S-10CREWCAB.NET

or lack thereof....

Tacoma News Tribune http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/loca ... 2815c.html

Henry J....Is it just me or did you see this one coming?

Last I heard, with a major quake in WA the estimate was that I5 from Olympia to seattle would be mud (based on geological surveys). The entire area would basically fall into/be swallowed up by the sound.

Even emergencies at the Hanford nuclear reservation or the Umatilla Chemical Depot in northeastern Oregon, where the Army’s chemical weapons are being destroyed, likely would come without warning.

God, Im glad these geniouses get paid as much as they do.....Who knows what a bunch of monkeys would've come up with.

kauaibuilt47 wrote:...Is it just me or did you see this one coming?...

Yes. I know a little about that.
WMD disposal I would rather they focused the efforts on the situations over which they do have a little more control.

I think the preparedness is a good thing, and you can never have enough practice or training. They are right in that each scenario is unique. The cookie cutter approach is not a good way to go.

Yeah, thats the link that we were talking about Umatilla and WMD.

I just thought it was funny that us lowly worker bees realized the problems outlined in that article and the WA state government and the feds are just now noticing that they have a HUGE problem on their hands and they have NO idea how theyre gonna handle it. Its pretty sad that theyre only looking at their scenarios now because the feds are gonna cut their funding.......

I wanna wait and see what kind of cooperative training is gonna be instituted between local, state, and federal agencies. There is NO way that any one of those entities are gonna be able to handle ANY major disaster by themselves (esp if its a massive earthquake). Katrina proved this.

Something must be happening as we recently had an introductory visit from our civil support team. They have ALL the good toys

kauaibuilt47 wrote:There is NO way that any one of those entities are gonna be able to handle ANY major disaster by themselves ..... Katrina proved this.

You've got that right.

One of the problems is that they've done "table top" exercises w/ the head shed saying "this is how its going to go." They dont bring in the worker bees to tell them whether or not their bone-headed ideas are gonna work.

The locals, and possibly state guys, know what works best/wont work at all in their area (for the most part). Problem is that FEMA runs any emergency situation.....They dont know the area. They dont know the back roads, the local/state assets, the people and how they'll react, etc.

Boats for rescuing Katrina victims, choppers for getting personnel into/out of seattle, heavy equipment for removing freeway debris in LA, etc.

Bad juju, everyones getting set up for failure. Throw in the political wrangling and you get Katrina response.

After Katrina, the local solution (atleast here and the surround counties) was to kick FEMA to the curb. They got here late, and we never really included in anything.

Cool. The news reports were VERY confusing. Its nice to hear from someone who went through it about what really happened.

I was still living on Kauai (Hawaii) when Hurricane Iniki hit in 91. I understand what you guys went through. The biggest help we had was our neighbors. The national guard cleaned up the airport, schools, and other public buildings.

families and their neighbors had huge cookouts.
Partly because food was gonna go bad, partly because some didnt have anything. It really drew families and friends together.

My stepdads family came together and rebuilt each others houses.....Good times.

Our local officials and volunteers really pulled together. Our local volunteer fire department worked 24 hours a day for the first few days following Katrina.

The Red Cross also distributed food, ice, and water. Our biggest problems were lack of ice and impassible roads. Right after Katrina, I had to cut up several trees and pull them out of the way with the CC before we could go 100 feet up the road.

Do you do anything differently now? I mean like storage of water, food fuel? Security measures? Generator? Safe haven?

We have been stockpiling gasoline in chemical containers, storing water, and have two generators. We have a 4kw, and my wife's dad bought an 8kw welder/generator. Security is the same: 9mm Glock, Remington 742 30 06, pair of 12 gauges, and the arsenal at my in-laws house.

Can always go the MRE route. SPAM! 1/3 of WORLD spam sales are in Hawaii alone.

After Iniki there was a hurricane scare. People started saving water and the water pressure went down to a trickle at the house.

Gas lines were about 2 hours long and you were limited to 10 gallons or something. Its not like it was a huge island either.

Back home we didnt have to worry about home protection.

We kept at least 1 big tent and several blue tarps in good condition. Normal blakets were ok, didnt need anything special to stay warm.

BATTERIES and good flashlights and candles.

Oh yea...forgot about MRE's....we've got alot of boxes of those too.