It was a two-hour presentation - first hour was two presentations by visiting scientists. First, Professor Brian Atwater from University of Washington. His specialty is paleo-seismology and his team were the ones to find the 1700 Orphan Tsunami in Japan (they had a large tsunami but there were zero records of any accompanying earthquake). This tsunami was caused by the fault in the Cascadian Subduction zone.
The second presentation was from Dr. Rebekah Paci-Green from Western Washington University. She is one of the people behind the upcoming Cascadia Rising drill and is authoring may of the "injects" that we will be having to deal with over the course of the drill. An inject is an envelope with a date and time written on it and when we open it (at the right time) the paper inside will say something like: The west wall of the building you are looking at has just collapsed. We will communicate this to the Emergency Operations Center and receive their response.
The remaining hour was three presentations from the High School students (today was the result of a student project at the Mt. Baker High School) covering Before, During and After a major disaster. They did a very good job both with the research and with the presentation. There were about 150 people in the audience.
An afternoon well spent.
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