Tribal Preparedness

The tiny community of Tokeland sits off State Route 105 on a remote peninsula on the west coast of Washington State, exposed to the full fury of the wind, rain and waves coming off the Pacific Ocean. On days of heavy rain, it's sometimes hard to tell where the low-lying land ends and the sea begins. It is just such a combination of geography and environment that makes this area at risk for natural disasters.

This interplay of land and sea has not been lost on the Shoalwater Bay Indian Tribe, which has lived along these shores for millennia. This small tribe of about 300 members has an emergency-preparedness plan in place that undergoes continual updating and revision, making this tiny piece of the Washington coastline perhaps the safest location on the Pacific Coast in the event of a disaster.

PASSIONATE CHAMPIONS
Lee Shipman is a tribal elder with the title of emergency manager. That means she gets a lot of strange and interesting things thrown her way. One day it was a notification from the U.S. government that emergency agencies would be required to adopt, train on and use an approved incident management system to be eligible for future assistance. Shipman's first National Incident Management System (NIMS) training class left her with an overwhelming sense that she didn't know anything and her whole community needed to learn a lot.

The Shoalwater Bay Tribe is governed by an elected five-member council. After her first NIMS class, Shipman reported her conclusions to the council, which was receptive to taking action. She arranged for the entire council to attend Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training.

WORST-CASE SCENARIOS
For the Shoalwater Bay Tribe, history and geography told them that earthquakes and tsunamis held the most potential to wipe out their community. Major winter storms can also have significant impact, but not community-ending outcomes.

Tokeland is about midway along a major geological faultline known as the Cascadia Subduction Zone. This thrust fault is approximately 800 miles long, running under the Pacific Ocean off the North American Coast from mid-Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada, south to Cape Mendocino in California. Historical records, geological history and native legends indicate that at least 13 great earthquakes have occurred along this zone in the past 6,000 years, with an average interval of about 500 years between them. Tsunamis are most often created when large sections of the ocean floor rise or drop quickly, displacing the water above and causing it to move violently. The most recent evidence of how dangerous tsunamis can be was seen in Sumatra in 2004.

Scientists believe that the last rupture of the Cascadia Subduction Zone occurred on January 26, 1700, resulting in one of the world's largest known earthquakes. Scientists peg it at a magnitude 9, with a unknown-sized tsunami in North America and a five-meter-high tsunami that came ashore in northern Japan.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION
To answer the question "If a disaster happened, what would we do?" Shipman, the council and other interested tribal members formed a planning team. While the team held some formal meetings, there was so much to do and such eagerness to accomplish it that impromptu meetings happened frequently--sometimes daily or anytime team members found themselves in the same place at the same time.