, this is the current reality. The Cascadia mega-quake will certainly occur, and without immediately mandated building retrofit codes, successfully implemented early warning systems, greater attention to first responder training, and community involvement, thousands of lives will be lost and we will only know in hindsight that we could have made a difference.
Part Two: The Monster Off Shore
The Cascadia Subduction Zone, also known as the “mega-thrust zone” is a 600 mile long fault in the Pacific Ocean running from Vancouver Island, Canada to Northern California. This area represents a significant earthquake hazard to the residents of the Pacific Northwest. Fifty miles off of the coast of Washington State, the Pacific Plate dives beneath the San Juan plate in what scientists call a “subduction zone” (DHS). These plates have become stuck. As this subduction region continues to build pressure as it has for the past 316 years, its sudden release will be responsible for the worst disaster in American history (CREW).
Since the shocking 2005 study by the University of Washington titled “The Orphan Tsunami of 1700,” the seismologic community has been aware of this imminent threat to populations. University of Washington geologist Brian Atwater linked evidence from the Washington coast with written records of a powerful tsunami that struck Japan, determining to the hour the last time the Cascadia Subduction Zone delivered a megaquake. Coastal silt deposits from tsunami’s past have shown that the Cascadia earthquake has reoccurred in relatively predictable intervals. With the last quake happening in 1700, there is a 1 in 10 chance that it will happen in the next 50 years:
The next great Cascadia earthquake has a one-in-ten chance of occurring in the next 50 years, and that it may attain magnitude 9. The one-in-ten odds follow from an average interval of 500 years if the fault lacks memory of when it last broke. The magnitude-9 assumption leaves a margin of safety in case of lesser events. (Atwater 101).
The “megathrust” earthquakes are the most dangerous in the world, and range from 8.5 to 9.5 in magnitude, lasting from four to six intensely destructive minutes (Atwater). It is critical to understand that the Richter Scale is logarithmic, meaning a 9.5 earthquake is ten times stronger than an 8.5, and one hundred times stronger than a 7.5. In the last five years, we have witnessed two megathrust earthquakes, giving us a glimpse into the inevitable. In 2011, the most earthquake prepared nation in the world — Japan sustained massive damage as a result of a 9.5 megathrust earthquake and suffered a catastrophic Tsunami killing 15,893 people. Fortunately, most of Japan’s infrastructure is modern and designed to suit a very active earthquake environment. Tokyo, the largest city is the world by population density was mostly spared from major structural collapse and casualties (a scenario that will not play out similarly well in Washington State). The majority of the deaths were caused by the resulting Tsunami. The sobering fact remains that despite being modern and an understandably prepared nation, experts miscalculated the potential for a 9.0 quake, resulting in the improper height of sea walls which could have prevented many deaths. Warnings were presented well in advance by one astute geologist.
In 2005, however, at a conference in Hokudan, a Japanese geologist named Yasutaka Ikeda had argued that the nation should expect a magnitude 9.0 in the near future — with catastrophic consequences, because Japan’s famous earthquake-and-tsunami preparedness, including the height of its sea walls, was based on incorrect science. The presentation was met with polite applause and thereafter largely ignored (Schulz).
Part Three: A Series of Unfortunate Events
Although emergency planners have invested heavily in determining the potential risks to human life and property, aspects of the risks assessment amount to educated guesswork. At the foundation of disaster forecasting, HAZUS is a state of the art computer program funded and developed by FEMA to estimate losses from potential disasters. This program is heavily weighted by regional and national planners as the best data source available for earthquake loss estimates: “Federal, state, regional, and local governments use the HAZUS earthquake model for earthquake risk mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery planning” (Neighbors). As important as this methodology is to our understanding, it is only as good as the data put into its calculations. Unfortunately, detailed structural engineering data of existing at-risk buildings is unavailable due to the cost of a building to building evaluation. “The results show that the estimated economic building damage varies by a factor of 14, on average… In extreme cases, the estimated economic building damage varies by a factor of more than 500” (Neighbors).
Seattle was first settled a mere 150 years ago by modern day Americans. After the “Great Seattle Fire” burned down the entire downtown business district in 1889, wood structures were replaced by brick and mortar buildings. Although this was a great achievement in preventing future conflagrations, 19th century technology and limited understanding of geology has set the stage for a greater pending loss of life. These buildings, which compose a range of smaller multi-story buildings, to medium sized highrise structures are not capable of withstanding a major Cascadia event. These buildings house many business and residences throughout the city. Although geographically protected from the destructive power of Tsunamis, there are over 1000 unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in the City of Seattle (the majority of which also happen to exist on the ground with the highest susceptibility to soil liquefaction), and at least a thousand more in the surrounding Puget Sound Communities (CREW). In addition, there are numerous concrete tilt up structures built prior to building code upgrades in 1973 (PSSCA), and steel frame towers built prior to “shear stress” resistant codes that were enacted in response to the 1994 Northridge earthquake (CREW). According to a 2007 engineering study commissioned by the City of Seattle following 2001 Nisqually earthquake (the relatively mild 6.8 magnitude quake that caused 8 million in damages), two thirds of the damaged buildings in Seattle consisted of URM structures and remain hazards to this day:
Based on Seattle’s permit records from 1990 to 2007 for the surveyed buildings, the rate of retrofits to URM buildings appears to be below 10 percent. The demolition rate of URM buildings also appears to be below 10 percent. Hence, it appears Seattle’s URM buildings may be in a similar condition in 2007 as they were prior to the 2001 Nisqually earthquake (Reid Middleton).
