Nasty Weather Advisory

LOWER COLUMBIA OR-LOWER COLUMBIA AND I - 5 CORRIDOR IN COWLITZ COUNTY WA-SOUTH WASHINGTON CASCADE FOOTHILLS WA-SOUTH WASHINGTON CASCADES WA-WILLAPA HILLS WA-
1046 AM PDT THU MAY 20 2010

..SIGNIFICANT WEATHER ADVISORY FOR CENTRAL COWLITZ AND EXTREME NORTHERN COLUMBIA COUNTIES

AT 1037 AM PDT...NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR WAS TRACKING A FEW THUNDERSTORMS NORTH TO NORTHWEST OF KELSO OR BETWEEN CASTLE ROCK AND STELLA...MOVING EAST AT 20 MPH.

HAIL UP TO ONE HALF INCH IN DIAMETER AND WIND GUSTS UP TO 40 MPH ARE EXPECTED WITH THESE STORMS.

* LOCATIONS IMPACTED INCLUDE...
LEXINGTON AND OSTRANDER...
CASTLE ROCK...
SILVER LAKE...
TOUTLE...

IF THREATENING WEATHER APPROACHES YOUR AREA...TAKE SHELTER IN A STURDY BUILDING.

Wind Advisory

LOWER COLUMBIA-GREATER PORTLAND METRO AREA- CENTRAL WILLAMETTE VALLEY-I-5 CORRIDOR IN COWLITZ COUNTY- GREATER VANCOUVER AREA- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF...ST. HELENS...HILLSBORO...OREGON CITY...
GRESHAM...SALEM...LONGVIEW...KELSO...BATTLE GROUND...WASHOUGAL
1143 AM PDT WED MAY 19 2010

..WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 11 PM PDT THIS EVENING FOR THE GREATER PORTLAND AND VANCOUVER AREA...THE CENTRAL WILLAMETTE VALLEY...AND THE I-5 CORRIDOR IN COWLITZ COUNTY...

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN PORTLAND HAS ISSUED A WIND ADVISORY...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 4 PM THIS AFTERNOON TO 11 PM PDT THIS EVENING.

* WINDS: SOUTH WIND 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS TO AROUND 45 MPH ARE
EXPECTED.

* TIMING: BEGINNING LATE THIS AFTERNOON AND CONTINUING UNTIL
AROUND MIDNIGHT.

* LOCATIONS INCLUDE: SALEM...HILLSBORO...OREGON CITY...
GRESHAM...ST. HELENS...BATTLE GROUND...WASHOUGAL... LONGVIEW...
KELSO

* IMPACTS: HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS FOR HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES
AND POSSIBLE TREE DAMAGE.


PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

A WIND ADVISORY IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS ARE FORECAST TO BE
31 TO 39 MPH OR GUSTS WILL RANGE BETWEEN 45 AND 57 MPH. WINDS OF THESE MAGNITUDES MAY CAUSE MINOR PROPERTY DAMAGE WITHOUT EXTRA PRECAUTIONS. MOTORISTS IN HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES SHOULD USE CAUTION UNTIL THE WINDS SUBSIDE.

Volcano Awareness Month

Ahhh....spring. When a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of....volcano awareness. The catastrophic eruptions of Mt. St. Helens thirty years ago are a reminder that Cascade volcaoes hold potential to disrupt our communities. Eruptions and lahars at Mt. St. Helens took the lives of 57 people and caused billions of dollars in property damage. Here's a breakdown of our five active volcano neighbors.
•Mt. Baker, located in Whatcom County erupted last in the mid-1880s. River valleys are prone to landslides and lahars. Small stream plumes near the summit are observed frequently.
•Glacier Peak, is located in Snohomish County. This volcano last erupted in the 18th or 19th century. Large explosive eruptions in the past spewed ash to the east into Montana. Lahars threaten river valleys to the west.
•Mt. Rainier, located in Pierce County, produced small eruptions in the 19th century. Numerous large landslides flowed down the volcano's flanks into river valleys over the past 6,000 years. More than 150,000 people live on lahar deposits in river valleys around the volcano.
•Mt. St. Helens, is technically located in Skamania County. It is one of the most explosive and active volcanoes in the Cascades. The eruption on May 18th, 1980, was the most destructive volcanic eruption in U.S. history.
•Mt. Adams, located in Yakima County, is referred to as the "quiet giant." Mt. Adams produces lava flows, and is also prone to large landslides and lahars in the river valleys to the south, west, and north.

How can you prepare?

•Get a NOAA Weather Radio
•Develop an emergency plan with your family. For tips on how to create a plan, visit the DEM website.
•Prepare for ashfall with goggles and dust masks for all family members.
•Follow authorities' instructions.

