Suddenly, the great theoretical disaster so many Northwesterners kept locked in the back of our conscious minds doesn’t seem so distant. TV images from Japan show the horrific reality a major earthquake and resulting tsunami can unleash.
Perhaps never before have images so dramatically captur
ed humanity’s powerlessness against nature’s fury. TV viewers witnessed walls of water engulfing communities just rocked by an earthquake of unfathomable force, wiping them out in a matter of moments. Thousands are dead in a nation that experts say was as prepared as any on Earth.
We face similar threats here — the Cascadia subduction zone off the Pacific Coast could generate earthquakes and tsunamis as powerful as those that hit Japan. Strong quakes below Puget Sound could inflict significant death and damage, and even trigger destructive tsunamis along the Snohomish County shoreline.
Yet the humility force-fed by the images from Japan might lead some to question how far we should go to prepare for a large-scale disaster that, while inevitable, might not happen in our lifetimes. How effective can we really be against forces so overpowering?
Not very, perhaps. But modern building codes, the seismic retrofitting of older bridges and other structures, the training of emergency and utility personnel, and emergency planning by businesses, schools and families all stand to get us back on our collective feet sooner when disaster strikes.
Preparing for the size of event that’s most likely to hit us is not an exercise in futility.
Earthquakes elsewhere underscore the urgency of replacing the vulnerable Alaskan Way Viaduct in Seattle and the Highway 520 bridge across Lake Washington. Bridges in Snohomish County need shoring up or replacing, too.
One of the lessons from the disaster in Japan, and recent earthquakes in New Zealand and Chile, is that we must devote adequate public investment to our transportation infrastructure. That includes major Snohomish County corridors like Highway 9 and U.S. 2, which take on additional regional significance when you imagine how much use they’d get if an earthquake shut down portions of I-5 or I-90.
Once the current state budget crisis has been addressed, one of the first orders of business in Olympia for next year must be to put forth a major new transportation investment plan that includes adequate maintenance and seismic retrofitting where it’s needed most. Current and projected funding is falling far short of what’s needed.
In the meantime, families should leverage the images from Japan into personal resolve, heeding the usual and oft-repeated advice make basic preparations for a range of potential disasters — earthquakes, storms, pandemic flu, even terrorism. Start planning at www.govlink.org/3days3ways.
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