When Ronald Reagan entered office in 1981, his administration had a belligerent attitude towards the Soviet Union. Reagan wanted to expand U.S. nuclear forces and also wanted to convince the U.S. public that a nuclear war could be winnable. He supported the construction of a network of bomb shelters and called on states to draft plans for the evacuation of millions of citizens from major U.S. metropolitan areas if a nuclear attack appeared to be imminent.
I volunteered to look into the issue of evacuating Seattle for the Physicians for Social Responsibility in 1982. The idea was to have most of the citizens of Seattle flee over the mountains to communities in Central Washington in a three day period. Reviewing the probable flow of traffic to Central Washington, it was obvious that within twelve hours, all of the major arterials out of Seattle would be impassable due to accidents and breakdowns. I estimated that the proposed evacuation would take at least three weeks instead of the called for three days.
John Spellman, the governor of the state of Washington between 1981 and 1985, rejected the call for evacuation plans in spite of the threat by the Reagan administration to withhold some federal funding from Washington State if evacuation plans were not drawn up. The governor, backed by the state legislators, refused to draw up the evacuation plans demanded by the Reagan administration. The governor said that such plans would an exercise in futility and that the federal government could keep their money.
In 1983, a bill (RCW 38.52.030) was passed by the Washington State legislature that said, "The comprehensive, all-hazard emergency plan authorized under this subsection may not include preparation for emergency evacuation or relocation of residents in anticipation of nuclear attack.”
Although the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia inherited their nuclear arsenal and their fear of a nuclear war with the U.S. Relations have been deteriorating between the U.S. and Russia and we are closer to an all-out nuclear war than we have been since the height of the Cold War.
Now North Korea is working on the development of miniature nuclear warheads and ICBMs to carry them. Analysts say that N.K. may achieve these goals within a few years. North Korea has repeatedly threatened to attack the U.S. with nuclear weapons. The first U.S. cities that would be vulnerable to such an attack would be cities in Hawaii, Alaska and on the West Coast including Seattle.
While it would be wise for emergency planners to consider measures to deal with a nuclear attack on the Seattle area, the idea of an evacuation of Seattle in three days is still ridiculous and the provisions of the state law prohibiting evacuation planning are still valid. The population has Seattle has grown from about two million in 1980 to over three and a half million today. There has not been a comparable growth in major roads leading out of the Seattle metropolitan area. Any attempt to evacuate the city would take more than the three weeks I projected in 1982.
Seattle:
