By CHERYL ROMANO/YachatsNews.com
YACHATS — Not long after moving to Yachats, MaryBeth Selby heard an alert on her weather radio — a possible tsunami was headed for the coast.
“My Internet was down, and my cellphone had no signal, so I had no way to communicate with anyone,” she said. “I started to panic.”
At 2 a.m., the KoHo development resident drove downtown to get a cell phone signal and called a family member on the East Coast. “I think a tsunami’s coming, but I can’t get any information,” she remembers saying.
Luckily, the tsunami didn’t materialize. But it did spur Selby to try to figure out how to protect herself and survive in the event of a natural disaster.
Now Selby is the newest member of the city of Yachats’ Emergency Preparedness Committee, working with chair Tracy Crews to help people avoid panic, get educated — and collect some free disaster supplies — at a community preparedness fair on Sunday.
Most of the day in and around the Yachats Commons, free workshops and demonstrations will be offered on an array of emergency preparation activities for a tsunami, wildfire, earthquake or just a winter storm. Starting at 9 a.m., attendees can learn about creating “go bags”, using fire extinguishers and administering first aid for people and pets after a disaster. There will also be walks to the city’s emergency caches, which are storage areas for post-disaster food, water and other essentials. Smokey Bear will be making appearances from noon to 2 p.m.
The fair is intended to be a “one-stop shopping” activity to help people be prepared. Free tote bags will be available to hold print material and merchandise, and raffle prizes, including go bags, will be offered. No registration is required for the family-friendly event.
Two state-level officials — Sen. Dick Anderson, R-Lincoln City, and Rep. David Gomberg, D-Otis — are scheduled to conduct an emergency preparation Town Hall in the multipurpose room starting at 11 a.m. There will also be a “Beat the Wave 5K Run/Walk” from 2-3:30 p.m. starting at the Overleaf Hotel.
Preparation gives hope
“Being prepared can save your life,” Crews says simply, adding that Sunday’s fair is much more than “just tables with information.”
“One of the biggest challenges we have is, how do you communicate to people the dangers, and also empower them to take action?” she said. “Our unique situation in Yachats is that we have no hospitals, no clinics that can help in the aftermath” of disaster. “The roads and bridges will go out, and we could have 3,000 tourists with us who will have brought nothing.”
Once Selby became involved with the emergency committee, she learned to her dismay that “Most of the people in my own neighborhood were uninformed about disasters, or the information they had was wrong.” Some thought, for example, that a tsunami “’will go underneath my house,’” or “’I’ll open a bottle of wine and let it take me.’ “
“We need to fix that,” Selby said.
Crews said the reality is that the majority of people will survive a catastrophic event in the Yachats area.
“We need to be thinking, ‘What can we do to make sure we have the resources we need’ for several weeks before help comes?’ ” she said.
Crews works at Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport as marine education manager with Oregon Sea Grant, which focuses on coastal resiliency and natural hazards. Some funding from that group is supporting the Yachats fair, which is timed to precede a regional event called “Cascadia Rising 2022.”
Cascadia Rising is a national level exercise June 13-16 coordinated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to cover Oregon, Washington, Idaho and parts of British Columbia. It will simulate how the region might respond to and recover from a rupture in the Cascadia Subduction Zone that causes a massive earthquake and resulting tsunami.
The subduction zone is a 700-mile fault that runs along the sea floor of Pacific Coast states. It’s estimated to rupture on average every 200-500 years, according to FEMA. The last major Cascadia earthquake and tsunami occurred in 1700 and experts have warned that the next rupture could be imminent.
While the focus on preparation might seem gloomy, the absence of emergency planning could be much worse.
“The upside of all this,” said Selby, is that “Education and awareness, being prepared, gives you hope.”
- Cheryl Romano is a Yachats freelance reporter who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. She can be reached at Wordsell@gmail.com