On one hand, the science is good enough to tell us that it will be bad; on the other hand the science can not accurately determine how bad it will be. Our best possible method of measuring risk has a broad margin of error. Our regional planners have taken HAZUS and made best possible loss estimates with available “out of the box” US Census data (Neighbors). The USGS data inputs from past quakes are critical, however, forecasting of geologic behavior beyond 6.8 is limited due to lack of recorded experience in the region. In the event of a 9.0 quake, it is a safe assumption to realize that there are thousands of century-old buildings which will not fare better than the poorly constructed concrete buildings that claimed over 200,000 lives in Haiti’s 7.0 earthquake.
Part Four: First Responders
Our nation has been challenged by several large scale disasters in recent memory. Although it was not a “natural disaster,” September 11, 2001, was our greatest test of courage and duty. This event, which was the single most defining moment of American first responders, showed what we are willing and capable of in the face of absolute horror. Although isolated to what amounted to several city blocks, this event was the largest loss of life on American soil since Peal Harbor. This unprecedented event required a response spanning all 28 Federal Urban Search And Rescue (USAR) Task Forces from across the nation, and the remaining resources of the largest fire department in the world: the mighty FDNY (Atkins). Four years later, another tragedy struck our homeland. Hurricane Katrina, hammered New Orleans in 2005, killed over 1200 people, and became the largest natural disaster in American history. It also became the poster event that embodied the perception of governmental dysfunction at local, state and federal levels. Despite the New Orleans Fire Department’s preparation and commendable actions on the ground before and following the disaster, Katrina demonstrated how our systems can fail, and how sometimes our policy makers don’t understand or acknowledge our weaknesses until it is too late.
The Puget Sound Structural Collapse Annex (PSSCA) Catastrophic Disaster Plan was developed to promote collaboration by the 8-County Puget Sound Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP). This is a major earthquake response plan, and clearly states the limitations of the available first response rescue capabilities. This consortium of regional fire service leadership summed up the post earthquake capacity in the following statement: “A major earthquake resulting in collapse of several multistory structures would quickly far exceed the capacity of this Task Force, as well as the capacity of local jurisdictions to respond” (PSSCA). The plan also identifies the casualty risks by referring to the CREW study, although it miss states the estimated fatality numbers of thousands as hundreds in the following quote: “The Puget Sound Region collapsed buildings and falling debris will kill or injure many people and trap many others. Some estimates place these numbers in the hundreds” (PSSCA). Contrarily, the CREW Cascadia Subduction Scenario report, states casualty numbers as follows: “Should the earthquake and tsunami happen tomorrow, the number of deaths could exceed 10,000. More than 30,000 people could be injured.” It is clear from this response plan and the limited rescue capacity data at the state and federal levels, the responsibility of local response has been delegated to the county and city departments of emergency management. In short, the level of service received by the citizens in the first 48–72 hours post disaster, unarguably the most critical time frame of survival, will be dependent on the capabilities of the local level disaster managers, first responders and surviving citizens.
The World Health Organization Technical Hazard Sheet-Natural Disaster Profile states that “Survival in entrapment rarely lasts longer than 48 hours: 85–95% of persons rescued alive from collapsed buildings are rescued in the first 24–48 hours after the earthquake” (WHO). The Puget Sound Metropolitan Region has 369 uniformed rescue task force members who are trained to various levels, from Type I “all risk teams” to Type III “operations level teams.” In addition, 6,000 career firefighters, trained to various levels of basic rescue, firefighting or operations level rescue capabilities serve the entire state (PSSCA). Following a major disaster event, off duty firefighters are instructed to secure their family and personal safety before reporting for duty. Realistic factors must be included when calculating available response personnel in the first critical 48 hours, such as deaths, injuries, and inability to access their areas of responsibility due to infrastructural damage, communication and transportation disruptions. Like the citizens, many regional firefighters will also be victims and subject to these damage predictions as described by FEMA:
FEMA calculates that, across the region, something on the order of a million buildings — more than three thousand of them schools — will collapse or be compromised in the earthquake,” “So will half of all highway bridges, fifteen of the seventeen bridges spanning Portland’s two rivers, and two-thirds of railways and airports; also, one-third of all fire stations, half of all police stations, and two-thirds of all hospitals. (Schulz)
The population of major metropolitan counties in the Puget Sound basin, including King, Pierce, Thurston, Snohomish and Kitsap County, stands at 4.52 million people (US Census). In hypothetical numbers, if 60% of all available responders in Western Washington report for duty, it represent approximately 3,000 firefighters. A citizen to rescuer ratio of 1300:1. The remaining responders will certainly be needed to relieve the battered on duty responders within 48–72 hours. According to the Puget Sound Structural Collapse Rescue Annex Catastrophic Disaster Coordination Plan, “past experience,” which excludes a megathrust level quake in the United States, will distribute victims and casualties in the following manner: 50% injured, but not trapped, many who can self rescue or requires minimal assistance, 30% light structural entrapment, requires light rescue capability, 15% void space structural entrapment, requiring medium level rescue capability, and 5% entombed, requiring specialized heavy rescue (PSSCA).
