BETTER TO BE ACTIVE WHILE WAITING THAN PASSIVE. (15 JUNE 2016)

At 2:20 p.m. today FEMA does a test of their Emergency Alert System (EAS) which is meant to meet the standard of going off 10 min. after a disaster. (This test time is the Pacific NW states.) This article is a conversation/analysis on how I have tried to anticipate future disasters, & tried to optimally use resources to maximize our preparation. We face overwhelming challenges in life, do we just passively wait until they blindside us, or should we try to prepare for them??? Different people have different answers. For me, the act of preparing takes the edge off of the negative charge that the thought of a potential disaster carries. As the saying goes, I hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. There are Biblical presidencies that teach us to anticipate & prepare, such as the 5 wise virgins that had their lamps ready for the Bridegroom. That story also reminds us that there are different areas of life that need to be prepared for disasters: spiritually, mentally, physically, socially & financially. Does preparation guarantee success?? No. But certainly by failing to prepare, one has prepared to fail.

FEMA. The elite’s(A) Kellogg, Brown & Root Service (KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton) has been involved in outfitting FEMA camps in its 5 regions. (See maps of the camps & regions in the thread.) DHS & the Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) are also involved in the camps. The head of DHS Jeh Johnson just recently said that Amer. right-wingers were as much a threat as Islamic extremists. (Sounds like the skewed values of the Obama administration.) The camps have been said by some govt. persons willing to admit they exist, that they are strategically located to deal with natural disasters. There has been recent govt. activity involving FEMA so naturally people are speculating whether this means they have advance knowledge of a large natural disaster or coming martial law from economic collapse & civil unrest.

MY PAST EFFORTS & THE ATTITUDE OF LAUGHING OFF THINGS TO RECOVER. I went beyond the planning stages. For an economic collapse, I had constructed an isolated storage base. For nuclear war, I had studied what targets would likely be hit, the fallout from those, and what was needed to survive that fallout. In line with the answers to those questions I then built underground with lead & soil built up to absorb radiation & stocked with food/water for more than 6 months. All these preparations came to naught—the properties passed to others. Was there a lesson here? Yes, the lesson is that one needs to “roll with the punches of life” & not get emotionally invested in what we try to do. An example to illustrate my point is a scene in the 1997 film Robinson Crusoe… his fortress/home burns down and he shrugs it off & rebuilds. That kind of resilience is what has made the Japanese inured to natural disaster. Living in the land of perpetual earthquakes, tsunamis & volcanic activity, they would never have made it in their homeland without that ability to “shrug it off” & start over. Don’t forget they did get nuked, & immediately began their recovery.

My LATEST PROJECT is to design something to mitigate the anticipated 9.0 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake & tsunami that is going to hit the NW in the future. The tectonic plate off the coast of Wash. & Ore. is sliding under the plate to its west. A big movement occurs every 200+ years, and we are overdue for a big shift. When it does, it will create a 9.0 earthquake & a resulting tsunami. The last time it happened was 1700. We know about that big one from Japanese written records, Native Amer. folk stories, and geologic evidence. Similar events are the 2004 Great Indonesian earthquake & tsunami that killed 250,000, and the 1960 9.5 quake off the coast of Chile, which is quite similar to what is expected off our coast. The 2011 East Japan earthquake & tsunami which killed 16,000 is another similar event. (It surpassed the 1995 Kobe earthquake which killed 7,200).

THE TOPOG LAYOUT OF OREGON. Along the Pacific coast are low lying areas all along the WA & OR coast. In the 1920’s they joined these small fishing communities with Hwy. 101. Slightly east of the low coastal area are a range of hills that run the entire length north to south. Then comes a garden-of-Eden type region which stretches from these low coastal hills to the Cascade Mtns. This beautiful garden-like central area is bisected by the Willamette River & I-5 running basically north-south from Seattle-to Portland-to California. Between OR & WA is a mighty river named the Columbia with a series of hydroelectric dams built on it. Running alongside the river on both sides are highways & railways going east; the largest hwy. east is I-84 which goes through a few tunnels as it heads towards Idaho. So our Portland area connects to the world by sea, by air & 2 Interstates (I-5 & I-84). The anticipated 9.0 earthquake & tsunami would destroy all these connections. (More on this later.)

