County greets Cascadia Rising

SANDPOINT — Bonner County’s emergency management plans and abilities were put to the test Thursday as it took part in Cascadia Rising, a massive interstate disaster exercise.

The exercise’s name is drawn from the Cascadia subduction zone, which stretches 700 miles from Medocino, Calif., to Vancouver, British Columbia. The exercise contemplated a magnitude-9.0 earthquake and attendant tsunami.

Such an event has the capacity to destroy the Interstate 5 corridor and inundate it with water, potentially pushing a wave of humanity east to escape the devastation.

“It wiped out a lot of the coastal areas,” Matt Klingler, a Bonner County Public Works director who served as director of emergency management director during the exercise.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said such an event could cause as many as 3,000 people to seek refuge in Bonner County, which would place a significant amount of strain on local shelter, food and fuel resources.

“That’s one of the priorities for us to figure out,” Klingler said of the sudden influx of displaced citizens.

An Emergency Operations Center established at the Bonner County Administration Building, which was staffed with employees from across various departments who have been undergoing EOC training since the start of the year, said Emergency Management Director Bob Howard, who served as an evaluator during the training exercise. Howard said EOC trainees were subjected to increasingly complex scenarios in the training leading up to the massively complex Cascadia Rising exercise.

Logistics and planning sections at the EOC grappled with the demands of sheltering and feeding earthquake refugees.

Throughout the day, mock disaster planners would throw out curve balls the EOC would then have to react to.

“We had food shortage concerns. We had gasoline/fuel shortage concerns and they dealt with those issues, too,” said Howard.

There were even scenarios involving rowdy situations at local grocery stores and rolling power outages as the disaster unfolded.

Howard said Bonner General Health conducted its own functional exercise to take part in Cascadia Rising.

“They had volunteers to be patients and so they were triaging those patients,” he said.

The Bonner County Amateur Radio Emergency Service also took part in the exercise. The volunteer group served as backup communication.

“Our amateur radio people were fantastic. They were able to communicate with Washington, Oregon and Boise,” said Howard.

Bonner County ARES’ role in the exercise grew when radio actual radio trouble flared up elsewhere.

“Bonner County picked it up and carried it. They did relay for other states,” said Howard.

Howard said he was pleased with Bonner County’s performance during the exercise and said he would have no qualms with activating the EOC in an real-life emergency. He also plans to have EOC disaster exercises at least twice a year.

“We’re going to continue to train and exercise as often as we can. We want to get better at what we’re doing and be ready for when the big one happens,” said Howard.