Free Boat Safety Inspections

The Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office will be providing FREE boat safety inspections at Willow Grove Boat Launch on Sunday May 16th from 10 AM until 2 PM. The public is welcome to bring their boats and personal watercraft for this free event. There will be free handouts and other boating safety information available. Once inspected, each boat that passes the inspection will receive a 2010 Marine Safety Inspection Decal. For more information, contact Deputy Darren Ullmann at the Cowlitz County Sheriff's Office at 577-3092.

What if it happened today? Part IV

Following 9/11, it became undeniable that agencies being able to communicate with each other would not only make things easier, it would save lives. Interoperable communications is now a priority of all levels of government. Many grant funding opportunities are available through the Department of Homeland Security to purchase interoperable radio equipment. Gone are the days of agency-specific code-speak, now the name of the game is "clear language." When everyone is on the same page, rapid and sometimes life saving decisions can be made much easier.

The technological advances made in the study of volcanic eruptions have been huge, thanks in no small part to the first-hand experiences of studying Mt. St. Helens. While earthquakes and volcanic monitoring are still basically the same as in 1980, the number of tools and the degree of accuracy are much more advanced. GPS and computers are now a major part of volcanic study, as is the study of the gases being emitted by the mountain. Scientists can now detect not only carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxides, but also a host of other gases, all at resolutions much sharper than 30 years ago, giving them clues about what is going on inside the mountain.

The widespread use of GPS and DNA matching would also make body recovery and identification much faster than in decades past. Our local Search and Rescue groups spent months searching for bodies. Once the bodies were recovered, the long task of identifying them began. The tools of forensics, though not necessarily as advanced as they are on TV, are still lightyears ahead of what they were in the 80's. Comfort and closure for grieving families could be achieved much fast today.

In conclusion, would 57 lives have been lost if Mt. St. Helens were to erupt today? No one could say for sure. The day of the week and time of day would make a huge impact, no matter the decade. Would the mitigation, response and recovery to the eruption have been more streamlined? Absolutely. No disaster is without chaos, it wouldn't be a disaster if it was. But the technological advances in communications and science would definitely make the darkest days of our community a little easier to handle with efficiency and accuracy.

Police Use Twitter in Missing Person Case

While I fully admit that I am slow to warm up to Twitter, I will acknowledge that it has many important uses in the fields of law enforcement and emergency management. Take this article from www.kgw.com for instance:

Police use Twitter to Find Man with Dementia
by Teresa Blackman
kgw.com
Posted on May 10, 2010 at 10:22 AM
Updated yesterday at 10:29 AM

PORTLAND – Twitter messages helped detectives find an elderly man with dementia who had been missing since last weekend.

Richard Lewis, who uses a walker, somehow wandered away from his caregivers on Saturday. Then, police were able to track him to the area of N Lombard Avenue and N New York Street before their clues ran dry.

Detectives used the Portland Police Bureau’s Twitter account to ask for help finding the 80-year-old man. And they said it was a tweet that eventually brought him home.

“It was a tip from a Twitter user which ultimately allowed detectives to locate Mr. Lewis,” said PPB detective Mary Wheat.

In all types of investigations, police continue to increase their use of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook as tools to help crack their cases and hunt out criminals.

Something tells me that I should stop fighting the social media monster and just embrace it as both an important tool for emergency information and a not-so-important tool for users to show their poor grammar and syntax to the world.

30 Years Ago Today

Here is a link to the USGS website that has a "30 Years Ago Today" feature about what Mt. St. Helens was up to days before the blast. Check it out here. For instance, here's what the mountain was doing 30 years ago on May 10th:
May 10, 1980:
The volcano remained under clouds most of the day. Steam and ash emissions were visible once the weather cleared. Surveys of the bulge showed that the outward motion had slowed to less than three feet per day, about half the average rate for the previous two weeks. The low rate was later considered to be the result of an erroneous measurement. There were 20 earthquakes larger than magnitude 3.0 recorded, including 10 larger than 4.0.

If you click here, there are some cool pictures and a some more information from our friends at the Discovery Channel.

What if it happened today? Part III

So what would have changed if Mt. St. Helens blew today rather than 30 years ago? The most profound difference between 1980 and today (besides a decrease in hair spray and shoulder pad sales) is the easy access of information, the instant and broad ways that information can be disseminated and the pervasive nature of today's media. Today, at least in the realm of Cowlitz County Emergency Management, when emergency information needs to go out, we can do so in a variety of methods to inform as many people as possible.

