Excellent article from Eric Holdeman at The Seattle Times:
Do you have an earthquake relocation plan? You should
If you think that an overturned propane tanker is bad news for road transportation, you have not seen anything yet. If you are a family, business or manufacturer, after a big earthquake you will be relocating out of the area just to survive.
At some future date there will be a significant earthquake that will hit this region. It could be the Cascadia Subduction Fault, the Seattle Fault, the Tacoma Fault, South Whidbey Island Fault or another earthquake fault we don’t even know exists. Imagine what the traffic impacts will be for the region when one mainline bridge collapses on any of the routes that are the lifeblood of this metro area. Remember, it is easily possible that more than one bridge might collapse and on multiple routes.
Then reflect that in California, following the Northridge earthquake, it took six months to rebuild one bridge — and they gave a verbal order to start tearing down the bridge the day after it collapsed. Atlanta is currently experiencing the impact of the I-85 bridge collapse due to a fire, and it not being available to carry 250,000 cars a day. Repair estimates are months, not weeks.
Ponder what the transportation environment will be when we lose one or more bridges. No one is moving anywhere because of our limited options for driving north-south or east-west through central Puget Sound. Trucking companies will not be making deliveries of food and other critical items like lifesaving prescriptions for those who need them. Port operations will cease. Our “just in time delivery system” will expose the fact that we live day-to-day on a razor thin margin of food, fuel and other critical supplies.
Some very good thoughts - most urban grocery stores depend on daily deliveries. Rural stores like mine (Crossroads Grocery in Maple Falls, WA) get several deliveries per week. Something blocks the trucks and our shelves are bare in a few days especially if there is a run.
The main highway from Bellingham has beeen washed out several times. This is not a matter of if, this is a matter of when. This Wednesday, a person from Whatcom County CERT program is coming out to try to organize a local CERT team in this area. We have a bunch of CERT trainiees but there is no cohesive team with a deployment plan. Seeing some nice progress in bringing this community together - planning to do a ham radio class later this fall.
Eric blogs at Emergency Management's - Disaster Zone.
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