Before the disaster: The disaster planning for the cities of Olympia and Lacey are mainly contained within CEMPs that are planned and agreed upon by the City Councils and other departments of the respective cities. While disaster plans are simply a set of procedures designated (in advance) towards individuals or a group (family, company, etc) that will prevent harm and diminish damage during a disaster, CEMPs (Comprehensive Emergency Management Plans) are city-wide plans that acknowledge and address any disaster that could happen and how the city, the city’s departments, and the necessary resources will be allocated in the event of a disaster. Both the cities of Olympia and Lacey have CEMPs that follow the basic 5 plan steps of Prevention, Protection, Mitigation, Response, and Recovery. These plans detail the responsible departments for each step of the process as well as how these responsibilities, departments, and resources would be shifted in the case of a disaster. Differences between the plans include graphs like the transitional and developmental timeline in the Olympia plan, and the glossary and index found in the Lacey plan. Overall, the plans are almost identical, respectful to the roles being filled with their own councils and representatives. Each city has paired with local, state, and federal organizations to meet response mandates, allocate resources for disasters (like with American Red Cross), and support the community sufficiently in times of need.
After the disaster : On the morning of April 16th, 2025, the sky would split, the earth would shake, and chaos would begin to unfold. Due to the immense and rapid dispersion of an impenetrable fog, the City Council would be forced to enact whatever CEMP they could within city limits. However, these plans rely on an Emergency Coordination Center, now scheduled to be in the City Hall. Without an ECC, the plan wouldn’t be able to be enacted. Due to the shattering of windows, quick spread of chaos, and unknown level of safety, the group in class has assumed that safety of State and Local government would become top priority and the remaining elected officials who were present in City Hall or the Capitol that day would be moved to the underground fallout bunker from the 1960s (can hold ~500 people).
With the local heads of government bunkered with minor security, intercity mutual aid would fail due to inability to access roads, highways, waterways, etc. The inability to communicate – failure of internet, GPS systems, and radio waves – would lock both citizens and officials into the city, and cause an almost instant supply chain collapse for food, water, and medical supplies. We assume that within a week, 70% of medical supplies will be raided, hospitals/clinics across town will be holed up with survivors, and rations will be exponentially lower than they need to be to sustain our vulnerable population (18.8% above 65). Mass civilian panic and lack of communication would cause riots, leaving police forces either wiped out or forced into hiding for their own safety. The disaster plan would be completely unable to be implemented in any fashion, due to the immediate and certain disruption of all systems that this plan relies upon. Local heads of government would be able to stay boarded up in fallout shelters for very limited amounts of time due to our current lack of preparation for nuclear or eldritch-level disasters.
Environmental impacts of the disaster would rapidly infest and contaminate downtown Olympia – the fish on land, the human-sized rats, and the giant toxic snails – which would make finding any natural resource to implement a local and instant disaster plan very difficult if not impossible without prior preparation. The city will lose many resources quickly, and we do not know how many civilians or officials would survive (or for how long) due to this disparity in resources.