Check out these summary bullet point results from Cascadia Rising Earthquake Exercise.
Critical Transportation
• Lack of overarching policy or strategic plan to reduce the value of assessments in establishing critical transportation entry points within the impacted region
• Movement of resources and evacuation of people was delayed
• Attempts at using alternate modes of transportation within the impacted area were severely limited
• Transportation efforts were disproportionately focused on rotary-wing aircraft, [of which there are relatively few in the region]
• Lack of pre-planning to use maritime assets to move people and goods
I believe that even a "little bit" of pre-planning on possible routes still standing, or quickly made usable, would provide great benefits when we eventually do have an earthquake. Being an operations guy, I understand that situational awareness at the time of the event is key to know what routes are feasible, but now is is the time to look at priority routes and look specifically at what might be accomplished using the Puget Sound "super-highway" that will not go away in an earthquake — and, some docks will still be functional, somewhere.
We need not wait for the next earthquake to motivate us to do this planning!
