North City Water District prepares to respond to disasters large and small

Most likely local disaster
Earthquake

The North City Water District serves east Shoreline and west Lake Forest Park


On Wednesday, February 26, North City Water District’s main administrative headquarters closed while our staff and Board of Commissioners attended all-day ICS training.

Incident Command System (ICS) training is a component of the National Incident Management System — a comprehensive, national approach that helps public agencies like ours be better prepared to handle a natural disaster, through the use of standardized terminology, equipment, and organizational structures.

By helping us communicate with and plan for interactions with other agencies in emergency situations, this training helps us do what we do best: ensure safe, reliable water supply in the event of an emergency.

In our case, emergencies can range from a localized event such as a broken water main (which occur due to varying causes, including soil and construction conditions when the pipe was installed, shifts in the surrounding soils, temperature fluctuations, and the age of the pipe itself), to larger scale natural disasters such as a potential earthquake, often referred to in regional planning efforts as the “Cascadia event” in our area.

In addition to ICS training, we’ve joined ShakeAlert (the early warning system developed by the U.S. Geological Survey), installed backup generators at both our main North City / Denny Clouse Pump Station and our Administrative Headquarters, and held several multi-agency meetings to help our staff be prepared to communicate and participate in a coordinated emergency response with other agencies.

We’ve also asked our ratepayers to contact us if you would like us to add your emergency contact information to your account, which we would use strictly in the event of an emergency for announcement purposes, in addition to announcements on our website, Facebook, and NextDoor.com.

Feel free to email us at customerservice@northcitywater.org, or give us a call at 206-362-8100 to learn more and/or provide us with your emergency contact info.

Diane Pottinger, District Manager