If only 5% of the greater Seattle areas 2.4 million population is directly affected by injury or entrapment, 120,000 people will require some form of rescue. Using the PSSCA’s rescue profile as a guide, this represents 60,000 self rescue, 36,000 light rescue, 18,000 medium rescue, and 6,000 entombed civilians requiring heavy rescue. In this scenario, the level of response required in the first 48 hours does not currently exist. Also, there is the matter of the emergency medical care required by victims once they are rescued. Survivors and displaced people will require access to communications, information, shelter, food, water, medications and sanitation. This is a staggering reality for the first responders, and its implications are overwhelming.
The coastal communities are not included in the PSSCA Catastrophic Disaster Response Plan. Depending on time of year and time of day, loss of life in these communities can be in the tens of thousands. These communities are rural, underfunded and are limited in response capabilities. The Tsunami will strike within 15–30 minutes of the earthquake, bringing in a 50–100 feet high wall of water moving at 500 miles an hour. At the height of summer tourist season, a city such as Ocean Shores, Washington, will not have the time to evacuate its citizens and visitors. Citizens must leave the entire city within fifteen minutes for higher ground, which does not exist. The CREW study points out very clearly that the busy summer tourism season could easily double the anticipated tsunami deaths: “The population of Ocean Shores live in the inundation zone… the majority of Ocean Shores’ residents may be too far from high ground to reach it in the time available” (CREW). On duty personnel may be killed, leaving rescue responsibilities to survivors and responders from surrounding communities who will have their own immediate challenges since the entire Gray’s Harbor region will be destroyed by the tsunami.
Part Five: Out of the Box Thinking
It wasn’t until the 2015 New Yorker magazine article “The Really Big One” by Kathryn Schulz, that the regions inhabitants were jarred to attention. Schulz gave a sensational account of the pending disaster with a splendid summary of the available science and successfully scared everyone who read it. But what does this mean for the area first responders? What use is it to be aware of a pending calamity when the best guess indicates that it may happen tomorrow, or not at all in the span of our career? The answer can be as complicated as the number of scientists and stakeholders involved, but to put it simply, “do nothing” is not the answer.
Occasionally, our emergency response systems are challenged by the larger-than-usual disasters. Some communities see the local destruction by tornado’s, mudslides, industrial accidents, where 30, 40, 100 people are killed. Although tragic at any scale and stressful for communities and their first responders, these events are well within the nations existing emergency response capabilities. First hand experiences of mega disasters with fatalities reaching tens of thousands are rare to non existent in the American fire service. Most of us can not even imagine what that looks like, let alone start planning for it in proper context. Plan or no plan, incoming national resources will be focused on population centers with the highest concentrations of entrapped people. In truth, most heavy resources will arrive well outside the 24–48 hour survival window. Small to medium sized cities, especially in coastal or rural locations will be left to fend for themselves for extended days, even weeks. It is imperative for those charged with the protection of lives to better understand the realities associated with their community, and should understand that planning on outside assistance is not a plan at all. Our communities must strive for self sufficiency. Just as all fire fighters must have basic medical training as a minimum, every career and volunteer firefighter should know how to use levers, shore up damaged buildings, safely locate and package trapped victims, and organize makeshift medical clinics.
Some progressive agencies are fortunate enough to have the resources to provide operations level rescue training as part of employee development. Yet for numerous departments, for whom post disaster self sufficiency will be most needed — the rural, volunteer or combination career-volunteer departments, these training objectives are often back-burnered due to limited funds or other pressing needs. Small fire service organizations require funding to specifically train and equip staff and volunteers as operations level rescue providers with simple, readily available tools and techniques.
Improving outcomes of disaster rest solely on preparation. Demolition or costly reinforcement of old buildings is critical, but political reluctance results in slow progress. Tsunami resistant structures with vertical escape options are proven effective, yet too expensive for small coastal communities. Still, the risks are so great, the true challenge is one of public awareness and education since its public pressure alone that can overcome political and financial barriers.
Integration of non governmental organizations and community volunteers are also critical for immediate reaction to such events. As witnessed during the Oso, Washington, mudslide in 2014, citizen volunteers were critical to the rescue and recovery operations, although, lack of training and understanding of command systems lead to notable difficulties. The 2015 wildfires, worst in Washington State history, also called for citizen volunteers and the members of the national guard to receive wildland firefighting courses as the event was unfolding. Although more volunteers were available, trainers were unavailable due to the lack of manpower on the front lines. We must learn from these events and change our disaster mitigation paradigms by preemptively training citizen groups and guardsmen in basic rescue techniques as a matter of priority.
In April of 2011, FEMA Region IV and Region X Administrators Nancy Ward and Ken Murphy testified in Washington DC, before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, a Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Affairs. In their testimony, Ward and Murphy was tasked with updating the House of Representatives about the current state of disaster preparation in the regions of their responsibility. Following a short summary of lessons learned from the Japan earthquake and tsunami, the testimony took a significant turn. They spoke of two federally funded programs that are critical to the effort of reaching at risk populations. One of the federal programs, the “Whole Community Initiative” stresses the importance of stakeholders working together before disaster strikes as the most effective way to save lives. Murphy and Ward also identified the critical nature of the first 72 hours following a disaster event, and how FEMA has “begun to work across all segments of society to identify how we can collectively achieve these outcomes” (Murphy, Ward). These words establish the collective infancy of our mega-disaster preparations and attempts to instill an urgency to act. If we are to save lives when it matters most, in the first 48 to 72 hours post event, every stakeholder from citizen to first responder, from mayor to governor must investigate their own mitigation capacity paradigms. Before the House, Ward and Murphy went on record to warn us all. Will we heed the following words with adequate introspection, or will we politely applaud and ignore them? It is up to us to decide, and it is up to us to act.
An incident of catastrophic proportions has the potential to imperil millions of people, devastate multiple communities, and have far-reaching economic and social effects. Time is of supreme importance, and the imperative to take immediate action begins in the communities where people live and work, where businesses and industries operate, and where local governments and institutions reside.
We cannot effectively respond to a catastrophic disaster alone. Our planning and preparedness scenarios require all parties to pitch in, including FEMA and its partners at the federal level; state, local and tribal governments; non-governmental organizations in the non-profit, faith-based and private sector communities; and most importantly, individuals, families, and communities, who continue to be our most important assets and allies in our ability to respond to and recover from a major disaster…it is truly the whole community that must be prepared to respond in ways that extend beyond the normal paradigms in which we have traditionally operated (Murphy, Ward).
Works Cited
Atkins, Stephan Editor “The 9/11 Encyclopedia: Second Edition” Santa Barbara, California ABC- CLIO, 2006. Print.
Atwater, Brian F., et al. “The Orphan Tsunami of 1700. Japanese Clues to a Parent Earthquake In North America.” United States Geological Survey Professional Paper 1707 (2005): University of Washington Press. Web. 11 October 2015.
Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup (CREW) “Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquakes: A Magnitude 9.0 Earthquake Scenario” (2013) Web. 14 October 2015.
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “Analytical Baseline Study for the Cascadia Earthquake and Tsunami” (2011) Web. 18 October 2015.
Federal Emergency Management Agency “HAZUS Earthquake Event Report, Cascadia” (2013) Web. 15 November 2015.
Murphy, Ken, Nancy Ward “Tsunami Warning, Prepardness, and Interagency Cooperation: Lessons Learned” Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) (2011) Web. 11 November 2015.
Neighbors, C.J. et al. ASCE Natural Hazards Library (2013) “Sensitivity Analysis of FEMA HAZUS Earthquake Model: Case Study from King County, Washington” Web. 11 November 2015.
Reid-Middleton,“Unreinforced Masonry Building Seismic Hazards Study” (2007). City of Seattle Department of Planning and Development. Web. 12 October 2015.
Schulz, Kathrine. “The Really Big One.” New Yorker 7.20 (2015): 52–1. Academic Search Premier. Web. 11 Oct. 2015.
United States Census Bureau. State and County Quick Facts Web. 4 December 2015
Puget Sound Structural Collapse Annex (PSSCA) “Catastrophic Disaster Coordination Plan” (2011) Web. 11 October 2015.
Washington State Department of Natural Resources. “Understanding Earthquake Hazards in Washington, Modeling a 9.0 Earthquake on The Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Coast” (2013) Washington State Department of Natural Resources WEB 11/20/2015.
World Health Organization. “Technical Hazard Sheet-Natural Disaster Profile” (2015) Wold Health Organization Humanitarian Heath Action Web. 12 October 2015.
