New Insights from Retooled Disaster Drill
/The annual disaster drill in the Pacific NorthWest, known as Cascadia Rising, prepares responders for an earthquake and anticipated tsunami that would follow, affecting northern California, Oregon, Washington state and British Columbia. This year because of other disasters - wildfires, torrential rain and of course COVID-19 - the drill could not be held the conventional way as an operational event on the ground. Too many resources were simply depleted for a full operational run of this important preparedness exercise. The design team for the drill (including one amateur radio operator) was quick to respond to the crisis by retooling the forum into a discussion-based drill taking place over a three-day period. It was hosted on Microsoft Teams, starting 13th June 2022 (ending 16th June 2022.)
An early assessment of the drill indicated that this switch in format created a new way of looking at the preparedness exercise and the way people are deployed and it showed most especially that hams can be useful in even more ways in the first 96 hours after disaster strikes. Their traditional participation has focused on delivering resources to impacted communities (such as people at shelters) and keeping transportation channels open (roads, airports).
