Businesses in Cascadia - CREW

immediately following an earthquake. We need to know how this will work so that wecan plan effectively.• We would be interested in finding ways to share resources and storage space in order tomake the costs of backup facilities more manageable.• We would like to know what tools work best for communication backup systems. Whatare the best practices?• From a financial investment perspective, businesses in the financial sector would like tolearn how to help the community rebuild intelligently after the earthquake. (Bestpractices.)• We would like to have access to hazard maps with layering options. For the purposes ofplanning and the development of mitigation strategies, it would be most useful if wecould add our own layers.• We would like to have CREW (or some other entity) act as the bridge between the publicand private sector for regional preparedness exercises and other similar events andinitiatives.DISCUSSIONWashington Federal has locations in eight states, all of which have earthquake hazards. Itwould be useful to have more information about this. Also, it would be great if CREW couldprovide lessons about disaster impacts and economic recovery from other places around theworld that have experienced destructive earthquakes. This information should be presented inmultiple formats (e.g., webinar, shared repository on a website, in publications). From afinancial perspective, we could also use information about how to help the community rebuildintelligently after the earthquake. For example, how does the earth movement affect thestructures?Puget Sound Energy: As a means of assessing the potential impacts on PSE’s facility (internalas well as external), we hired a consultant to come in and do a comparison to show whathappened in other disasters. We learned that some of the retrofitting that we had done at PSEhas failed in other earthquakes (i.e. in Christchurch, New Zealand), but we also learned aboutthe types of retrofitting that did work.Also, in terms of emergency management and response after an earthquake, it is important forbusinesses and organizations to know how the public sector will work in a disaster situation.Emergency response planning is really separate from business continuity planning. It isimportant to understand the model. Part of the problem that business people have is that theydon’t know what they don’t know. They need to understand the mechanics to know how tocoordinate.28 | CREW Business Roundtables