When Mount St. Helens erupted 35 years ago, officials were ill-prepared for the magnitude of the emergency.

Kate Prengaman, Yakima Herald-Republic | May 18, 2015

(TNS) — When Mount St. Helens erupted 35 years ago Monday, killing 57 people and blanketing much of Central Washington in ash, officials were ill-prepared for the magnitude of the emergency.

“When the mountain blew, everyone was kind of out there on their own,” said Charles Erwin, emergency management specialist for the city of Yakima. “That’s what got the county started on doing disaster planning and coordinating with all the local jurisdictions.”

The explosion caused two different disasters on either side of the mountains. While the west side was dealing with mud and debris flows taking out bridges and roads, the prevailing winds pushed an estimated 520 million tons of ash eastward, turning Sunday morning in Yakima into midnight.

Local, state and federal officials say the eruption and the disorganized response prompted the development of planning and response protocols that officials say have made the region more prepared for a future eruption — because it’s only a matter of time before the volcano erupts again.

“We know we have recharge of magma chamber right now,” said Carolyn Driedger, scientist with the Cascade Volcanoes Observatory. “We’re fairly confident that the monitoring equipment we have there now will give us about as good a warning as we can get that there is magma rising. We could have an eruption with a few days of warning; it could be 100 years from now.”

And Mount St. Helens isn’t the only volcano Washington has to worry about. Mount Adams, Mount Rainier, Mount Baker and Glacier Peak are also capable of producing destructive mud and debris flows, known as lahars, and spewing ash.

Although Mount St. Helens has the most recent and most destructive activity, all five have generated ash or lahars in the past 300 years, according to the state’s hazard mitigation plan.

But in Yakima County, the primary danger is ash, according to the county’s emergency management plan.

Countless tons of it fell across much of the county during the 1980 eruption. It clogged waterways and cut visibility on roads to levels so dangerous that highways were closed for days. Merely walking in it kicked up clouds of ash.

Inhaling ash can cause lung damage, especially for those with existing respiratory conditions. Volcanic ash is acidic and when it combines with water it can create a form of sulfuric acid that can, in some cases, be strong enough to burn skin, damage crops and corrode machinery.

Preparing to deal with ash is the most important thing communities in Yakima County can do, Erwin said.

“What we’re trying to do again, since it’s far from people’s memory now, is to encourage all the cities to have plans for clearing ash from the streets and where to dump it and how to answer citizens’ questions about what to do with it,” Erwin said.

He recommended that all area residents add dust masks and goggles to their emergency kits to be prepared for an ash event.

Across the state, communities at risk from volcanoes work together on coordinated response plans, said Mark Stewart, spokesman for the Washington Military Department’s Emergency Management Division.

Each plan is different because each volcano is different, he said.

“Our five volcanoes have what I would call a different eruptive personality,” Stewart said. “We all know Mount St. Helens is a big exploder. Mount Rainier, on the other hand, is a lahar producer, and hundreds of thousands of people live in harm’s way of those lahars.”

One coordination plan addresses both St. Helens and Mount Adams, because the at-risk areas overlap. It’s developed by the Forest Service, state and federal geologists, and the emergency management officials from the surrounding tribes and counties, including Yakima and Klickitat.

The plan divides up responsibilities and channels of communication. For example, the Forest Service will make road closures as needed to protect public safety, and the state Emergency Management Division will coordinate the use of aircraft for emergency responses.

This multi-agency response plan simply didn’t exist 35 years ago, said Doug Ficco. When St. Helens blew, Ficco was a maintenance engineer with the state Department of Transportation from Southeast Washington to Southwest Washington, where he was trying to figure out how to save bridges from the vast amounts of water and debris gushing down from the mountain. Now as a DOT regional administrator in Vancouver, he said much has changed in terms of disaster preparedness.

“Back then, we didn’t do a lot of pre-planning for emergencies. We didn’t have relationships in place with the Corps of Engineers and the National Guard,” Ficco said. “It was a little chaotic.”

Now, he said, multi-agency emergency drills are part of the routine.

Putting the response plans into action starts with observational data of the volcanic activity from the Cascades Volcano Observatory, which is run by the U.S. Geological Survey.

Driedger said the 1980 eruption also triggered increased investment in monitoring equipment for the mountain and more research to understand what’s normal volcano behavior and what’s a warning sign that an eruption could be imminent.

“That eruption really changed the way we as scientists do business; we realized we need to work with emergency managers,” Driedger said. “We can draw a direct line from the St. Helens eruption to those coordination plans and awareness that we know today.”

Advances in volcano monitoring and communication technology mean that the region is more prepared today to get people out of harm’s way in time before an eruption, Stewart said.

“I have a high level of comfort that if it should happen again, procedures are in place to get critical infrastructure up and running and keep people safe,” Erwin said of Yakima County’s response plan.

But even with preparations to protect water supplies and power substations, and plans to get the roads cleared quickly, ash is still likely to cause problems.

