Drop. Cover. Hold on.
Follow those steps for your best chance to survive a major earthquake, which could occur at any time on one of four faults near the North Olympic Peninsula, emergency planners say.
The public is encourage to participate in the drop, cover and hold exercise at 10:19 a.m. today as part of International ShakeOut Day.
“Look around your surroundings and decide on a place where you could drop, cover and hold on for at least five minutes to replicate the first step you will be taking when the ground starts to shake,” Clallam County Emergency Management Program Coordinator Jayme Wisecup said.
Clallam County had 7,827 registered for the ShakeOut as of Wednesday. Jefferson County had 7,442 signed up for the drill.
To register, click on www.shakeout.org.
“Drop, cover and hold is the accepted way of surviving one of these things,” said Jim Buck, a former state representative who has spent years helping Joyce and other communities plan for a catastrophic quake and resulting tsunami.
Clallam County employees will take part in the drill at 2 p.m. today to accommodate a commissioners budget meeting, Emergency Management Program Coordinator Penelope Linterman said.
A “tsunami saunter” will occur in the morning as people dressed in costumes will march uphill from Port Angeles City Pier to the Clallam County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., Linterman said.
Most evacuation routes out of downtown Port Angeles, including Lincoln Street, would be destroyed in a magnitude 9.0 Cascadia subduction zone earthquake, Buck told the Port Angeles City Council in a Sept. 26 workshop.
A 30- to 40-foot tsunami will follow the earthquake.
“The thing we really need to emphasize is that people need to walk [to higher ground],” Linterman said in a Monday interview. “They will not be able to drive.”
In Jefferson County, KPTZ 91.9 FM will broadcast live from the Emergency Operations Center in Port Hadlock during the earthquake drill.
The Port Townsend radio station has been running public service announcements about disaster planning all week, Jefferson County Emergency Management spokesman Todd Morrison said.
“Drop, cover and hold is a primary thing,” Morrison said in a Wednesday interview.
Morrison encouraged family members to plan for where to meet and how to stay in touch after a disaster.
Jefferson County has a robust Map Your Neighborhood program where neighbors coordinate supplies and identify those with special needs to enhance emergency preparedness, Morrison said.
A group of handheld radio enthusiasts in Jefferson County will practice communications after the earthquake drill, he added.
The last 9.0 earthquake occurred on the Cascadia subduction zone in January 1700. Geologists believe these megathrust quakes occur about once every 500 years.
There is a 10 percent chance a 9.0 earthquake will occur on the Cascadia subduction zone in the next 50 years, Clallam County Fire District No. 3 Assistant Chief Dan Orr told the Port Angeles City Council in the September workshop.
Other major earthquakes are possible on a smaller, lesser-known fault closer to home.
A new study in the Seismological Society of America suggests that the Lake Creek-Boundary Creek fault just south of Port Angeles produced magnitude 7.0 earthquakes 2,900 years ago and 1,300 years ago.
The Nisqually earthquake that shook the Seattle area in February 2001 was a 6.8.
The Lake Creek-Boundary Creek fault runs under the north end of Lake Crescent, down Indian Valley and up the Little River Valley.
“It’s probably only capable of doing a [magnitude] 7½, but being right under us, I’m not sure you’d be able to tell the difference,” Buck said in a recent interview.
Other faults that can produce significant earthquakes on the North Olympic Peninsula are the South Whidbey fault and the Seattle fault, Buck said.
The Lake Creek-Boundary Creek fault has been the source of three to five large, surface-rupturing earthquakes in the past 13,000 years, according to the study “Holocene Earthquakes of Magnitude 7 During Westward Escape of the Olympic Mountains, Washington.”
“If you consider the hazard from these upper-plate faults, whose earthquake epicenters are only 10 or 15 kilometers deep, future upper-plate earthquakes will be much closer to large population centers in the Puget Lowland region, than will larger earthquakes on the plate boundary of the Cascadia subduction zone,” said Alan Nelson of the U.S. Geological Survey, who co-authored the study.
Earlier studies suggested that earthquakes caused massive landslides that separated Lake Crescent from Lake Sutherland thousands of years ago.
Emergency planners say Clallam County will be divided into about 20 micro-islands after the Cascadia quake because bridges and culverts will be destroyed.
Linterman, Buck and Morrison agreed that survivors of the initial quake and tsunami should be prepared to shelter in place for at least 30 days.
“We have two roads coming in and out,” Morrison said of East Jefferson County.
“Those roads might be compromised.”
People can help prepare for an earthquake by volunteering to help in efforts such as Map Your Neighborhood, community emergency response teams and volunteer firefighting, Buck said.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 56450, or at rollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
