Knowledge: Power or Anxiety?

As you may have guessed from reading my February post, I’m getting involved in my local emergency volunteer corps. I’m now the “Prepare your Neighborhood” (PYN) lead for my large, vulnerable neighborhood which sits in what used to be called the “tsunami inundation zone” and is now called the “tsunami evacuation zone,” both of which mean that our neighborhood will be filled with tidal water pushed through and over Nehalem Bay after the Cascadia Earthquake. Thank God it will be tidal water in my case, because I’ve recently learned that a home that is actually HIT by a tsunami wave is uninsurable—that’s the most coveted homes in my next-door town. My insurance company has been looking and all they can find is tidal water flood insurance that will cover 2/3 of the current value of my home at its highest rate.

A map I’ve used when I’ve looked at buying land outside of the I-5 Corridor

Now I walk the streets with my dog and try to meet neighbors who will help me spread the word about go-bags and drills and such, and mostly find that people are not interested. To me, having all the information feels more settled and less anxious, but I know that for many people, starting to learn about something troubling can cause so much anxiety that they don’t want to know any more—not even a little. Some people think that because it wasn’t taught in their high school science days, the earthquake really isn’t going to happen. I wish I knew how the best science teachers in Oregon and Washington are teaching about it right now—in a way that doesn’t scare, but informs the students they serve. I could probably learn a lot from them.

As with the global warming crisis, the youth around us know more about Cascadia than most of us older adults tend to know. It would be great if we could get them as a whole to educate ALL of their grandparents—elders will be the most severely affected. Later this summer we will have an ice cream open house in our neighborhood to try to draw the neighbors out and start to have conversations about go-bags and the best paths to high ground. It will be a challenge to find a way to open their eyes to the issues without putting up more walls of fear, but I have to try.

My own preparation efforts have been massive. I’ve gotten a storage unit on high ground which I share with a neighbor. We now keep all of our camping supplies there—including my husband’s massive hunting tent, a few boxes of freeze dried and canned food, and cases of canned water. When I lived on the other side of the coastal mountain range I had a single box of emergency supplies in my garage, and a smaller one in my car. Now I have a storage unit! I have some camping gear that I’ve used rarely, like my “She-wee” pee funnel and a high tech camping hammock—all of these feel like treasure in light of this prepping project. Last month when I was visiting Corvallis I bought an old fashioned hand saw at a garage sale—something no one seems to have any use for any more, which will be of great use when there’s no electricity, when portable solar panels are needed for more important things than powering saws.

I joined the neighborhood radio program and I turn my walkie-talkie style satellite radio on every Thursday at 6pm to participate in the weekly drill. This will be my lifeline, and my neighborhood’s only resource for outside information for a while after the big one. I keep it next to my bed, but some days I’ve thought about taking it with me in my car when I go out—I haven’t done so yet.

Things have changed for my house guests too—I no longer recommend the yurts in the nearby State Park that is located on a long and deadly stretch of sand sticking out into the sea, holding the bay water in. I show everyone the gathering place on high ground where there is no risk of water inundation or landslide, within hours of their arrival, and tell them how to get there. Otherwise they wouldn’t know where to go. The gathering place has no giant state-sanctioned sign over it with an arrow. It probably should. This knowledge is my gift to them—it’s a fact—however weird it may seem. “You go here if there’s more than a few minutes of shaking, and start walking as soon as you can… as soon as the shaking stops. If you walk fast you’ll be fine.”

Two of the most educated and capable emergency volunteers in my county are living super close to my house in my own neighborhood—one is one house from me and the other is one street from me. You’d think that would provide a sense of relief, but they will each be deployed to the “mass care” site from which patients will be searched for served. I will see them initially and then the neighbors who are able bodied (hopefully me) will be sent back across the highway to form a different encampment, probably at my church, that will have to be run without their expertise. So I need to learn from them now and hopefully find out who else in my neighborhood has skills to share.

I’ve also joined the Red Cross as a disaster volunteer so that I can be of use when they arrive and I’ll be able to work well within their system of shelters and food distribution. I may be caught up in the quake while traveling or shopping a few miles (and broken bridges) away from home, which means I’ll likely serve as a lead in whatever neighborhood that may be—I already know many of the emergency volunteer leaders in my county, so that will be easier than it would have been a few months ago when I first got involved. The Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) protocols and the Red Cross ones will be the common denominators that serve as a road map and something familiar to look to, wherever I am.

It’s not just the coastal towns of my state that will be wiped out by the earthquake that happens offshore here. A 9.0 magnitude quake in the nearby ocean (they say it will hit both all of Oregon and all of Washington at once, most likely) can still cause most of the urban part of the NW to be toppled—the cities will be the scariest places to be, with tall brick and concrete buildings falling and the river becoming larger through the liquefaction that is predicted to happen along the shores of waterways. What really amazes my imagination is that parts of Oregon that are on the far side of the state will keep operating as usual. Idaho will be completely unphased—still having electric lines and cell towers straight up and down. It will just be us in the populated areas that will be sent back to caveman days.

Instead of Eastern Oregon relying on us for their infrastructure, the experts say, we will begin relying on them. The now super boring and un-hip town of Redmond will be the center of activity that everyone will be trying to reach. Banks and hospitals and stores there will be open. Cell phones will work. They say evacuations will come for the wounded and the tourists first. We who are “locals” will be last. We who don’t have land elsewhere will eventually go and live with extended family if they haven’t been made homeless, or maybe even friends? Ex-wifes? My husband’s ex now lives in Northern Idaho, and I imagine that’s where his kids will go. Will we go there too? I’m glad that she and I have been able to become friends. It’s hard to imagine this, but I’m doing all the imagining. I feel that I need to—just a little bit—to be not too shocked. We’ll all be shocked, but I’m saving myself a little shock by getting it into my head that this crazy thing is going to happen in the next few decades, and so far, I think I’m actually going to stay for it, at least for a while.

Today I walked my dog down the road near my home that has no overhead electric wires. It is the only road of that sort in my larger neighborhood—the other roads have wires strung from poles. Even though it will get me to high ground just as fast as my two other options, I would have to walk two full blocks CLOSER to the tsunami water to reach that road. My neighbor and I are pondering whether we will do so, to lighten the risk of electric wire contact and injury. If it’s light out, I will also be able to SEE if the water’s coming from that road as I walk toward it and along it, almost to the point where I would be reaching safe ground. I have no idea what I’ll do when I have to decide which way to go, and she doesn’t either, but I’m glad she raised the question because now I have time to think about it and build the muscle memory of taking a very counterintuitive, but maybe safer route to high ground. That makes me grateful for the knowledge.