Three-day quake drill a series of what-ifs
In the event of a major earthquake, what if all cell service on Vancouver Island went down? What if the airport was destroyed? What if a tsunami washed out the roads in and out of Port Alberni?
These are among the scenarios that emergency response co-ordinators faced during the province’s largest full-scale disaster exercise, a three-day affair that simulated a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami.
About 140 people buzzed about the Saanichton control centre on Wednesday, responding to hundreds of alerts about changing conditions. In rooms covered in maps and television screens, they represented a network of agencies and individuals ranging from the Coastal Fire Service to amateur radio operators.
“The risk of a major catastrophic earthquake in British Columbia is very real,” said Naomi Yamamoto, B.C.’s minister of state for emergency preparedness. “Science tells us there’s a one in three chance in the next 50 years that we’ll have a magnitude-9 earthquake.”
Such a disaster would cause mass casualties, devastation in places such as Port Alberni and “tremendous” shaking in the Lower Mainland and Victoria areas, she said.
The $1.2-million exercise follows two reports that found gaps in the province’s preparedness for such an event. Previous reports also identified gaps, but not much had been done, the reports found, and the lack of preparedness was not adequately disclosed to the public.
Since then, the province has made other efforts to improve readiness, like working with Ocean Networks Canada to improve arrays, giving early warnings for tsunamis and earthquakes.
One area that is still lacking, Yamamoto said, is individual preparedness. Individuals should have emergency kits and make emergency plans with their families.
“Government resources will be there, but they’ll be there to help the most critically injured in those places most significantly impacted by a major disaster,” she said.
More than 600 people from 60 organizations participated in the full three-day drill, which included included volunteers acting out the part of casualties — complete with full makeup — and access to a “mock morgue” in Port Alberni on Thursday.
The simulation is being evaluated by Claude Denver, one of the top emergency management officials in Alaska’s Department of Homeland Security. The department began designing similar exercises following the Sept. 11 attacks and they have been hosted six times in Alaska since 2005.
“You have multiple players, multiple venues, you have live action going on, and it’s challenging to make sure everything that is written on paper to guide the exercise follows what the live action is doing,” Denver said.
On Wednesday, things seemed to be going well.
“I think you’re doing great. Your exercises are inherently challenging and because they’re challenging, it’s tough to paint everything with the same brush,” he said.
“Like all exercises, when you start out, there’s a little bit of ramping up, getting up to speed. And we saw those challenges early on. We look at it as a crawlwalk-run process.”