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Perhaps no other facility in the Portland area will have as big a role to play in the aftermath of a major earthquake than Portland International Airport.

Planners at the Port of Portland are now devising what exactly that role should be 鈥� what elements should function seconds after a disaster? Where should passengers mass? How much airfield space should be seismically upgraded?

They’re tough questions, and, at the moment, answers are in a secure place.

鈥淲e don’t have an actual seismic plan right now,鈥� said Dan Pippenger, director of planning and development for the Port of Portland. 鈥淚t’s all kind of in my head, really.鈥�

Pippenger is now helping draft the airport’s resiliency plan. The Port of Portland will control more than $1.3 billion in construction contracts over the next decade, and a sizable sum will go toward seismic structural upgrades. Around 2 percent of the $215 million cost of a major upcoming terminal upgrade will likely go to this sort of work, but much about it is still up in the air. Design for the terminal core project is only at about 10 percent, according to Kama Simonds, a spokeswoman for the airport.

The upgrades are part of the 鈥�PDX Next鈥� suite of projects updating or adding to the terminal, airfields and parking garages. The projects range from 鈥渟mall,鈥� like replacement of the massive concourse heating and ventilation equipment, to major prime contractor packages.

The port’s seismic playbook is the . Critical in the aftermath of a major disaster will be keeping port infrastructure in working order, to maintain the movement of people and goods.

Airports often become hubs for relief efforts following a disaster. But how soon after should an airport resume commercial service? Following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the Sendai Airport was open to emergency operations within the day, and operating commercial service in a limited capacity within three weeks, Pippenger said.

He wants to avoid what happened in the New Orleans area following Hurricane Katrina: many of the displaced residents left the region for good because the shutdown of commerce meant they could no longer make a living there.

Pippenger thinks that the role the port can play in the long-term economic recovery of the region is more vital than the immediate life safety concerns, like crowds arriving to leave town en masse. The seismic safety plan he’s working on will include designations for certain 鈥渃ritical鈥� facilities, as well as engineering and technical solutions to make the structure more resilient.

鈥淭his policy that we’ve adopted really makes us put a seismic lens on all of our decisions in planning and development,鈥� he said.

Essential buildings like the Oregon Military Department headquarters under construction in Salem and the city of Portland’s Office of Emergency Management are built to function through and immediately following a major disaster. Lights may flicker in the building while the generators turn over, but the idea is operations don’t cease. Right now, no buildings at PDX are designed to this standard.

By now, the PDX terminal facility is really a collection of add-ons built starting in the 1950s. Much of it is not up to current seismic code. At the airport, Pippenger and others in his department are still determining what upgrades will be critical and what will be merely built up to code.

Many of the upgrades will come in the impending improvement of the central terminal core, but the approximately $1.3 billion eyed for all the work still must be approved by the parties that will ultimately pay for them 鈥� the airlines. Simonds said the port isn’t overconfident about its chances; the air carriers that would fund the improvements operate across the country, and, she cautioned, 鈥淲e’re not the only airport in the country that wants to expand.鈥�

One major seismic issue to resolve is the airfields, and at PDX, they aren’t simple concrete slabs. They’re more like 3-D rectangles more than 2 feet deep and made of precisely-engineered layers of asphalt, concrete and gravel. The soil around them is rigid, but becomes elastic in a liquefiable event, when the 11,000-foot-long runways can twist and deflect. When the airfields settle, it’s doubtful they’ll remain even, and any shift of more than a few inches could necessitate total reconstruction.

Commercial jets do a number on concrete surfaces with their landings and, especially, takeoffs.

There are several options for seismically upgrading PDX’s airfields, but all are so costly, prioritization of needs after an earthquake will be important. Holes can be drilled in the airfields and stone columns 6 feet deep packed in to provide seismic stability the same way piles support a building. There’s also deep soil mixing, where material is augured up from under an airfield and mixed on the surface with more resilient materials, like liquid concrete.

The port’s big seismic worry is liquefaction. The soils on the banks of the Willamette and Columbia rivers are highly liquefiable, and that’s primarily where Port of Portland facilities are located. It’s not known how facilities will fare in an earthquake.

Carmen Merlo, head of Portland’s Office of Emergency Management, was among local leaders who traveled this summer to Japan to study the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami six years ago. The trip was organized by Greater Portland Inc. and included Pippenger and other Port of Portland officials.

The group realized that small businesses can play a sizable role in the effort to reignite the local economy. Beyond that, what stuck out was how long recovery takes, she said, and how far Portland has to go.

鈥淚t was sobering to see how slow recovery was, even in a country like Japan 鈥� one of the wealthiest, most prepared countries on earth,鈥� Merlo said. 鈥淚t’s a stark reminder that it takes a long time.鈥�

Port of Portland upcoming construction contracts

July-September 2017

PDX post-security concessions storefront redevelopment 鈥� $2.5 million

PDX common use improvements at five gates on concourses C and D 鈥� $300,000

January-March 2018

Airtrans Way reconstruction 鈥� $2 million

Employee lot bus route rehabilitation $1.5 million

Hillsboro Airport runway rehabilitation phases 1 and 2 鈥� $15 million

Terminal 5 Berth 503 rehabilitation 鈥� $2.3 million

April-June 2018

PDX international arrivals hall escalator replacement 鈥� $1.7 million

PDX north terminal heating water piping replacement 鈥� $6.5 million

PDX baggage handling system 鈥� $2.3 million

PDX concourse C, D and E passenger boarding bridge replacement 鈥� $18 million