Supply Chain Resilience : Push and Pull in Catastrophes
Before the pandemic , jurisdictions in Puget Sound were actively working with the private sector to develop capabilities to deliver all five of these functions and to assist with rerouting when necessary . But elsewhere in 2019 , other U . S . jurisdictions facing serious seismic and other risks explicitly decided that emergency management agencies do not have the personnel capacity or competence to conduct meaningful Supply Chain Resilience assessments . One region facing a seismic risk similar to Puget Sound ’ s decided it could not give operational priority to grocery deliveries . Most emergency management agencies in the United States have not even begun to consider the issue .
Maximizing Surviving Source Capacity
More than half — potentially more than sixty percent — of Puget Sound ’ s groceries are trucked into the region . 30 Most of these trucks use Interstate-5 . Portland is a significant source of food for Seattle ( just as Seattle is a major source of food for Portland ). After a major Cascadia event , the I-5 is expected to be impassable in several locations for a matter of months . Truck volumes on I-90 crossing Snoqualmie Pass ( Annual Average Daily Truck Traffic : about 7,000 ) are about onethird to half those on the I-5 between Olympia and Tacoma . 31 32 Interstate 90 is expected to better survive the event , at least until it traverses the sedimentary basin that begins about sixteen miles east of downtown Seattle . I-90 is the corridor that FEMA intends to use post-Cascadia to move supplies from an air hub at Moses Lake in Eastern Washington . The I-90 is the most promising alternative for moving food from Northern California , Eastern Washington , and other food processing sources outside the impact zone .
Between Seattle and Portland both food sources and transportation channels are likely to be seriously disrupted . For example , dairy production in Eastern Washington ( see map below ) will continue even as many of the dairy plants along the I-5 corridor will be disrupted or destroyed .
As the dairy map ( Figure 5 ) and the maps in Figure 6 indicate , Puget Sound is itself a significant food processing center . Depending on what is being measured , roughly one-third to nearly half of food consumed in Puget Sound is locally processed / packaged . These flows will be seriously disrupted by a major Cascadia event . Some processing facilities will be destroyed , other facilities will be physically isolated , most will lose access to grid power and public water for a considerable period of time . Identifying surviving capacity and reclaiming this capacity as soon as possible is clearly crucial .
30 Please see the first installment in this series for more details on the grocery supply chain serving the Puget Sound region .
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