County prepares for effects of westside quake

Jul. 8—People who live west of the Cascades, where seismologists say a massive earthquake is looming, have been preparing for the damages the great quake will cause.

Those in Northeastern Oregon, however, might not be so seismically inclined.

"The Big One," a product of the Cascadia Subduction Zone off of the Oregon coast — could cause unprecedented damage along the coast, where a catastrophic tsunami is likely, and in the Willamette Valley.

But emergency management officials say it's time, regardless of its distance from that quake's epicenter, for this part of the state to prepare, too.

"There's more left to do for Eastern Oregon," said Jason Yencopal, Baker County emergency manager. "It started on the coast and moved to Central Oregon, but now we need to focus on Eastern Oregon."

Baker County emergency officials made progress June 27-28 when they hosted a regional Cascadia earthquake exercise at the Baker County Health Department.

Officials from Union, Umatilla and Harney counties also participated at their respective emergency headquarters.

Yencopal said the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is helping Baker County and other counties set up exercises.

Several state agencies also participated, including the Oregon Health Authority and the Department of Transportation, along with a handful of county agencies including the road, planning and health departments.

During the exercise, Yencopal and others worked with a FEMA contractor to create a list of possible scenarios that could occur in an earthquake. A worker in Umatilla county relayed these scenarios to Baker County, and responders dealt with them as if they were happening in real time.

The exercise started with communications practice. The team dealt with a scenario where usual radio communications were down and they had to rely on handheld radio correspondence to Haines and Halfway.

Effects of 'the big one'

The Cascadia Subduction Zone in the Pacific Ocean, about 70 to 100 miles west of the Oregon coast, is where one tectonic plate is plunging under another.

Scientists estimate that this fault produces a mega-earthquake, potentially magnitude 9.0 or higher, every 300 to 700 years. According to Oregon.gov., scientists give a 37% chance that the fault will produce an earthquake in the next 50 years.

And since physical damage in Western Oregon would be significant, transportation in Eastern Oregon could be a problem.

In one hypothetical scenario during the June 27-28 exercise, 20 buses and 200 cars full of evacuees arrived in Baker County, prompting Yencopal and his crew to register them at a Red Cross shelter.

Despite Baker County's distance from the fault, it would still experience some shaking, Yencopal said, although it's hard to determine how much. That means emergency officials still need to be ready for physical damage locally, such as ruptured pipes and wastewater issues. Yencopal said they practiced related scenarios in the second half of the exercise.

Yencopal said that while the exercise covered major issues in earthquake response, responding to an actual earthquake, as one might imagine, would be a more intense experience.

"We only took one thing at a time, water, gas, fire," Yencopal said. "But really, everything would be happening at once."

Yencopal said there are still other aspects of emergency response the exercise didn't address, such as distributing information to the public.

"I kept this (exercise) small on purpose, and I'm looking forward to future large scale exercises," Yencopal said.

How to prepare

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management (ODEM) recommends people prepare a bag with two week's worth of food, water and critical supplies for when "the big one" — or any other significant natural disaster — strikes.

ODEM also recommends developing an emergency plan and signing up for emergency alerts.

Baker County has an emergency notification system that provides critical information in the event of an emergency. Register a cell phone to receive alerts on the county's website, bakercounty.org.