My friends and family know that emergency preparedness is one of my interests, and when given the chance, I’ll happily talk with them about how they might begin to prepare for a disaster.
Those conversations often start off fairly light and—oddly enough—fun. In contrast with the nebulous, stochastic threat of a possible catastrophe, preparing is something we can do right now. You can, this week, add a little extra canned food to your grocery order so you begin to build your stockpile. You can, right now, identify safe exits from your home, or begin identifying items for your emergency kit. It’s tangible.
But after we get past the low-hanging fruit, an unease often creeps in, especially when we start talking about actual scenarios. Trying to prepare for every possible catastrophe is a fool’s errand; as an individual or a household, it’s just not possible to do that, especially when different catastrophes will require different resources. Responsible, level-headed preparedness means tailoring your approach to specific scenarios, and around these parts, one of the more looming catastrophes is a Cascadia Subduction Zone megaquake.
A magnitude-9.0 quake off the Pacific Coast would be a region-wide megadisaster. The FEMA Region 10 Cascadia Subduction Zone Response Plan is a grim read, stating that such a quake would likely necessitate food and water for up to 2.5 million displaced people, hospitals within 250 miles of impacted communities will be at capacity, and transportation infrastructure would likely be so damaged that not only would the public be without support “for the first 72 hours after the event”, but repair could take years. And as a 2013 report by the Cascadia Region Earthquake Workgroup identifies, there is very little transportation redundancy in the region due to our geography: the steep mountains and inland waterways we live among make alternative routes and detours hard to find. Communities, especially on the coast, are likely to be cut off from one another—and, in large part, the rest of the world.
A few extra cans of tuna in your pantry and a nice multitool ain’t gonna cut it.
The wonderful Margaret Killjoy writes in her essay “We’re All Preppers Now” that while preparing for disaster can involve acquiring gear and building new skills, the most important component of preparedness may very well be relationships.
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