If we had information that a volcanic eruption was imminent, we could send out an Emergency Community Notification System message, in essence a Reverse-911, which would ring every landline in the county in minutes, each person receiving a recorded emergency message. Every cell phone that had been registered with the service would ring as well. We could put the information across on our Flash News Network which takes a press release and disseminates it to every person subscribed to the service, as well as every local news agency. We could email a press release to all media outlets, including radio. We could send the information across Twitter to our subscribers, as well as our blog and website. We also have access to local public access television and the Emergency Alert System on all local radio stations.

All of these avenues are wonderful tools in our communications tool box. But...people have to be in tune to what is going on around them. Public apathy and a head-in-the-sand attitude are difficult traits to change, even after huge natural disasters such as the eruption or Hurricane Katrina.

Another advancement that would have streamlined communications pre and post-eruption is the implementation of interoperable communications between first responder agencies. Interoperable communications is the ability to share common frequencies so various agencies can communicate with each other. In 1980, the Sheriff's Office couldn't talk via radio to Castle Rock Police, or the Forest Service, or anyone else outside their agency for that matter. No one could. There were no cell phones, so any communications had to be over the phone, face-to-face or through message runners. If you've ever played the party game "Telephone" you know how messages can get a bit garbled when they go through more than two channels.

I have more on the topic, but I'll save it for tomorrow.

What if it happened today? Part II

In my research regarding the events of May 1980, I have found that while many things would have been much simpler due to the advances of technology, many things would have stayed exactly the same. Case in point: politics. Any action where a number of people are involved, from repaving a sidewalk to making crucial decisions before and after a natural disaster will always be fraught with politics. Someone will always have an opinion and any decision will have its share of naysayers. Such was the case with the controversial closing of the so-called red zone and the restricted area of the blue zone. Property owners will always have something to say when they are not allowed access to property that is rightfully theirs, no matter the danger.

It doesn't matter how advanced technology or warning systems are, there would still be people merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of the victims claimed by Mt. St. Helens were either doing their job or were not in a restricted zone at all. They were simply victims of a cruel hand of fate. Other victims were in the wrong place by choice. That would not change either. Even if every individual was personally told that the mountain would erupt on or around May 18th, people would STILL have been there out of morbid curiosity. Human nature and the invincible attitude that comes with it has not evolved in 30 years time.

Would there always be the ornery old cuss who won't leave his home, come hell or high water? Yep. Would there always be the thrill-seekers and the looky-lous who show up with their coolers and cameras, ready to be entertained? Um, yeah! Even though natural selection takes out a few of those, that particular gene will never evolve and in this county, it only seems to mutate.

What I'm saying is that lives would be lost, no matter the decade. (Unless it's 3010 and everyone is made of robot parts, but that's another discussion altogether) Maybe less than 57 would have died on that day, but no amount of technology could prevent that. So what would have changed? Guess you'll have to check in on Monday to see.

New Local Business

The Survival Bunker, a retail store for all things emergency preparedness, will be opening on June 1st in Kalama. For all the details, check out their website at www.survivalbunker321.com. Be sure to visit the store in June to take advantage of special discounts and weekly prize drawings! If your disaster supplies kit is lacking in all the essentials, why not give your support to a new local business? Tell them you saw it on the blog!

What if it happened today?

My task recently was to compare and contrast the differences between Mt. St. Helens erupting in 1980 and if it were to erupt at the same magnitude today. For the sake of a more exact comparison, we assumed the same day of the week and time (Sunday morning, 8:30 am). The day of the week and the time of day made a huge impact in the effects of the eruption. Mid-day on Monday would have been even more devastating. So, in a few installments (I know your attention span) here is my conclusion:

It is hard for us to remember, or for the younger generation, imagine a world without cell phones. There was a time when the person you wanted to contact wasn't just a phone call away, any time of the day or night. It is difficult to think back to when information wasn't instantaneous, even the most banal or inane question able to be answered in an instant from Google or Wikipedia. In 1980, Google wasn't the verb that it is today, in fact, it was only a word in the sense of an Old English cricket term.

But such was the case in May of 1980 when Mt. St. Helens unleashed a fury on the Pacific Northwest that could only be matched by a nuclear explosion. I have been tasked with creating a presentation discussing how things would be different if Mt. St. Helens erupted today, at least from an emergency management perspective.

More tomorrow!

You've GOT to be kidding

Just got an email from the National Weather Service informing our area that we should be expecting frost tonight. Temperatures will likely dip into the mid to low 30's tonight. If you have any sensitive outdoor plants you may want to bring them inside or cover them up. This weather is ridiculous and I, for one, am sick of it. I would like to speak to a manager immediately and get this situation cleared up.

