{"id":4762,"date":"2011-03-21T03:01:08","date_gmt":"2011-03-21T10:01:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=4762"},"modified":"2011-03-21T03:01:08","modified_gmt":"2011-03-21T10:01:08","slug":"rethinking-a-bug-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/03\/21\/rethinking-a-bug-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking a bug-out"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent most of this weekend updating my emergency preparations, with an eye especially to earthquake and tsunami preparedness.<\/p>\n

Like most of you, I’ve always had a bug-out bag — a grab-and-go kit — around the house. But I realized as I worked yesterday that I never took those kits completely seriously. Thing is, I didn’t believe I’d need to bug out. Until now, I’ve mostly lived in the sort of places other people would bug out to<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Cabin Sweet Cabin was high on a hill outside of a small town (and was probably the most earthquake-safe structure in the whole county). The Desert Hermitage was a mile up and way to hell and gone away from everything. Sure there were conceivable scenarios in which I’d have to grab that kit and go (a forest fire near the cabin, for instance). But the vast majority of possibilities involved “bugging in.” The few scenarios that had me leaving home usually involved such a localized danger that there would be shelter and help readily available nearby.<\/p>\n

Now … different story. And the more I explore both the geology and the topography of this new place I’m living, the greater the dangers appear. <\/p>\n

The quake-generating possibilities of the Cascadia subduction zone, which stretches from northern California into British Columbia, were mostly unexplored until the last few decades. The scientific consensus was that quakes in this region would never exceed about 7.5 on the Richter scale — fearsome and dangerous, but not true geological monsters. Only in the 1980s did scientists begin to grasp what the collision of the Juan de Fuca and North American plates could generate. Now they realize that while Cascadia’s big quakes are few and far between, they’re behemoths when they hit — sinking coastal lands by up to six feet and generating unimaginable tsunamis. When scientists began to piece together the geological record, they found that the last monster was in 1700.<\/p>\n

As ML said in a recent comments section: the best way to avoid the danger is by not living here<\/i>. But here I am. And here are a lot of other people, too, for a lot of reasons. (If you could name one utterly safe spot in the world — which you can’t — it would probably be an aesthetic hellhole without rivers, lakes, forests, or any of the other things that make life enjoyable.) No doubt about it, though. Moving here wasn’t a safe choice. <\/p>\n

“Official” maps say my house is close to (very<\/i> close to), but not actually in<\/i> a tsunami zone. I ask myself: “What the heck do ‘official’ map makers know about it?”<\/p>\n

I remember the “official” maps of the expected danger zone published before the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Those maps probably got people killed; the real path of destruction didn’t resemble the ‘official’ projections. And tsunamis? Heck, those maps are made by bureaucrats sitting safely uphill and inland. The makers appear to be considering only elevation. Are they accounting for potential land subsidence which would abruptly change<\/i> elevations? Are they accounting for the peculiar hydraulics of tsunamis — the way one wave piles on another in narrow valleys or at the end of channels far from the sea? I think not. I think emergency management officials are doing the best they can. I’m glad I don’t have their job. I’m glad I don’t have to try to prepare other people for disasters or be an official first responder. But those map makers are purely guessing based on one 300-years-ago experience, and they’re not betting their lives on those maps.<\/p>\n

So yesterday I took my old kit completely apart and began rebuilding it with a particular scenario in mind: It’s the middle of a rainy winter night. The world starts shaking in a way that only a nearby subduction-zone earthquake can produce. When the shaking stops (assuming the house hasn’t fallen down on me and the dogs, which knock wood it won’t have), I’ve got less than 20 minutes — if that — to get the dogs and me into the nearby hills before a tsunami rampages up the channel from the coast. <\/p>\n

There’s no time to dress. I put on the socks and shoes waiting beside the bed (hoping I don’t have to hunt for them if they’ve slid around the room), strap my fanny pack on over my nightgown, throw on a coat, and grab the kit (which is next to the bedroom door, assuming it, too, hasn’t gone sliding; maybe I should strap it down). I throw the door open and let the dogs out off leash. <\/p>\n

I dash for the hills on foot, hoping the dogs stay with me. They may not. But in any case, leaving them off leash gives them the best chance of getting into the hills quickly, no matter what happens to me.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure what the neighbors will be doing at this point. Some may stunned into inaction. Some may be gathering supplies and trying to calm children. Some may be injured. Some may not be aware there’s tsunami danger this far inland. But because I have to assume that some will be headed for their vehicles to drive to high ground and the streets will be clogged with craziness, we stay on foot and go up an alley and through unfenced yards. Within a block, we’re climbing a muddy, forested slope. I’m wearing the headlamp that hung from the outside of the kit. We scramble up the slope until we’re about 25-feet above my street level. From there, we cross another yard and continue upwards by a paved dead-end road.<\/p>\n

Should any part of this route be impassible, I have a Plan B that adds about two blocks to the trek. Fortunately, there are hills in several directions. I am definitely not<\/i> heading for any of the officially mapped “assembly areas.” That way lies madness, too much traffic, and too many unprepared people.<\/p>\n

Of course a thousand things could go wrong with this plan. I could be dead or too seriously injured to use the kit. I could be freaked out by the magnitude of the earthquake. We could be trapped in the house. The streets could be impassible because of subsidence, liquifaction, broken sewer or water lines, downed power lines, or rubble. I could get preoccupied trying to help an injured dog or neighbor. Who knows? That’s why they call these things disasters. Plan C, if I can’t get out of the house, is to get me and the dogs upstairs, where there are ample “bug-in” supplies.<\/p>\n

But anyhow, that’s the scenario for which I rebuilt (or rather, am rebuilding) my grab-and-go kit. It’s a situation where, in addition to the standard water-food-shelter triad, I’ll need supplies for keeping warm and dry and for taking care of the dogs, assuming we all end up on a hill together. I’ll never need to get terribly far from civilization — just get above it.<\/p>\n

Here’s the chaos of my living room as I worked on the updated kit:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tomorrow I’ll list the “ingredients” of the kit (so far) and tell why I made some of the choices. I’ll be glad to have reality checks and advice on items to add.<\/p>\n

The one big concern that looms after I’ve done all I can is this: Every large local building that could otherwise function as a shelter (schools, churches, lodge halls) is in the tsunami zone and on really bad soil that’s likely to liquify in a monster quake.<\/p>\n

The roads into this area are are also prone to landslides, which would slow down any rescue efforts — as would the fact that the population is so low here that basically nobody from the outside is going to give a damn about us if people in more populated areas get hit, too.<\/p>\n

Assuming we make it into the hills okay, we’re likely to be up there a while if there was major destruction at home. We might be able to stay in or around some hilltop home or garage once things settle down, but we’ll have to provide our own supplies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent most of this weekend updating my emergency preparations, with an eye especially to earthquake and tsunami preparedness. Like most of you, I’ve always had a bug-out bag — a grab-and-go kit — around the house. But I realized as I worked yesterday that I never took those kits completely seriously. Thing is, I didn’t believe I’d need to bug out. Until now, I’ve mostly lived in the sort of places other people would bug out to. Cabin Sweet Cabin was high on a hill outside of a small town (and was probably the most earthquake-safe structure in the…<\/p>\n

Continue readingRethinking a bug-out<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-preparedness","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}