PORT TOWNSEND — Jefferson County’s Department of Emergency Management will host lectures on disaster and emergency preparedness today.
Speakers will cover water storage and food resilience. The free talks will be at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. in the Humphrey room at Jefferson County Library District, 620 Cedar Ave., Port Hadlock.
Registration is required and closes at 2 p.m. A registration tab can be found at the bottom of the event page at https://tinyurl.com/4u8v7mss.
Speaking at the event will be Jameson Hawn, Jefferson County Public Utility District’s (PUD) digital communications specialist, Dave Seabrook, District 2 East Jefferson Fire Rescue commissioner, and Crystie Kisler, co-founder/owner of Finn River Farm and Cidery and food systems advocate.
Hawn’s presentation will focus on the PUD’s countywide emergency response plan and what people can expect in the case of disaster.
“In this case, we’re focused on an earthquake,” Hawn said. “An earthquake clearly would impact water systems all across the county. We are susceptible to it.”
The PUD is legally required to have a plan, which dictates the steps in its response, Hawn said.
The PUD owns and manages 14 water systems countywide, ranging widely in size, Hawn said. Each system has its own style of response, he added.
Hawn’s presentation will cover a number of steps required of the PUD to bring water back to customers; assessing the functionality of well heads and reservoirs, testing for contamination and making necessary repairs.
Depending on the severity of the disaster, restoring water could take a while, Hawn said.
“A standard 7.0 earthquake, you can see ground moving up to 3 feet,” Hawn said. “When you think of water lines, they’re pretty well static. Everything in the ground, it doesn’t want to move. You’re talking about breaks throughout a system.”
Hawn said the PUD is required to have 48 hours of water on hand at all times, based on the number of people served by a given system.
In a disaster outcome with excessive reservoir leaks, maintaining 48 hours of water might not be possible, he said.
“It will take a very long time to get to the single service home to check for ruptured lines,” Hawn said.
Hawn said PUD crews would be working around the clock and pulling resources from mutual aid crews for as long as it takes to restore service.
Because the Subduction Zone earthquake is expected to have regional effects, which may further slow the process down, the PUD has updated its plan to include on-call potable water services.
“It’s just a drop in the bucket, but realistically, during an emergency, people’s world goes from, ‘What am I going to do on social media today and watch on Netflix?’ to standing in line for water,” Hawn said.
Olympic Potable is the on-call water service, Hawn said.
The Department of Emergency Management (DEM) would establish the sites where potable water is most needed and Olympic Potable would bring a tank of water, while the PUD persists in making repairs, Hawn said.
Hawn said the PUD is trying to establish an on-call potable water service for south county as well.
Hawn said timelines for restoring water are situationally dependent; they could be affected by issues with roads, issues with power lines blocking roads, among other potential challenges.
One hope in conducting emergency management outreach is to prepare people’s expectations, Hawn said.
“Life is going to slow down quickly during a large-scale event,” Hawn said. “That’s OK. Our employees are our neighbors, they’re going to be going through the same stuff. Our job is to get everyone back up and running. I try to let folks know that we’re all human and we’re all going to respond to this in our own way. Our team, though, when it happens, they kick into gear. They really do shine.”
Hawn said the DEM would discuss household water storage.
In addition to serving as a fire commissioner, Seabrook serves on the city/county Climate Action Committee. He co-founded a micro-farm in Chimacum called Chimacum Workhorse Project, where he is experimenting with using only minimal fossil fuels.
“I plan to cover two basic topics,” Seabrook said. “One of them is personal and household preparedness. We have some specific recommendations from Jefferson County Department of Emergency Management regarding how much food and water you should have on hand.”
The standard of three days’ supply is good, Seabrook said. Two weeks is better, and one month or 30 days is best.
Seabrook will talk about how to stock food supplies and how to meal plan to meet caloric and nutritional needs.
Seabrook’s second topic will cover longer-term food resilience.
“More specifically, local food system resilience in the event of system failures,” Seabrook said. “A recent example is when the Hood Canal bridge went out of service, which I think for a lot of people was a good reminder that we are vulnerable due to our geographic situation out here on the Peninsula.”
For people who are engaged in farming, their perspective is about production, Seabrook said.
“There’s a lot more that goes into it,” he said. “From processing, to dry or cold storage, to the transportation system that’s required to get things to a processor, or from a processor to a market. Then the process by which consumers purchase food and how they cook with it.”
In the case of a power outage, personal refrigeration systems will go out, Seabrook said. People will need a backup plan to refrigerate their food or to eat their perishable food first, he said.
Also, people who cook with electric stoves will need to plan for cooking their food, he said.
Seabrook said the food system locally could benefit from increased levels of processing and dry and cold storage. The problem is, it’s not clear who would fund developing it. Most local farms are too small to fund or manage such projects, he said.
“I advocate for greater public sector involvement,” he said.
Today’s talks are a part of a monthly series of talks presented by the DEM on emergency preparedness topics. It maintains an archive at https://tinyurl.com/mfw6rph6.
Next month’s topics are extreme heat and wildfire smoke safety. The event will take place at the library at 3:30 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. June 17.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
