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Blue Cascades III
Managing Extreme Disasters

Overview

Blue Cascades III, held in March 2006, is the third in a series of infrastructure interdependencies tabletop exercises focused on the Pacific Northwest and developed and conducted by regional public and private sector organizations themselves.

Previous Blue Cascades participants, particularly regional utilities, have continued to raise the importance of taking a tabletop exercise beyond the immediate response stage and focusing on challenges associated with restoration and reconstitution activities. They are particularly concerned with a prolonged, cascading cross-border disruption that has broad regional physical and cyber infrastructure interdependencies as major complicating factors.

Focus

According to experts, a major earthquake occurs roughly every 300 years in the region and is overdue. Blue Cascades III was a two day exercise which focused on regional recovery in the wake of a major earthquake, and took into consideration infrastructure interdependency gaps recognized at previous Blue Cascades Exercises.

Representatives of member organizations of the Puget Sound Partnership for Regional Infrastructure Security chose and developed the scenario--a 9.0 magnitude earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

Purpose

By focusing on the Pacific Northwest’s equivalent to Hurricane Katrina, the goal was to explore, identify, and assess what needed to be done to make the region resilient--able to withstand damage and disruption and reconstitute as rapidly as possible if affected. The exercise was hosted by the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region (PNWER), a consortium of five states (Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Idaho, and Montana) and three Canadian jurisdictions (British Columbia, Alberta, and The Yukon Territory). Funding was provided by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security National Cyber Security Division and US-CERT and regional private sector organizations.

Blue Cascades III covered response, recovery and longer-term restoration, as well as what preventative and mitigation measures already existed to address a large-scale regional disaster. In the scenario, the quake and resulting tsunami along the coast disrupted and damaged critical infrastructures and caused a prolonged electric power outage that lasted for weeks to months in parts of Washington, Oregon, and California.

Objectives
  • Illuminate reconstitution and business continuity challenges and needs associated with long-term disruptions of critical infrastructures;
  • Increase understanding of interdependency issues related to recovering from long duration outages;
  • Highlight the existing extent of cooperation, including understanding of roles, responsibilities, and authorities--local, county, state, federal (civilian and defense), of jurisdictions and of private sector organizations during long-term regional disruptions;
  • Further explore cross-border physical and cyber U.S. and Canadian interdependencies;
  • Increase the level of collaboration among regional cyber security responders and experts; as well as cooperation along cyber and physical security and emergency management personnel;
  • Demonstrate how the new Puget Sound Regional Portal on the U.S. CERT Website could be utilized to improve preparedness in a regional cyber threat/disruption/attack situation;
  • Underscore and validate the mutual value of public and private sector and cross-function and multidiscipline cooperation to deal with large-scale, prolonged disasters of all types.
  • Explore and assess what approaches and plans are necessary for regional resource management;
  • Recognize and examine jurisdiction boundaries and problems that arise from these artificial barriers;
  • Explore the development of plans for determining restoration priorities;
  • Examine and begin to better understand how to deal with the welfare of citizens;
  • Highlight existing laws and gaps that may impede restoration or recovery efforts.

Intent

Blue Cascades III allowed participants (players) to discuss the impacts of attacks and disruptions on each represented infrastructure. This setting allowed participants to become familiar with other infrastructures and the potential for cascading effects as a result of interdependencies.
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