Washington senator: Seattle is ‘prime target’ for N. Korea

Washington State Senator Mark Miloscia doesn’t want to wait until tensions rise even further to plan for an attack from North Korea.

“It’s looking like it’s becoming a real threat that North Korea can possibly launch a nuclear weapon at us,” Miloscia told KIRO Radio’s Dori Monson. “So we need to make sure our planning is up to date.”

“The Northwest and Seattle would be a prime target, along with California or Oregon; different than say Guam or Hawaii,” he said.

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Miloscia was once a military pilot flying B-52 bombers during the Cold War; some carried nuclear weapons, he said. He was recently quoted in The Sun saying that the threat of North Korea launching nuclear weapons at the Northwest is very real. But Washington is not prepared. He said the threat is the same for all of the West Coast.

“The threat to the Northwest is not imminent today, but it’s approaching the day in the not-too-distance future when it could be a threat to Seattle and Washington state,” he said. “Not today. Maybe three years out it is. There’s a threat … we need to start planning right now.”

“For the last six months, the dictator running North Korea has been making some outrageous threats, plus the upgrades to their missile systems and their nuclear weapons,” Miloscia said. “It is time for our state to get rid of its prohibition to planning for an evacuation for nuclear war.”

Miloscia notes that in the early ’80s, the Washington state Legislature passed a law banning any preparation for a nuclear strike in the Northwest. He said there was a thought that planning for it would encourage it. So he is co-sponsoring a bill with Senator Davie Frockt to get plans in order.

“If we need to suddenly evacuate Seattle or King County, how would we do that?” Miloscia said. “How would we move all those people out? I hope we plan for that, as opposed to when you see all those people escaping hurricanes getting stuck on the road. If he’s really serious about hitting Seattle, then I think we should plan on how we would evacuate.”

“We don’t have much of a capability of stopping a missile once it reaches outer space … if they do manage to do a successful launch and get it past whatever missile defense we have around North Korea, the odds of it actually hitting us are pretty good,” he said. “… today, all we could do is watch it land. Those missiles are going ten times the speed of sound, so there’s really no capability to shoot it down once it starts coming here.”