A landing craft air cushion vehicle comes in to Sunset Beach, in a practice for landing after a Cascadia Subduction Zone event.

With D-Day on Thursday, Clatsop County residents may have been surprised to see two amphibious landing vehicles cruising through the waters before crawling on land at the entrance of Sunset Beach.

The event, developed by the Clatsop County Office of Emergency Management with the coordination of the U.S. Army, Navy, Coast Guard, Oregon Military Department along with local government leaders and responders, aimed to provide a “dry run” for after the Big One hits.

The landing vehicles, like big hovercraft, landed with propellers roaring, kicking up sand on the beach as hundreds of onlookers watched the boats make their landing.

“We can land pretty much anything,” Executive Officer Lt. Commander Christopher McCurry said aboard the U.S.S. Anchorage, where the two LCACs are stowed.

The craft have far more mobility than World War II style boats limited to steep grades, needed to enable the vessels to drop a ramp before sending troops.

An LCAC has the ability to reach 78% of the world’s coastlines, he said, with far more mobility than the type of craft used in World War II.

Travelers aboard the LCAC from shore were supplied with earplugs to help withstand the propeller and engine noise, transported from Sunset Beach onto the USS Anchorage, a ship designed for landing craft air cushions like those deployed in Monday’s practice.

Two LCACs, “packed in tight,” can be stowed aboard, McCurry said.

The USS Anchorage stretches 634 feet long, with 500 acres of deck space, operates in foreign and hostile areas or humanitarian aid during emergencies.

The ship carries 400 crew; when in deployment, an additional 500 Marines may be aboard. The ship can carry Hueys, Super Cobra attack helicopters, 57-ton trucks, RQ-21 drones along with amphibious watercraft.

The Anchorage is one of about 11 ships of its class nationwide; about half of those are stationed on the West Coast.

While the U.S.S. Anchorage, commissioned in 2011, has yet to respond to a natural disaster, other readiness groups supported Hurricane Katrina response, the tsunami in Indonesia, and the hurricane in Puerto Rico, McCurry added.

The Anchorage, based in San Diego, recently conducted an eight-month deployment in the Mediterranean, near Spain, he said. Any one of the ships can get underway within 96 hours after local authorities ask for federal assistance, he said. “We might be able to get on faster depending on what we’re bringing.”

For humanitarian missions, the Anchorage may carry “anything that is on a vehicle or a conex box — water purification systems, water tanks, mobile hospitals, along with the surgical or medical personnel associated,” McCurry said.

Aircraft aboard can operate as search and rescue.

“Our purpose relies in ship-to-shore, either in combat, or humanitarian forces and assistance to the beach anywhere in the world,” he said. “What we focus on is the logistics of the ship-to-shore movement.”

Teams may set up operations on the beach that operate as a “MASH,” he said, a mobile hospital that can be delivered to the beach with an LCAC.

Those in need of additional medical assistance can be transported to the ship, where a medical facility on board can perform needed tasks.

Local officials, first responders and members of the media were invited to watch the simulation, was designed as a joint exercise to determine how food, supplies and health care will be delivered in the days after a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Local officials, first responders and members of the media were invited to watch Monday’s Sunset Beach landing, designed as a joint exercise to determine how food, supplies and health care will be delivered in the days after a Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

For the Clatsop County exercise, two Landing Craft Air Cushion vehicles delivered road equipment and other material as part of the military’s Defense Support of Civil Authorities operations. DSCA plans and trains Naval units to ensure they are ready to support any mission when called upon. 

South County officials included county commissioners Lianne Thompson and Sarah Nebeker, Gearhart Mayor Matt Brown, City Administrator Chad Sweet, Seaside City Councilor Steve Wright and City Manager Mark Winstanley.

“A 2016 exercise, Cascadia Rising, was the regional exercise featuring all levels of government, but it left us with as many questions as answers,” Clatsop County Emergency Services Manager Tiffany Brown said in an early morning briefing.

Major Bobby Lee, deputy director of military support for the Oregon Military Department, provides response and planning efforts for the state, explained how the governor works with the joint domestic operations center comprised of Army and air personnel; the Army land component; and the air Army 5,000, these force providers come up during a response.

All disasters start at the local level, she said, meaning responsibility from a city’s responsibility for your citizens and managing disasters. If that event exceeds capabilities, the county and first responder partners may join in.

“Most of the time that gets us there,” Tiffany Brown said. “These people know what they are doing and doing well — but when something happens, we have to do that through the state.”

The cities put requests to the county, which put them to the state, which then looks for state agency partners: public works, department of transportation or other resources. “If they exhaust all resources at the state level, including the Oregon Military Department, then that’s when we have a federal declaration, and that’s when we begin asking the federal government for resources. But we still don’t get the Navy.”

The Federal Emergency Management Agency asks federal partners for help. When all regular departments are unable to achieve the resource request, the Department of Defense will come forward.

“That’s why it’s so great they’re here, that we can understand how to speak the same language, that we’re talking about the same thing, that they have an idea where they’re coming if they can’t get hold of us,” Brown said. “This planning dovetails with what we’re doing here.”