CONCLUSIONS FROM STUDY. The earthquake & tsunami will essentially wipe out the coastal area. Hwy. 101 will cease to exist. Why? When such an earthquake hits many soils esp. sandy soils, the soil acts like a liquid; roads on them literally deconstruct. The shaking takes out bridges. Landslides take place. Hwy. 101 is built on sand, with many potential landslide sites on the edges of cliffs. The massive earthquake will destroy most of the highway, and the tsunami will put the final touches into its total destruction. Many longtime residents will know how to evacuate to high ground, even if they have to walk. Tourists will not have a clue. 15,000 people could easily lose their lives. The roads that run east to connect the coast region to the Willamette Valley area will be toasted by landslides, liquefying road bases causing roads to disintegrate, & bridges failing. These roads thru the coastal hills will be ruined into numerous places, and left unusable. Basically everything west of I-5 will be devastated. I-5 will also be essentially destroyed. Half of it will cease to exist, & countless bridges on I-5 will fail. I-84 and the rail lines going east will also be toast. It will take a long time to restore them, by clearing landslides, broken brides & tunnels, etc. However, I-84 can be restored to usability sooner than I-5.

PTS. TO PROTECT. Sea port facilities will be destroyed and parts of the PDX airport infrastructure. However, in my analysis, the international airport PDX can be repaired and back in operation fairly quickly. (Granted the tower may topple & equipment break in places—but older methods can be reinstituted.) The airport then becomes the first center of rescue efforts, with sea supply coming afterwards. I am focusing my thinking on what can be done to harden PDX, as it is obviously the easiest most productive node to protect with the limited resources that exist. Similar thinking in the Seattle area has resulted in the state-local officials focusing on hardening a life line (a stretch of highway) from Lewis-McCord south of Tacoma to Paine Field, Everett to withstand a worst case scenario.

MORE THOUGHTS. For those enjoying my analysis (perhaps you can apply similar thinking for your own area), I will offer some more of my analysis. Because the lateral highways that supply the coast will be helplessly ruined, immediate relief efforts have to come by air, but the airports (half a dozen large ones along the coast in places like Tillamook, Newport & Lincoln City) won’t survive. This means large helicopters (such as the Coast Guard & Nat. Guard operate) to provide a little relief. That will be totally inadequate. How soon a clearing for C-130’s can be made is a good question. Also relief by sea can follow relatively quickly. Portland’s newer skyscrapers, built to newer better specs, will withstand. But there are plenty of old large buildings built of brick that will collapse. The large work population downtown will head home going east & west. Some of the bridges over the Willamette River should survive allowing egress to the east. The tunnels on hwy. 26 will be blocked but alternative detours (albeit crowded) will allow movement west by downtown workers. Power, water, electricity, gas lines, etc. will be taken out. With fuel difficult to find, it will make it harder to do things. Remember that supply lines will be crippled, basically leaving people to depend on what they have. 86,000 people live in the tsunami flood zone. Most will have some time to evacuate—but thousands can be expected to be caught by the water. Over the next few years, the govt. will retrofit bridges, tunnels & ports to withstand the shaking. If the big one comes later & not earlier, we will definitely be better prepared.

RIVERS & DAMS. The Corp of Engineers believes the dams it built will withstand the quake, and the tsunami will only go up the Columbia so far before being stopped by the first dam. The high level of water in the Columbia will cause rivers that feed into it to back up & flood.

MAJOR CASCADIA EXERCISE THIS LAST WEEK. This last week the govt, the national guard, and various other groups in OR-WA were involved in a 5-day Functional Exercise called Cascadia Rising, where various groups practiced skills in various places that they will be called to use if the big one hits the NW.(B) In my area, the Multnomah Sheriff’s Emergency Group organized & led the exercise.

FINAL THOUGHTS. This article certainly gives plenty to think about. I didn’t mention all the news, Calif. has been having lots of minor earthquakes as if in preparation for something. If I were to re-emphasis anything it would be this: there are different areas of life that need to be prepared for disasters: spiritually, mentally, physically, socially & financially.

(A) Illuminati mmbrs run KBR (B) A detailed 180 Exercise Scenario Document (book-size) exists online detailing all aspects of the anticipated catastrophic earthquake & tsunami. My analysis of the subject was based upon these studies & others, as well as some interviews.