PORT TOWNSEND — City residents can learn more about what they can do for themselves in case of a major disaster during a meeting tonight at the Port Townsend Library.
The emergency preparedness meeting will be held from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. to help people prepare themselves, their families and neighborhoods.
The meeting will be led by City Manager David Timmons, who will provide a checklist of things people need to have ready and provide information on what the city will do in case of a catastrophic emergency, said Rachel Aronowitz, associate librarian at the library.
“It is about disasters that are more likely to happen here and what to do after it happens, what first steps you can take,” Aronowitz said.
The low elevation of Port Townsend makes the city particularly susceptible to tsunamis, she said.
Aronowitz noted that Lords Lake, the city’s water supply, became very low during a record drought in 2015.
The Pacific Northwest went through a series of serious fires in 2015 that threatened several communities in Washington state, burned more than a million acres and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses.
Floods hit Jefferson County in 2015, resulting in homes and roads damaged along the Duckabush and Dosewallips rivers.
This year, much of the West Coast is preparing for the Cascadia Rising earthquake drill June 7-10, which will simulate emergency response to a magnitude-9.0 earthquake off the Oregon coast in the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
The zone is a 700-mile fault line that runs parallel to the coast from Northern California to Vancouver Island, which last produced a major earthquake in the year 1700.
When it breaks, it is expected to produce an earthquake and tsunami similar to those experienced in Japan in 2011.
The Cascadia Subduction Zone is the only significant section of the “Ring of Fire” of connected faults around the Pacific Ocean that has not had significant activity in the past 50 years.
