Informational Challenges in Early Disaster Response: The Massive Oso/SR530 Landslide 2014 as Case in Point

In disasters, and more so in catastrophes, one of the most daunting problems to professional responders is gaining situational awareness. Unfortunately, truly actionable information (intelligence) is missing in the first days and even weeks of responding. Consequently, incomplete situational awareness brings on a distorted common operating picture leading to suboptimal direction of responses, so more lives are lost, and more damage is inflicted. This study reports on the challenges emergency responders faced in the immediate aftermath of the 2014 massive landslide near Oso, WA. Over a hundred agencies were involved in the response, which presented a huge coordination task for the incident command. This study identifies and describes various challenges in the early response and also discusses recommendations on how to tackle and potentially mitigate the challenges identified in future responses.