In 1980, farmers were worried about the potential impacts to crops and there was little information about how best to respond. “It was such an unknown. Very few people have gone through being covered up by volcanic ash,” recalls Alan Taylor, who was then sales promotion manager for Northwest Cherry Growers in Yakima. “Going through that was all uncharted territory in agriculture.”

He said farmers tried a variety of techniques to remove the ash from crops quickly and to quell rumors that the ash could poison the cherry crop. But he said the biggest lesson farmers learned probably wasn’t how to be prepared, but realizing that sometimes Mother Nature just has the upper hand.

There are so many variables to a potential eruption — from what time of year to how much ash — that the ideal response from the industry will just depend on the conditions, agreed James Michael, vice president of Marketing for the Washington Stone Fruit Commission.

“In the case of the mountain blowing up, it’s not an exact science,” Michael said. “The technology in our industry is changing so rapidly that it’s hard to predict, but some of those investments in cleaning and washing technology could help salvage fruit after an incident.”

Driedger said the way Eastern Washington handled the ash challenge in 1980 provided a lot of important insight for scientists about the best way to protect water supplies and coordinate cleanup efforts.

“It was really the first modern eruption in U.S. history, and the people in Eastern Washington made a worldwide contribution by documenting their experiences in 1980,” she said. “One really important thing as we move on in time from that memorable eruption is that memory really needs to be transmitted down through time so future generations don’t forget that these are active volcanoes, and you need to be prepared for them to act up from time to time.”

©2015 Yakima Herald-Republic (Yakima, Wash.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

source: emergencymgmt.com

The Tsunami Alert Community (Kogami), an NGO educating people on disaster risk reduction in West Sumatra, is urging the provincial administration to improve the management of escape buildings or temporary evacuation places (TES) to increase their effectiveness.

Kogami executive director Tommy Susanto said that although the provincial and Padang city disaster mitigation agencies (BPBD) had announced a number of buildings as TES, their effectiveness was still in question.

“The buildings will not function optimally unless they come with signboards identifying them as TES, the owners agree to open the buildings when there is an earthquake that has the potential to cause a tsunami and people are regularly trained to evacuate to the buildings,” Tommy told The Jakarta Post, on Sunday.

He also questioned why a number of buildings located within 500 meters from the shoreline had been publicized as being TES despite the fact that they were at risk of being destroyed when a tsunami hit.

The only real new TES, according to Tommy, were two that were located in Koto Tangah. Both, which were opened only three weeks ago, were built by the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) and each had the capacity to hold between 4,500 and 5,000 evacuees.

“Both are in need of better daily building management and people in the surroundings also need to be trained to make use of them,” he said.

Lack of management had led to traffic congestion and panic everywhere during the 2012 earthquake as hundreds of thousands of people drove to the east, away from the beach.

They did not make use of the buildings previously known as shelters, such as school buildings, because the school keepers would not open the gates for evacuees.

“Such things would not happen if the regional administrations had the guts to officially declare the buildings as TES and put signboards there,” Tommy said.

He said such a situation could occur again if the management of the TES buildings was unclear and people lacked knowledge.

Kogami recorded that between 300,000 and 400,000 of Padang City’s 1 million population were possibly threatened by a tsunami. Most of them lived in the Koto Tangah district, which is a sloping area and lacks escape routes for getting away from the beach.

Tommy admitted that efforts had been undertaken by the government after experts considered Padang to be a tsunami-prone city. Similar efforts had also been done by the private sector, including the Ibis and Grand Zuri hotels, which had declared their buildings to be public tsunami shelters.

Tommy, however, asked the BPBD to be selective in naming a building as a TES, to apply better TES management and to regularly train locals on the use of a TES. He also suggested that buildings located within 500 meters of a beach should not be named TES.

The head of the provincial BPBD’s prevention and preparedness division, Rumainur, said that there are currently 26 buildings with a combined capacity for 70,000 evacuees that could function as TES in Padang. The number does not include two more that are to be built this year in Koto Tangah.

Rumainur said that some 500,000 people in Padang live in tsunami red zones. Of them, 200,000 would not be able to escape away from the beach. The existing TES, he said, would be able to accommodate some one-third of the people.

“We only need to build TES to accommodate the remaining 130,000 people,” Rumainur said.

Of the existing TES buildings, according to Rumainur, most were government office buildings that had been rebuilt stronger after the 2009 earthquake, school buildings, campuses, mosques, new hotels and old buildings that had survived previous tsunami.

source : http://www.thejakartapost.com

Even as tremors from aftershocks in Nepal after Saturday’s earthquake continue to rumble across the city, the Delhi government is yet to finalise the mandatory state disaster management plan.

While the capital’s respective districts have their local plans drawn up and ready, it still awaits the green light from the Delhi Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) that includes the Lieutenant Governor and Chief Minister.
Delhi, with its population of 16 million, falls under seismic zone IV.

According to the Vulnerability Atlas of India (1997), for shaking intensity VIII, 6.5 per cent houses in Delhi face high damage risk and 85.5 per cent houses face moderate damage risk.

Also, most buildings in Delhi may not meet requirements on seismic resistance.

