Some thoughts:
- One of the sub-thoughts brought out in the article is that Seattle will be totally devastated, but as the KUOW story title shows--it is not true to that extent.
- Yet, she quotes the FEMA Region X Administrator as saying, "Everything West of I-5 will be toast." It would have been better to clarify what he meant by that statement, rather than include it in the article. People take statements like that very literally.
- All of the information shared has been known for years. Seismologists, engineers and emergency managers could have written this same story years ago.
- No one is listening!!
- Kathryn did make an interesting observation about emergency management readiness for catastrophic disasters. I don't think you need a huge event to have your team become better prepared for a disaster. Even the small ones get your systems tuned up. The difference with a catastrophic is the size and complexity along with the duration of the event, months not days.
- As our own Washington State Emergency Management Division has stated, they were maxed out in responding to the 2014 HWY 530 slide, which was just a microcosm of the type of event that a Cascadia Earthquake would bring upon us.
- As someone pointed out to me, without local knowledge -- from the reporter, there are no preparedness messages in the story. No mention of the Cascadia 2016 exercise coming up in June of next year.
- Basically there is no "context" to the content.
