Cascadia's Fault - Jerry Thompson [135]
These are the kinds of things Corcoran recites when he does his outreach sessions. “When I came here in 2003 for the Coastal Storms Program,” he begins, “it was all about severe winter storms and flooding and those kind of more chronic or constantly occurring events. Then the 2004 Sumatran earthquake and tsunamis occurred, and while my focus was on storms, I had to ask myself as a coastal hazards agent, is this [tsunami threat] something that I should be paying attention to? And so I asked myself three questions: One, is it likely? Two, would it be bad? And three, can education do anything to improve the situation?”
In a heartbeat he answers his own questions: “Yes, yes, and Lord, I hope so. Yes it is likely. Yes it would be very bad. And education will, hopefully, go a long way towards improving the odds for most people.”
The first thing to know, according to Patrick Corcoran, is that if you hear a warning siren you shouldn’t panic. It probably means there has been a distant temblor in Japan, Alaska, or Chile. “So if you heard a siren, or understood a tsunami was coming, and you didn’t feel the earthquake, Alaska is the closest place it’s going to be and that’s three and a half to four hours away,” says Corcoran. “So the good news is—you have time before a small and not so bad tsunami comes.”
If it’s a seismic jolt closer to home, the Big One from Cascadia’s fault, the sirens won’t have time to go off before the first wave gets here. That’s because NOAA’s warning buoys are anchored farther out in the Pacific—beyond the Cascadia Subduction Zone—in order to provide plenty of warning time for those long-distance waves from Japan, Alaska, and elsewhere. Cascadia’s fault, being much closer to the shoreline of North America, will send out waves both east- and westbound. And the eastbound waves will hit the beaches of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia at the same time as or even before the westbound waves hit the warning buoys and trip the alarm. Until this chink in the armor of the tsunami warning system is dealt with by some newer generation of detectors closer to shore, the only real warning anyone in Cascadia will have is the violent shaking of the earth.
Corcoran begins to distil the to-do list. The first thing to figure out is whether the quake and tsunami are from far away or closer to home. Did you feel the earth move? Or was it a siren you heard? The implications are obvious and the necessary responses completely different.
“The second thing you need to know,” says Corcoran, “is where are the safer and less safe places. And not just where you live, but where you live, work, and play.” In other words, plan an evacuation route to safe ground from any place where you spend a considerable amount of time.
“Develop an eye for the landscape,” Corcoran suggests. “So, when the Big One occurs and we’re out driving around conducting our lives, we’ll have some sense of, ‘Wow, I’m in a bad spot. I need to get over there.’ Or, ‘Wow, I’m in a good spot—relative to tsunamis—I’m gonna stay put.’
“The third thing,” Corcoran continues, “is how to reconnect with your loved ones. After the Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and tsunami, it’s going to be very difficult to get a hold of family members. There will be no phones. And you will not be driving anywhere.” He suggests that families pick a rendezvous point somewhere on safe ground and plan for all family members to meet there. That way everybody knows that everybody else will eventually make their way to the same place even if there’s no way to communicate.
Corcoran asks people to imagine the nightmare of successfully escaping the shockwave and then deciding to go back into the disaster zone in search of a family member who has already escaped and is en route to a rendezvous point or rescue center. A person could die for lack of planning. “Actually, the important thing is sitting around the kitchen