In order to mitigate the consequences of a disaster, DDMA officials said engineering intervention is needed in buildings and structures to make them strong enough to withstand the impact of natural hazard.

Dormant for more than a year now — save a meeting or two — the DDMA is now ready with the draft of the state disaster preparedness and mitigation plan.

Incidentally, the draft was formulated in March 2014 and presentations were made before officials of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) in a meeting last October.

“Since then, there have been minor changes in the draft which is an ongoing process. A few recommendations were made and we had to include these. We have done that now and the draft is ready,” a senior DDMA official said.

However, the draft is yet to be approved by the state executive committee headed by the Delhi chief secretary.

It lists out building critical infrastructure such as roads, drinking water, communication network, health and sanitation, physical and social environment.

The draft reads, “In view of these components, a risk assessment study was conducted. It identified that Delhi is densely built and consists of a large urban population. Any major earthquake or fire/chemical explosion can affect districts very badly. Although various steps have been taken by the government, a high degree of awareness and training is still required.”

The draft also states that urban disaster management and disaster mitigation strategies minimise risk and should be incorporated in masterplan of Delhi.

Incidentally, Delhi still lacks a disaster response fund — something the Disaster Management Act, 2005, mandates.

Ashwani Kumar, Commissioner (Revenue) said, “A state disaster response fund was supposed to be created. It has been delayed due to the long process involved. The file has gone to Central government for approval. As far as the mitigation funds are concerned, we have discussed and decided that it is best if the departments create a planned fund for the head

OTTAWA, April 17, 2015 /CNW/ - The Honourable Steven Blaney, Canada's Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness today launched the first call for proposals for the National Disaster Mitigation Program (NDMP).

In Economic Action Plan 2014, our Government committed to providing $200 million in funding over five years, starting in 2015-16 to develop the National Disaster Mitigation Program. As announced in January 2015, the NDMP will focus mainly on flood mitigation, to better protect Canadians, their homes, and communities.

This funding is in addition to the investments made under the New Building Canada Fund. Announced in Economic Action Plan 2013, the New Building Canada Fund provides $14 billion to support significant infrastructure projects in Canada as identified by the provinces and territories, which can include mitigation infrastructure to help prevent floods and other natural disasters.

The investments in flood-risk identification and prevention measures through the NDMP reflect our Government's shift towards a proactive disaster relief model that will better protect Canadians and their communities from the costs and heartache associated with reoccurring flooding.

Quick Facts

• Flood mitigation investments are needed in Canada. Since being created in 1970, the DFAA have been applied to over 210 events, with total payments of over $3.4 billion made to provinces and territories. Of those 210 events, 190 were flood-related, representing more than 85 per cent of all DFAA-funded recovery efforts.

• Through NDMP investments, our Government will:
  • Help reduce flood-related risks and losses by supporting provinces and territories in identifying and mitigating high-risk flood areas;
  • Contribute to establishing conditions for the introduction of a residential flood insurance market in Canada;
  • Collect disaster risk information that will inform future investments; and
  • Facilitate greater knowledge-sharing across emergency management stakeholders.

• This funding is in addition to the funding that is available for disaster mitigation projects through the $53 billion New Building Canada Plan. It provides stable funding for a 10-year period, and includes:       
  • The Community Improvement Fund, consisting of the Gas Tax Fund and the incremental Goods and Services Tax Rebate for Municipalities, which will provide over $32 billion to municipalities for projects such as disaster mitigation, roads, public transit, and other community infrastructure.
  • The $14-billion New Building Canada Fund, which consists of:
    • The $4-billion National Infrastructure Component that will support projects of national significance; and
    • The $10-billion Provincial-Territorial Infrastructure Component for projects of national, regional and local significance. Of this amount, $1 billion for projects in communities with fewer than 100,000 residents through the Small Communities Fund.
    • An additional $1.25 billion in funding for the Public-Private Partnerships (P3) Canada Fund administered by PPP Canada.

Quotes

"We are pleased to launch the National Disaster Mitigation Program today as we shift towards a proactive disaster relief model that better allows us to identify, plan for, and prevent flood risks and the costs that Canadians incur as a result of flooding. This important investment will help reduce flood-related costs for all levels of government and help Canadians in high-risk communities avoid the heartache associated with reoccurring flooding in their communities. Our Government will continue to support Canadians in their time of need and work with the provinces and territories to help proactively reduce the risk of flooding in high-risk communities across Canada.
- The Honourable Steven Blaney, Canada's Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness

"We have all seen the toll that severe weather events take on Canadians. IBC is pleased to continue working with the federal government on flood prevention and mitigation measures. We know that the private sector, all levels of government and community groups – working together – can build more resilient and sustainable communities".
- Don Forgeron, President and CEO, Insurance Bureau of Canada

Related Products

• The Government of Canada Announces Flood Mitigation Investments and Modernization of Disaster Financial Assistance Arrangements
• National Disaster Mitigation Program Backgrounder

Associated Links

• NDMP website
• New Building Canada Fund
• Canada's Economic Action Plan

For more information, please visit the website www.publicsafety.gc.ca.

SOURCE Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada