The Really Big One

[FSTO]

More like ones built on pontoons, since the Vic General and the Jube will be under water if a tsunami hit...as well as a lot of the lower mainland ones around Vancouver.

MM

Studies say that the threat of a Tsunami for Victoria/Vancouver are quite low.
http://www.sfu.ca/cnhr/papers/Clague%20et%20al.%20Natural%20Hazards%202003.pdf

 

[Underway]

No airport, No C-17s.  How long would it take today's complete fleet of Chinooks to fly cross country to assist?  You picked a doozie of a scenario, even for today.

Don't need an airstrip.  Just need a clear highway.  There will be plenty of places in BC that can act as a staging area around Vancouver that probably wouldn't be hit as hard.  It's not like the C-17 needs a perfect place to land.

 

[dapaterson]

Except the carbon footprint of such an aircraft is huge, and the left coast won't let a little thing like a massive humanitarian disaster dissuade them from their left coast mentality. 

 

[Bearpaw]

The only historical earthquake that might be used as a model for the
"Big One" is the 1960 magnitude 9.5 quake in Chile.  Our "Big One" is
likely to be in the 9.0 to 9.8 range.  An American scientist has done excellent
work in studies of past quakes on the Washington-BC coasts in particular the
effects of the resulting tsunami---there was a recent documentary about this on TV.

The real unknown in this is where the rock rupture takes place---this has huge consequences for
the p-wave, s-wave structure of the quake----the worst building damage takes place from the
s-wave shaking----the p-wave damage could be severe if the break-zone is almost directly under Vancouver.
s-wave shaking is from side to side and forward and backward (shear wave)
p-wave shaking is up and down(pressure wave).

Vancouver Airport will be totally destroyed and probably flooded as well.  Richmond, Delta,
UBC, .... will be severely or totally destroyed by ground fluidization.

All bridges on the Fraser River to Mission will likely be not useable or destroyed---hopefully the
Mission bridge will survive----the Bridal Falls bridge is likely to survive.

All highways leading in to Hope will have several rock-slides blocking them---count on 2 weeks to clear.
The railways in Fraser Canyon likely have several blockages by rock-slides as well---these may be quicker
to clear.

Abbotsford International Airport should have some runway damage---this is the only C-17 capable runway
in the lower mainland that is likely to be in near-operable state after the quake.

What I would recommend for positioned equipment and materials at Abbotsford airport would be

0) equipment to repair runways,...
1) 3 or 4 fully equipped field hospitals
2) 10 mobile ROWPU and associated equipment filters,...
3) lots of pharmaceuticals, body-bags
4) at least 5,000,000 L of fuel for helicopters, diesels,... in
  tanks at most 250,000L
5) at least 100 10-ton trucks with trailers
6) bridging equipment sufficient for 2 crossings of Fraser
7) loaders, bulldozers
8) tents, food,... for at least a brigade or responders

I would also have several LCM stationed somewhere on the coast.

For planning purposes, one should be thinking of 5 to 10 times the damage in Haiti---the needs
will be similar except for scale.

The US is likely to be tied up with their own severe problems---Seattle, Tacoma, Bellingham,...
Portland---their situation could well be worse than Vancouver and Victoria.

Bearpaw (from Surrey BC)

 

[daftandbarmy]

Bearpaw (from Surrey BC)

Good point: we should build a wall around Surrey now to contain all the looters after the quake ;D

 

[Blackadder1916]

. . . Casualty estimates in the 1,000's for the dead, and 60,000 or more wounded.  .....

That few.  I would have guesstimated that the death toll would be much higher and the injured much lower, more in-line with the Japanese earthquake/tsunami of 2011.  Dead/missing (the vast majority due to the tsunami i.e. drowning) were about three times higher than those reported injured - ~19,000 vice ~6000.  I'm assuming that the injured included only those whose injuries required medical attention and hospitalization (however brief).  But then the area most directly affected was (relatively in Japanese terms) not highly populated.  However, the 1995 Kobe earthquake had a more traditional death/injured ratio at 6.4k dead to 27k injured, but that was dry.

 

[Bearpaw]

The looting could be quite a problem here----one can hear gunshots at least once a week here!

Most people here are completely unprepared for even the smallest emergency.

Bearpaw

 

[Staff Weenie]

Blackadder - As you know, there's so many variable that impact the number of fatalities and injuries - time of day, day of the week, season, etc.  I think they took a midrange. Who knows - in the past decade, they may have revised this upwards, based upon major quakes around the world.

You would have liked the Pandemic Influenza planning numbers - using known variables from the 1918 pandemic for epidemiological modelling, it was estimated that it would kill approx 300,000 across Canada in the first 45 days......

 

[Blackadder1916]

You would have liked the Pandemic Influenza planning numbers - using known variables from the 1918 pandemic for epidemiological modelling, it was estimated that it would kill approx 300,000 across Canada in the first 45 days......

Much like the estimated casualty rate we saw for Desert Storm that factored in use of chemical and biological weapons by the Iraqis.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

If Seattle is not hit bad, I expect US troops on the ground in 48hrs, if it is, I don’t expect a significant number to be in action for 5-6 days.

I don’t count on the CF much, any major hit is going to damage the highways into the lower mainland, first they will have to get through that. Then they will have to get across the Fraser, even if the bridges are standing, likely they will be closed to vehicle traffic till they can be inspected. So any bridge and rafting equipment is sucked up there. The Chinooks will be a big boost, the local airports will be shut, with likely Abbotsford coming back online first and being the main focal point of inbound air relief.

Self rescue, help and self-support food & water wise for 1-2 weeks will be the order of the day for most people. I have recommended in training exercises that a regional crisis centre either in Comox or Victoria hire every small tug and barge contractor to sail to Vancouver with some heavy equipment, they can quickly construct loading bulkheads along the shore and create a transportation network across the waterways in 24 hrs upon arrival. They will need support back up consisting of floating accommodations and fuel barges. Once this is in place, people can return home and deal with their family issues (personally I am stealing a dinghy and rowing to the Northshore). The USN/Marines will arrive and help with the waterside and moving rescue and support equipment in. I suspect another week after setup for almost everyone to have some access to basic shelter, food and  water.

The big issue is that in many countries you can give people, flour, oil, beans and some spices and in a few hours they will have bread. Here most people would have no idea what to do with them and will need packaged meal stuff to survive on.

I recommend getting to know your neighbours and having a good idea of everyone needs. You will need to band together, to do rescue, basic first aid, shelter and food gathering. You will also need to be together to provide security, as the dirtbags that live around you who have not prepared will want what you have. As they say civilization is only about 3 meals deep. I have decent relationships with most of the people around us and no doubt we will work together. I try to have about 30 days worth of food, generally b having about 3 of everything we need, plus a long term store of food int eh garage, with stoves, tents and fuel there. Also bought a water purifier when the 15 gallons I have stored gets used.

Every training exercise I have been part of has been an exercise in wishful thinking. Everyone thinks of organizing HQ and few think about what resources they will use, where to get them and how to use them.

 

[MilEME09]

Relevant due to highlighting the issues in the PRes.

Six-month military operation would follow major B.C. earthquake

The odds are against a serious earthquake on the Pacific Coast, but not as much as we would like – a military plan for dealing with the aftermath assesses the chance of a significant quake in the next 10 years as 4.5 per cent for Victoria, and 2.5 per cent for Vancouver.

“Operation Panorama,” the military response to a Pacific Coast earthquake, would be a six-month operation and could involve a mandatory callout of reservists, similar to what would happen in a major war, the plan says.

The 219-page plan for Operation Panorama was released to Global News under access-to-information laws.

    After a major Pacific Coast quake, “the casualty level is expected to be very high,” the plan says.

    “It is highly likely that such a catastrophic earthquake would quickly overload the resources of provincial and municipal authorities … it will take days to weeks to restore critical infrastructure.”

The quake could damage bridges and cause landslides that would cut Vancouver off from other parts of the country, the report says.

“An earthquake presents a ‘come as you are’ scenario,” the plan says. Planners anticipate a range of needs the military could meet, including providing mobile kitchens, water purification, generators, helicopters, tents to house refugees, ships and recovery of bodies.

Troops will start the operation without weapons, but that could change if police ask for armed support, the plan says. Training for, or conducting, “crowd confrontation operations” will not happen without the chief of defence staff’s approval.

A section of the plan written by legal officers cautions commanders to be cautious about civilian police requests for armed assistance, especially for help from military police.

“Although requests for military police assistance may come from civilian police, such requests should, wherever practical, be denied,” the plan says.

However, despite the apocalyptic scenario a major quake would present, the plan largely assumes that full- and part-time military forces already in B.C. can handle the situation, and refers only in passing to the possibility that they may be affected by the same disaster that’s affected everybody else.

Whether that’s realistic depends on how serious the quake is, says Paul Crober, a retired colonel who went on to have several senior roles in emergency planning in B.C..

After a big earthquake “the reserve brigade in Vancouver will be less capable to do things, through no fault of their own,” he said. “If they’re not affected, they’ll move on to it. If they are affected, they’ll do what they can.”

There hasn’t been a large-scale regular army presence in B.C. since the controversial closure of CFB Chilliwack in the 1990s. That may have a silver lining in this case, since the regular troops who were moved to Edmonton at that time won’t become disaster victims themselves, Crober says.

“That’s why the army would say ‘Well, it’s bad that we have to move out of B.C., but from a purely earthquake perspective and nothing else, it’s not a bad thing, in that their capabilities remain unaffected, and they can get back in, if road, rail and ports are available to accept them.’”

On the other hand, it means that part-time reservists are the only force on the B.C. mainland that can immediately respond to a major emergency.

The plan also flags a long-standing issue for the reserves — part-time soldiers, often in senior roles, who are first responders in their civilian jobs. In a civil emergency, it’s not clear whether they would be available to the military. (The plan assumes they won’t be.)

    “Those folks tend to make good soldiers, and they do rise up,” says John Selkirk, a retired lieutenant-colonel who heads Reserves 2000, a lobby group for the army reserves.

    “But it is a problem. On the other hand, I don’t think it’s that many. I would hazard a guess that the percentage of first responders is probably no more than five or 10 per cent.”

“It can be an issue,” Crober said. Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, he points out, was a detective with the Vancouver police at the same time that he ran an army reserve unit.

“In an emergency, his first job would have been to show up at the police force, when he was commanding officer of the British Columbia Regiment.”

Some police forces, like the RCMP and the Ontario Provincial Police, have in the past barred officers from being reservists for this reason, Crober says.

The plan also doesn’t mention any role for supplementary reservists, people on a list of trained ex-soldiers who, when they left the military, said they’d be available in an emergency.

This capability has been neglected, Selkirk says.

“This is a criminally negligent thing that’s happened,” he charges. “They let that thing absolutely slide. They just won’t put any effort into keeping it up.”

Three staging areas have been chosen for Operation Panorama, one on Vancouver Island, one on the Lower Mainland and another in the southern interior. Their locations were censored in the documents Global News received under a provision of access-to-information law that bars the release of information that “could reasonably be expected to be injurious to … the defence of Canada.”

On the whole, the document is very lightly censored. Defence officials blocked the release of some phone numbers and radio frequencies, and descriptions of three routes across British Columbia. Also, following a quake a senior army reserve commander in Vancouver is supposed to assess something, but what he is supposed to assess has been censored.

In the meantime, Selkirk says, reserve units don’t have the vehicles and equipment they would need to respond after an earthquake.

“They’ll do what they can,” he said. “The problem is that the army has failed to keep the reserve units with a sufficient stock of things that they would need in those emergencies. They don’t have enough trucks. Right now they don’t even have radios. Units are using their own cellphones when they have to go out and do a tactical exercise somewhere, but in an earthquake half of the cell towers would fall down.”

The federal auditor general raised the same concern last year, saying that reservists called out for domestic missions, like flood control, “did not always have access to key equipment … we found many instances of key equipment lacking, such as reconnaissance vehicles, command posts, and communications equipment.”

“You could be totally cut off from the rest of Canada, even by air, if the runways are damaged,” Selkirk said. “It could take a few days to get stuff there. If reserve units held stocks of what they might need, it would be a lot better.”

The defence department did not respond to questions we filed with them on Monday morning. We asked about:

    How many reservists in B.C. work as civilian emergency responders
    The lack of a role for supplementary reservists in Operation Panorama
    Whether it is feasible for forces now in B.C. to have a leadership role in the aftermath of an earthquake if they’re also affected by the earthquake

http://globalnews.ca/news/3241545/six-month-military-operation-would-follow-major-b-c-earthquake/

Operation Panorama link from the article: https://shawglobalnews.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/a-2016-00922.pdf

“The problem is that the army has failed to keep the reserve units with a sufficient stock of things that they would need in those emergencies. They don’t have enough trucks. Right now they don’t even have radios. Units are using their own cellphones when they have to go out and do a tactical exercise somewhere, but in an earthquake half of the cell towers would fall down.”

I've said it before on here that this is the new reality of the PRes, the fact that all it would take is an earthquake and the scattered PRes of BC would be cut off from higher HQ, or even attempting to notify troops should worry people.

 

[Rifleman62]

Cut from HQ? Less reports and returns :crybaby:

I have always wondered how you would get the vehs/eqpt across the Rockies.

 

[MilEME09]

Cut from HQ? Less reports and returns :crybaby:

I have always wondered how you would get the vehs/eqpt across the Rockies.

I imagine with the amount of damage to bridges and such, you'd be bringing vehicles in via chinook till engineers can get an airport up to get hurc and C-17's in.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Jack Granatstein gives a pretty good what if scenario to this actual possibility in his book:

Who Killed The Canadian Military
https://www.google.ca/search?safe=active&sa=X&biw=1920&bih=1007&q=Who+Killed+the+Canadian+Military%3F&stick=H4sIAAAAAAAAAONgFuLUz9U3MDIsr8pT4gIxM4rM4s0rtQQcS0sy8otC8p3y87P983IqAaLsm-MrAAAA&ved=0ahUKEwjAy6HF5JLSAhUL2IMKHSN1Ai0QxA0IkAEwEA

 

[Kirkhill]

I imagine with the amount of damage to bridges and such, you'd be bringing vehicles in via chinook till engineers can get an airport up to get hurc and C-17's in.

Might want some more Chinooks stationed at Edmonton then.  With a larger Air Reserve component?

 

[MilEME09]

Might want some more Chinooks stationed at Edmonton then.  With a larger Air Reserve component?

I had to actually look up about the AirRes because i've never met an airforce reservist. I think if we created a larger edmonton based airforce component, we would want to stand back up 18 Wing Edmonton, with a larger res heavy squadron.

 

[dapaterson]

Would someone explain to me how a part-time force is a panacea to address immediate requirements?  One would think that a full-time force in being is necessary for emergencies (be they domestic or international, disaster relief or warfighting); as they provide the immediate response, you mobilize the part-time force.

Our current thinking, that the highly paid full-timers will sit back, relax, and wait for the part-timers to respond, is illogical in the extreme.

 

[mariomike]

The plan also flags a long-standing issue for the reserves — part-time soldiers, often in senior roles, who are first responders in their civilian jobs. In a civil emergency, it’s not clear whether they would be available to the military. (The plan assumes they won’t be.)

Re: "major B.C. earthquake".

CAN-TF1 ( Vancouver ) would play a role,
https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/mrgnc-mngmnt/rspndng-mrgnc-vnts/hvyrbn-srch-rsc-en.aspx
•Vancouver Fire and Rescue Services
•Vancouver Police Department
•BC Ambulance Service

 

[MilEME09]

Would someone explain to me how a part-time force is a panacea to address immediate requirements?  One would think that a full-time force in being is necessary for emergencies (be they domestic or international, disaster relief or warfighting); as they provide the immediate response, you mobilize the part-time force.

Our current thinking, that the highly paid full-timers will sit back, relax, and wait for the part-timers to respond, is illogical in the extreme.

I would agree, your Reg force is your response unit, the Res forces are the follow up second wave IMO, or perhaps limited first 12-24hour call up of those that are available to be your eyes on the ground/recce so when the reg force arrives they have a better picture, and have people that know the area now with them.

 

[Kirkhill]

Would someone explain to me how a part-time force is a panacea to address immediate requirements?  One would think that a full-time force in being is necessary for emergencies (be they domestic or international, disaster relief or warfighting); as they provide the immediate response, you mobilize the part-time force.

Our current thinking, that the highly paid full-timers will sit back, relax, and wait for the part-timers to respond, is illogical in the extreme.

I'm reminded of Boris and Natasha - something about "Darling, I'm too important..."