opinion

Mark Cascadia earthquake anniversary by taking steps to be prepared

Friday, Jan. 26marks the 318th anniversary of the most recent monster earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone (CSZ). In the past 6,000 years or so, quakes of magnitude 8 or 9 have occurred every 202 years on average. Only once in that period of time has the interval between quakes exceeded 250 years, so the pressure in the CSZ fault has been growing for a long time.

We’ve been lucky to have avoided this devastating quake and its accompanying tsunami for so long. We’ve had the opportunity to strengthen our lifelines (roads, bridges, electrical grids, water and wastewater systems, fuel storage depots) against the damage the quake can cause. But in another way, we’ve been unlucky. We didn’t realize until about 30 years ago that the CSZ was an active fault, let alone one capable of producing the worst natural disaster to hit North America in modern times. As a result, our building standards are not strong enough to withstand it.

That means we expect roads will be blocked by bridge failures and landslides. Many critical public buildings, businesses, houses, and the other lifeline systems will likely fail. Especially vulnerable are the hundreds of un-reinforced masonry buildings that contain both businesses and multifamily apartments.

We can hope it’s not too late to avoid the worst of this impending catastrophe. But survival as a society and prosperous economy will require rapid expansion of effort from residents, businesses and government agencies. That’s why we formed Cascadia Prepared, a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization about a year ago as a private-sector force to encourage and assist effective resilience-building efforts from British Columbia all the way to Northern California. We’re working with the Seattle-based Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup, the Oregon Emergency Management Association, and others to develop resilience programs and increase public awareness of this threat.

What can you do when emergency first responders are overwhelmed? It’s critically important that all organizations and private homes have survival plans that include enough emergency food and water to keep everyone on site alive for 14 days. We should all have “go bags” in our vehicles and homes containing other emergency gear.

We should also all live and work in buildings that won’t fall down when the quake hits. If your building was constructed before 2000 and you’re not positive it is seismically sound, it may be worth having an inspection to determine whether retrofitting is needed to ensure your very survival.

The steps we need to take individually and collectively are well-documented and easy to understand. It will just take a bit of planning, a modest investment of time and money, and a willingness to prepare for uncertain threats. Join friends and neighbors in asking a bit more of ourselves, our employers, and our public agencies as we get ready to preserve our way of life.

Steve Robinson, president of Cascadia Prepared (www.cprep.org) can be reached at steve@cprep.org.