Is Haines prepared for a big shake?
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TweetA 7.0 magnitude earthquake that ruptured the earth in Anchorage on Nov. 30 begs the question: Is Haines prepared for a natural disaster?
“We are relatively prepared,” public facilities director Brad Ryan said. Ryan, who heads emergency operations as incident manager since 2017, said he intends to update Haines’ Multi-Hazard Mitigation Plan, last published in October 2015 and modified every five years. He also wants to get incident responders trained online through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The incident command list, a spreadsheet of borough staff to be contacted in an emergency, is broken into three categories: operations, planning and logistics.
In January, Warning Coordination Meteorologist from the National Weather Service Joel Curtis will visit Haines to speak to the community about natural disasters, and work with Ryan on emergency operation planning.
Curtis said that prioritizing a list of possible disasters that can affect Haines is the first step in prevention. “Just by recognizing threats, you’ve already taken a major step in preparing for them,” he said.
Potential disasters identified in the borough’s plan include earthquakes, avalanches, landslides and floods.
The largest potential geological hazard is earthquakes, according to the plan, as Haines is part of the second-most seismically active region in Alaska.
The Chilkat Valley is located near the Fairweather–Queen Charlotte fault system that marks the eastern boundary of the Pacific Plate and western boundary of the North American Plate. The horizontal movement of two plates in opposite directions where the boundaries meet causes strike-slip earthquakes. Historically, the FW-QU fault system has resulted in many earthquakes over the past 100 years, according to the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
Last January, a 7.9 scale earthquake in the Gulf of Alaska triggered warnings for a potential open-ocean tsunami to reach Haines, and an emergency operations center (EOC) was established in the kitchen of the fire hall.
Haines’ EOC, facilitated by Ryan, is a pop-up place to make decisions and receive and communicate information. Ryan was out of town during the warning, so police chief Heath Scott took charge, though he said the incident’s lack of organization proved “that we needed to re-invest in planning and equipment, and since then I think we have.”
Since last January, Ryan has begun online FEMA training, established a pop-up emergency operations center at the library, and updated equipment like phone jacks and wireless router to send and receive information for dispatch.
According to Ryan, the biggest problem during the 2017 tsunami warning was unclear information from the National Weather Service, Skagway Police and the Tsunami Center in Fairbanks, paired with the community’s skepticism that an open water tsunami would affect Haines’ location in inside waters. “Everybody’s education was telling them this shouldn’t be an issue and what we were getting for information was that it could be an issue,” Ryan said. “That was a problem.”
According to a 2018 state-published Tsunami Inundation Map for Skagway and Haines, though Haines is generally protected from earthquake-generated tsunami waves based on its inlet location, it doesn’t mean that it is not risk free. Relying only on historical events to predict hazards could lead to “significant underestimation” because future earthquakes in the area might have different patterns of energy release.
According to Scott, infrastructure in Haines is at major risk for an earthquake because of its age and lack of adherence to building codes.
Haines Borough School District superintendent Roy Getchell said schools that had damage in Anchorage were constructed with cinderblocks, which is not the case in Haines. “Our school wasn’t constructed that way, it’s steel-reinforced,” he said.
Ryan said that in terms of infrastructure, “all of the earthquakes we’ve had in the past, it’s survived.”
There are backup generators to power the public safety building and water and safety plant in case of power-loss. AP&T also has a backup generator for the town, Ryan said, though the administration buildings do not.
Damage to water and sewer lines aren’t uncommon in Haines, Ryan said, and presents an easier fix than a broken generator.
“Broken water and sewer lines, while they’re immediately a problem, they’re not as equipment and expertise-driven as fixing a generator,” he said.
Although the plan outlines severe weather as a concern for cutting Haines off from access to goods and services, and medical supplies, Ryan said he doesn’t think it’s a realistic concern to lose water and road transportation at once.
“If you had the massive tsunami in the Pacific Ocean (and) Seattle goes under, then we have major issues,” he said. “But the reality is then, everyone’s going to have issues and then the plan is probably to drive out and drive east.”
Ryan said that a natural disaster is scalable, but based on past experiences, Haines has done well. Ryan recommends community members to get prepared to “stand on their own” by having their house stocked with food and medicine.
Krista Kielsmeier, executive assistant to the manager, said that public works intends to apply for a federal hazard mitigation grant that would cover the cost of labor to update the 90-page document, and enable public works to bring in contractors to assist.