Mt. St. Helens: Pearls of Wisdom

We are coming up on the 30th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. Hallmark tells us that the traditional gift for a 30th anniversary is pearls. Well, I can't afford a string of pearls that would fit around the mountain, so I'll just settle for sharing some pearls of wisdom with you. I grew up in Castle Rock, in the shadow of the mountain. I have been inundated with volcano stories, ash spoils, tacky trinkets and stupid tourist questions for the past 20 years. (Although not even half as much as my husband who worked at the CineDome for years answering such jewels as "How long does it take for a deer to grow into an elk?" and "What time does the volcano blow each day?")

I wasn't born when the mountain blew, a fact which really seems to annoy people, but I did spend a summer volunteering at the Exhibit Hall and also cleaned rooms at the Mt. St. Helens Motel surrounded by tourists. I had thought that I knew a lot when it came to St. Helens. I didn't realize how wrong I was until my boss asked me (told me) to come up with a presentation about what would happen if Mt. St. Helens erupted today. I whined and tried to weasel my way out saying I wasn't born when it happened but, I'm serious, that really does annoy people and it didn't work. Anyway, after interviewing a few law enforcement types and doing a lot of research on what actually happened between March and May 18th of 1980, I really did learn a lot.

The only perspective I had was of a kid annoyed at camera clad tourists clogging up the pizza joint. Now a card carrying adult and emergency management type, I have a much different appreciation for the challenges of the eruption and the aftermath. I'll share my conclusions to the question of what would happen if the volcano erupted in 2010 in a few installments over the next few days.

If you are interested in learning more about the eruption and the Daily News' role in the reporting, please check out Bob Gaston, former managing editor of the Daily News, presenting an illustrated program, A Small Newspaper’s Biggest Challenge: Covering The Eruption Of Mt St Helens, at the museum on Thursday, May 6 at 7 PM. In his presentation he will review the challenges and stresses faced by the newspaper’s staff during and following the eruption, and their ultimate success which earned them a Pulitzer Prize.

I had the opportunity a few days ago to read the original news reports from the Daily News from May 19th-21st, 1980. No matter your thoughts on the local paper today, those articles were incredible and they absolutely earned the Pulitzer Prize that they won. I am excited for the presentation and I hope that you will check it out as well.

Want to be part of a government experiment?

I can guarantee that this one is completely painless with no hair loss, blurred vision or dry mouth side effects. The National Weather Service has launched an experimental program that will be using Twitter "tweets" to help monitor "significant weather information." The National Weather Service website explains:

Everyone talks about the weather. Now's your chance to "tweet" it and be heard. Through an experimental program, the National Weather Service will be searching for tweets that contain significant weather information.

Why Twitter?

An advantage of searching Twitter for weather reports is the capability to utilize recently added "geotagging" -- geographical information that is associated with something, in this case individual Tweets. This allows the NWS to correlate each Tweet to its location when it was sent. This capability will help to enhance and increase timely and accurate online weather reporting and communication between the public and their local weather forecast offices. The reports will be carefully evaluated during the experiment to ensure quality and timeliness.

Who Can Participate?

Anyone with a Twitter account can participate. Note: Trained storm spotters should use pre-established communication methods (toll-free line, eSpotter, etc.), when possible, to send severe weather reports to the NWS.

For all the information on what to do, click here and read the entire page.

Now you can use that Twitter power for good instead of for mind-numbing factoids like what you ate for breakfast and your opinion on American Idol. Yay!

Red Cross Activates Short Term Text Capabilities

Red Cross Activates Short Term Text Capability for Disaster Relief Fund, valid until May 31, 2010. You can help people affected by disasters, like the recent floods and tornadoes, by texting REDCROSS to 90999 and make a $10 donation to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. To learn more about the Disaster Relief Fund, please visit www.redcross.org.

Free Hazardous Waste Collection in Kalama

From TDN.com

A free monthly household hazardous waste mobile collection event will take place from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday at the Cowlitz Bank parking lot on the corner of Fir and Frontage Road, Kalama.

Those unable to attend this event can bring waste to the permanent collection facility at the Waste Control Transfer Station, 1150 Third Ave., which is open from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. every Tuesday and Saturday.

The collection event and permanent facility are only for hazardous waste generated at a residence. Business-generated waste will not be accepted, nor will unlabeled products, leaking containers, containers larger than five gallons, explosives, radioactive material or biological and infectious waste.

Products should be brought in original containers for easier identification. Damaged containers should be placed inside another container in case there is leakage.

The collection event is sponsored by Cowlitz County in conjunction with the city of Kalama and Washington State Department of Ecology. Cowlitz Bank donated the use of its parking lot. Volunteers from WSU Cooperative Extension's Master Composter/Recycler and Master Gardener programs will provide educational information and traffic control.

For more information on mobile collection events or the permanent Household Hazardous Waste Facility, call Waste Control at 425-4302.