WWU Students Gain Professional Experience Alongside Emergency Personnel During ‘Cascadia Rising’ Exercise

Finals this spring has meant something totally different for 16 students in Western Washington University’s Huxley College of the Environment Disaster Risk Reduction minor.

Instead of exams or presentations, they are working around the clock for 36 hours in Whatcom County’s Emergency Coordination Center in conjunction with more than 6,000 people across the Northwest, on Cascadia Rising – a multi-day emergency drill for agencies and volunteers to practice responding to a massive magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Coast.

Western Washington University students are an integral part to Whatcom County’s activities.

Rebekah Paci-Green, assistant professor in Environmental Studies at Western, said she immediately jumped at the chance to have her students involved in the exercise, since two years earlier, she had worked with FEMA to write the 182-page scenario document to guide the exercise.

“This is the largest, most comprehensive disaster exercise our region has ever done, and students aren’t generally invited to participate,” she said.

At the beginning of the quarter, Paci-Green told the students their work would guide the community in reducing impacts from a natural hazard for years to come.

“I needed them to realize how serious this was,” said Paci-Green. “I couldn’t have them treating our community’s safety as a mere class assignment.”

Some of her students began working on plans for managing what the students estimated will be over 50 million cubic yards of debris such an event would create. Others used census data and a door-to-door survey to find out who was most vulnerable to tsunami inundation. Tsunami waves are expected to swamp parts of Lummi Reservation, Birch Bay, Sandy Point and Semiahmoo in the event of such a massive earthquake. 

When students talked to residents, they found some well prepared and others insistent that a tsunami was impossible.

“You really get a sense for working with the public and working on the fly,” said Western student Isaiah Wynter (Vancouver). 

Five of the students became the lynch pin of the local exercise. They created hundreds of fake damage photos and descriptions.

During the exercise, the students sat in a sequestered room. Their job was to call in the simulated damage to the community in rapid fire to increasingly stressed emergency responders who then have to decide how to react.

“The whole experience has been incredibly challenging, but also incredibly worthwhile,” says Courtney Kjelland (Ellensburg), a student in the course.

Many students in the class are part of Western’s Disaster Risk Reduction minor. Some plan to work as urban planners, geologists, or emergency managers.

For Western student Terrah Short (Montlake Terrace), the class has been a chance to see what the field is like.

“My professional development has shot through the roof and I've only gotten more and more excited to do this work in the future after graduation,” she said. “The connections and networking opportunities have also been a really sweet deal.”

For more information on Western’s students and the Cascadia Rising exercise, contact Rebekah Paci-Green, Western Washington University assistant professor of Environmental Studies, at (360) 650-2707.