Massive rehearsal planned for Northwest mega-quake, tsunami

PORTLAND, Ore. — Imagine a devastating earthquake and tsunami have cut off Pacific Northwest coastal communities. Phone and internet service have collapsed. Ham radio operators living on the stricken coast fire up their radios, contact emergency managers and report on the magnitude of the disaster so no time is wasted in saving lives.

This is the kind of scenario that will be rehearsed during the second week of June in a massive earthquake and tsunami readiness drill that has been developed by the U.S. government, the military, and state and local emergency managers over the past few years to test their readiness for what — when it strikes — will likely be the nation’s worst natural calamity.

The June 7-10 exercise is called Cascadia Rising. It is named after the Cascadia Subduction Zone — a 600-mile-long fault just off the coast that runs from Northern California to British Columbia.

Federal officials say about 20,000 people will be involved in the disaster drill, representing various federal agencies, the U.S. military, state and local emergency response managers across the Pacific Northwest, Native American tribes and emergency management officials in British Columbia.

One main goal of the exercise is to test how well they will work together to minimize loss of life and damage when a mega-quake rips along the Cascadia Subduction Zone and unleashes a killer tsunami.

Awareness of the seismic threat looming just off the Pacific Northwest dates back to the 1980s, when researchers concluded that coastal lands long ago had been inundated by a tsunami. Research also indicated that a tsunami that was documented in Japan in January 1700 originated from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, also known as the CSZ.

Research suggests the CSZ, on average, produces magnitude 9.0 quakes every 500 years, but big quakes have been separated by as few as 200 years and as many as 1,000. So it is impossible to predict when the next monster quake will occur.

However, tectonic stresses have been accumulating in the CSZ for more than 300 years and seismologists say it could rupture at any time.

Washington Air National Guard soldiers from Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Wash., work to assemble temporary living structures at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington.