By ANDREW SELSKY
Associated Press

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — People in Oregon will be better prepared for earthquakes — particularly important in the Pacific Northwest because experts say “the big one” is coming — as an early warning system launched Thursday, the 10th anniversary of a devastating quake and tsunami in Japan.

California already has the system, while Washington state will join in May to complete coverage of the West Coast. The ShakeAlert system operated by the U.S. Geological Survey uses seismographic sensors to detect significant earthquakes quickly so alerts reach smartphones and people can seek cover before the shaking starts.

“It’s very important that (the three states) are all partners in ShakeAlert, because earthquakes don’t respect geographic boundaries, and we have huge population centers all across the West Coast where earthquake risk is the highest in the contiguous U.S.,” said Gabriel Lotto, ShakeAlert user engagement facilitator for the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.

Earthquakes in the Cascadia subduction zone, which extends from the ocean off Northern California to Canada’s Vancouver Island, have an average magnitude of around 9, making them among the world’s biggest.

A quake in that zone has a 37 percent probability of happening off Oregon in the next 50 years, with a slightly lower chance of one striking near Washington state, according to Chris Goldfinger, an Oregon State University professor and earthquake geologist.

“When a Cascadia event happens, the critical seconds of notice ShakeAlert warnings provide will save lives and reduce damage to important lifeline systems,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said.

The system cannot predict an earthquake but can give people a jump on seeking cover from falling objects and time to brace themselves.

When an earthquake is detected, people who have alerts activated on their smartphones will get a message saying, “Earthquake detected! Drop, cover, hold on. Protect yourself.” Mobile apps also carry the alerts.

Jenny Crayne of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry told reporters Wednesday that the system works by detecting an initial wave sent out by an earthquake.

“The P wave is first and fast. It travels out and ahead of the S wave, and it is not producing the shaking,” Crayne said. “The S wave is slower and second, and it’s the one that produces the real shaking and damage that you experience during an earthquake.”

The system’s sensors can rapidly detect that initial P wave and send that data to a processing center, where algorithms can determine and estimate the geographical extent of the earthquake, the magnitude and the expected shaking intensity in different areas, Crayne said.

If an area is expected to experience significant shaking, people there will receive an alert. But those at or very close to the epicenter of the quake won’t receive the warning in time because the waves will be too close together.

ShakeAlert can also slow trains to reduce derailments, open firehouse doors so they don’t jam shut and protect water systems with automatic shutoffs.

Installing early-warning shutoffs to things like electrical utilities and wastewater systems also are being considered, said Robert de Groot of the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena, California.

In action in California, an alert was sent to some 2.5 million people as a magnitude 4.5 earthquake struck the Los Angeles suburb of El Monte last September, de Groot said.

The goal is for 1,675 seismic stations to be built in the three West Coast states, de Groot said.

The rollout in Oregon coincides with the 10th anniversary of Japan’s magnitude 9.0 quake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and caused meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

“As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake, we are committed to improving earthquake safety in the Pacific Northwest through our strong university and state partnerships,” USGS Associate Director David Applegate said.

The post Quake alert system launched in Oregon appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The earthquake early warning system known as ShakeAlert will be capable of delivering alerts directly to wireless devices in Oregon on March 11 and to Washington state in May, completing the West Coast rollout, the U.S. Geological Survey said Tuesday.

The ShakeAlert system, which warns of significant quakes, has been enabled in California since October 2019.

The system uses a network of sensors that detect the start of an earthquake and calculates magnitude, location and the expected amount of shaking. It sends the information in real time to distributors that send out alerts to cellphones and the internet.

The information moves so quickly that people may have valuable seconds to protect themselves before shaking arrives, trains can be slowed or industrial processes stopped.

The USGS said that as of Jan. 31, the West Coast network was 70 percent complete, with 1,132 out of 1,675 seismic stations installed.

The USGS and partners plan a Feb. 18 outreach to Pacific Northwest residents on Reddit and a test message on Feb. 25 to Washington’s King, Pierce and Thurston counties, delivered to wireless devices through the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Integrated Public Alerting & Warning System.

The post Earthquake warning system to roll out to Oregon, Washington appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown joined Washington Gov. Jay Inslee at the Vancouver waterfront on Monday in a bid to place new urgency on replacing the Interstate Bridge over the Columbia River.

“This bridge could fall down any day with a small seismic event,” Inslee said.

Monday’s event, held at a new office building at The Waterfront Vancouver with a view of the bridge, came as a show of unity and purpose for the leaders of two states whose last attempt to rebuild the bridge dissolved into inaction and finger-pointing.

Inslee said those days of interstate acrimony are over.

“This is a new time and a new day in a variety of ways,” Inslee said, pointing to changes in the Washington Legislature and scientific advances that have deepened the understanding of seismic risks in the Pacific Northwest.

The two states have pledged a total of $44 million to form a joint bridge office to study past plans and evaluate new options. The previous attempt to build a new I-5 bridge ground to a halt in 2013 after the Washington Legislature declined to fund that state’s share of the Columbia River Crossing project.

Recently, a joint committee has met to begin anew the process of rallying for a new bridge.

Inslee took the lead in Monday’s press conference, saying the Interstate Bridge must be replaced.

“There is no option other than making this investment,” he said.

The bridge opened as a single span in 1917. The second span opened 41 years later.

In recent years, booming population growth in the Portland-metro area has added to pressures on the bridge. Many Portland-area workers live in Vancouver, where home prices are typically more affordable, and cross the bridge as part of their commutes. At the same time, economic growth and the rise of e-commerce shipping have greatly increased freight traffic.

“It is a traffic bottleneck that is not consistent with the economies of Oregon and Washington,” Inslee said.

Public agencies in Oregon are scrambling to prepare infrastructure for a sizable earthquake that could render many metro-area bridges impassable. In Portland, only the Sellwood Bridge and Tilikum Crossing are considered likely to remain operable after a worst-case earthquake.

The Interstate Bridge conversations mirror a push in Multnomah County to replace the 93-year-old Burnside Bridge.

Any replacement for the Interstate Bridge would cost billions of dollars. The price tag of the Columbia River Crossing was estimated at $3.3 billion to $4.1 billion in 2011, and construction costs have escalated sharply since.

Local opposition to light rail in Vancouver has created headaches for the project. Both Inslee and Brown insisted that any new bridge must carry what they called “high-capacity transit,” but neither specified whether that would be light rail or bus service. The existing bridge has minimal accommodations for non-vehicle users.

“What I think is critically important is we invest in high-capacity public transit on this bridge,” Brown said.

Inslee suggested a federal infrastructure package would need to be approved to provide funding for the project. The bridge is a critically important arterial connection that should be a national infrastructure priority, he said.

The press conference drew leaders from both states, although Portland commissioners were absent. Inslee planned to travel to Salem later Monday for more meetings with Oregon officials.

William Myers, executive secretary of the Columbia Pacific Building Trades Council, said a Columbia River bridge project would be a boon for the trades.

“It’s going to put a lot of families to work,” he said.

The post Governors hit restart button on joint bridge project appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

At an open house held at Bridge Meadows in Beaverton earlier this month, city officials and designers answered questions about the $35 million Public Safety Center planned at the corner of Southwest Allen Street and Hall Boulevard.

The city’s police and emergency response facilities currently operate in the same building as the Beaverton Municipal Court on Southwest Griffith Drive. As far back as 15 years ago, Beaverton officials recognized inherent problems with the building that would drive the need for a new one. A sizable earthquake would have disastrous effects on the city, so a protected emergency response facility is considered critical. But the Griffith Drive building isn’t up to those standards.

Also, the existing building has space and logistics issues. They include difficulty moving prisoners in public spaces, witnesses and victims being interviewed in public view, minors being held in separate cells but areas shared with adults, archaic cell doors and other security issues, property and evidence being stored off-site, and outdated report writing areas that could be described as reminiscent of the old “Barney Miller” squad room.

Police Capt. Eric Oathes is his department’s lead representative for the project.

“The holding areas are just for detention, a maximum of four hours, but those areas still need to be more efficient and more secure, so that’s part of what we’re including,” he said. “Teaming up with Emergency Management is important too, because we share a lot of information.

“The new building will be able to withstand a serious earthquake and still function. There will be redundant systems to avoid technical problems, and the facility will be able to generate some of its own power. There’ll be a connection where a water truck can connect to the building and fill an internal 500-gallon tank so that we can continue to function if a serious event happens and we lose power and water.”

The new building will be designed to fit into the new Allen Boulevard District Plan, a revitalization of several blocks in the city, according to Beaverton Police Chief Jim Monger.

“It’s important that this building fit into the community,” he said. “We want this to be a welcoming building, a landmark.”

Anderson Krygier Inc. is providing landscape architecture services for the project. Its plan calls for trees with bioremediation capabilities to offset some of the contaminants remaining on the property from when it was a gas station many years ago.

“Gasoline and oil are carbon-based, so it’s actually easier for plants to sequester that excess carbon over time than to remove a lot of dirt and infill,” said Michael Yun, an Anderson Krygier associate principal.

The plan also includes aesthetic appeal and minimal maintenance.

FFA Architecture and Interiors was awarded its contract in August 2017. Designs are about 80 percent complete. The primary issues are interior design and spatial use, foot traffic flow, and access to secure areas that will be determined after receiving extensive input from police personnel. Oathes expects most full-time staffers to offer their ideas. The process should result in completed, finalized plans by late spring, when site preparation is slated to begin. Construction is expected to start by December; completion is tentatively scheduled for 2020.

Ian Gelbrich is FFA’s lead architect and Richard Grace is its lead designer for the project.

“Beaverton is a very diverse community; the design theme, both inside and out, will reflect that,” Grace said. “We’ll integrate a lot of different textures and materials that work together to create the impression of a diverse community working together. That includes the way we’ll work with light. There will be a lot of natural light that plays on patterns of texture and shadow.”

One of the biggest challenges will be working out a finalized design and building plan that works with the available budget, according to Troy Ainsworth, a principal at FFA.

“Civic projects have funding set in stone, so we have to look at what the client wants and stay within the scope of the budget to produce that,” he said. “Functionality is specific on this project, but it’s also a chance to set a new design standard for public buildings. The city wants to bring an advanced concept of function and design that fits with the Allen Boulevard project.”

In the event of a major earthquake, Beaverton could have to contend with loss of electrical power, water and cell phone towers. Bridges and roads in some areas could be severely damaged or even impassable. Officials would need the Public Safety Center to not only survive the quake, but also function afterward. Mike Mumaw, emergency manager for the mayor’s office, sees great potential in the new facility.

“It will work well with CERT (Community Emergency Response Team),” Mumaw said. “Police, fire and ambulance will have their hands full. We currently have about 500 active or reserve members of the program. Their efforts will be coordinated out of this facility, so it’s like an auxiliary or a reserve group of responders.”

The post $35M Beaverton project addresses emergency responsiveness appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

On Sept. 19, a 7.1 magnitude earthquake rocked central Mexico. With a major seismic event expected to hit the Pacific Northwest in coming decades, engineers visited Mexico City recently to see what they could learn to apply here.

“One of the biggest challenges is to get people prepared and make it a priority for the earthquake that is coming,” said Brian Knight, a principal of WRK Engineers in Vancouver, Washington.

Knight traveled to the quake zone Sept. 28 to Oct. 5 as part of a team. He was joined by Erica Fischer, an assistant professor of structural engineering at Oregon State University; David Swanson, principal/director for structural engineering at Reid Middleton in Everett, Washington; Darin Aveyard, a Reid Middleton project engineer; and Kenny O’Neill, another Reid Middleton project engineer.

The earthquake struck exactly 32 years after one with an 8 magnitude hit Mexico City, killing thousands of people. Numerous smaller quakes have since occurred as well.

“They have dealt with infrastructure (damage) before, so this isn’t new for them,” Fischer said. “That is interesting for us because we haven’t had to constantly recover. We haven’t had the practice.”

The recent earthquake killed 361 people. Swanson attributed much of the reduction in deaths from 1985 to changes in building codes and more resilient design. Structural frames, in many instances, were not installed on buildings’ interiors – a surprising discovery for Swanson.

“I was impressed at the creativity of the building retrofits that took place since 1985,” he said. “They put the frames on the exterior of the buildings. They took risks on the retrofits. As a structural engineer, it was cool to see.”

Swanson, who specializes in structural engineering, said that in many cases the Mexicans gave up aesthetics for practicality.

“They may not look super pretty, but they performed well,” he said. “They made no bones about it and said let’s forgo the looks and put these braces on the outside of the buildings.”

Many of the buildings that suffered the worst damage featured confined masonry – similar, but not quite the same as the unreinforced masonry found in Portland. Confined masonry walls use brick or concrete block units, and horizontal and vertical RC confining members built on all four sides of a masonry wall panel. Unlike unreinforced masonry, the panels don’t bear an entire force upon a building.

“The majority of the buildings that collapsed were the confined masonry,” Knight said. “A lot of those had poor structural layouts and configuration.”

One of the biggest factors that determined the level of damage was the type of soil underneath structures. Mexico City is largely built on a dry lake bed. The soft soil amplifies the shaking throughout structures.

All buildings have a natural period, or resonance, which is the number of seconds it takes to naturally vibrate back and forth. Soft soil sediments can significantly elongate the period of seismic waves and the increase in a natural period. That usually leads to more damage.

The phenomenon was also seen in how the city’s water and road infrastructure fared.

“What we are interested in is how much the earth moved,” Fischer said. “If you have earth moving in two directions, the (water) pipe can’t stand it.”

She said that information gathered during her trip would be helpful in a study she was conducting on how to make infrastructure, especially water infrastructure, withstand seismic forces better.

Maintenance was a key aspect in how infrastructure fared in Mexico, Fischer said. Water officials had pinpointed areas that were especially vulnerable and needed special attention.

“What we have seen is that there had been repairs that occurred to the pipeline,” she said. “By default, they have more modern materials so they are stronger and can resist movement.”

A key aspect of Fischer’s study, she said, is tied to water infrastructure.

“We are focusing on Western Oregon,” she said. “It is looking at the most vulnerable areas in Oregon and how to improve them so people have access to water after an earthquake.”

The Mexican trip brought home the danger big quakes pose, Swanson said.

“It reminds us as engineers that certain styles of buildings are known hazards,” he said. “We as a community ought to do something about it. It’s a vivid reminder that they are still hazardous.”

The post Education in the wake of an earthquake appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Bridge construction may take a big seismic step forward if a new span in Seattle performs as expected.

“I think over time this could become one of the more common methods of resisting earthquakes,” said Tom Baker, an engineer with the Washington State Department of Transportation.

The , which serves as an exit ramp from State Route 99 into downtown Seattle, involves using shape-memory alloy (SMA) bars in the columns and engineered cementitious composite (commonly called bendable concrete) in the road surface. The combination should, in theory, allow the bridge to snap back into shape after a major earthquake.

“It’s the first of its type in the world,” Baker said of the bridge.

Traditionally, bridges have been built to simply remain standing after an earthquake. Even if a bridge has been damaged beyond repair from a seismic event, the absence of a collapse is considered a success.

Then a professor of civil engineering at the University of Nevada-Reno, M. “Saiid” Saiidi, came up with an idea that should allow bridges to not just survive a quake but be usable almost immediately afterward.

“I accidentally heard about this smart memory alloy that can absorb energy,” he said. “It was used in the form of small mechanical devices in mechanical engineering. I thought, what if I brought this into bridge material?”

Saiidi said that the materials helped address two major problems with traditional bridge design, which focuses on strength and diverting energy away from the span. First, while the bridge may be left standing after a quake, it is often tilting to one side. The second problem is that columns tend to fall apart. Either issue means the structure has to be shut down for repairs or replacement that can take weeks or months.

After nearly 15 years of design work and testing, the concept was deemed ready for its first use in Seattle. The SMA bars are used in the top five feet of the two middle columns, where most of the stress occurs during a quake. The bottom two-thirds of the columns are built with standard materials. The high-fiber bendable concrete is then poured on top of the SMA bars.

“What made us try a field trial was the success of Dr. Saiidi’s laboratory work,” Baker said. “We wanted to get a full-size test.”

A lot will be learned by how the structure performs in the real world after surviving simulated quakes of magnitude 8 or more in a laboratory.

“A couple things we will learn,” Baker said. First, “how it will work without an earthquake. If we do have a quake, how well it will perform compared to its performance in the lab.”

A major issue that could hinder widespread use is cost. A $400,000 grant from the federal government covered most of the added costs of the 400-foot expanse, which has cost the city and the state $4.8 million so far. The project is part of the much larger $3.1 billion Alaskan Way Viaduct program.

Saiidi said that he and researchers in Japan have been working to develop a next generation of materials that could bring the costs down.

“We have worked on smaller bars, but they are not something you can use in a bridge,” he said. “The latest developments in Japan have used bigger-diameter bars that could be used in bridges.”

Outside of Washington, the Japanese have shown the most interest in the new technology. Others in the U.S., including Multnomah County officials, are beginning to show interest.

“It is so new that it wasn’t considered for the Sellwood Bridge (replacement),” said Mike Pullen, Multnomah County spokesman. “We are definitely interested in learning more about what they learn in Seattle.”

The county maintains six area bridges. It is looking into major repairs for at least three of them – including the Burnside and the Morrison bridges – in the near future.

“We will definitely look at it in the future,” Pullen said.

He said that the current standard the county uses when designing bridges to resist earthquakes is to ensure service restoration within 48 hours. Most bridges in the area are designed to drive the force of an earthquake away from the span instead of trying to bend and snap back into shape.

The Seattle bridge’s performance will be observed by many interested parties.

“We applaud our neighbors in the north for trying something new to withstand earthquakes,” Pullen said.

The post A new kind of bridge to withstand earthquakes appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Western Oregon is a geologic hot spot. Even though the region hasn’t been rocked by a major quake in the modern era,experts agree there’s a serious chance one will hit in our lifetimes. Among the hazards of a large seismic event is the failure of buildings made of unreinforced masonry (URM) – brittle brick buildings of a kind demonstrated to have a high likelihood of failure in a seismic event.

The problem of what to do with Oregon’s URM buildings has vexed policy makers for nearly as long as the dangers have been known. But there’s growing sense that what’s been tried hasn’t worked and a new law will have to take a harder line to get owners to comply. To do that, it’s thought there will have to be incentives.

In Portland, stakeholders are drafting a new proposal that will likely require owners to retrofit and set deadlines for compliance.

“Everybody knows what needs to be done,” said Susan Steward, executive director of Building Owners and Managers Association of Oregon. “The problem is: How do we pay for it?”

No incentive

The pickle of a URM building owner is pretty straightforward: seismically upgrading a URM building is expensive – between $25 and $40 per square foot – and there’s little financial incentive to do it. That’s because the improvement is generally thought to add little “rentability” to the structure.

“Are tenants willing to pay more for a seismically-upgraded building? At this point, I don’t think so,” said Greg Frick, partner at HFO Investment Real Estate. “There’s a high cost involved, and I know not every owner is going to be able to write a check for 20 grand a unit to do an improvement. There’s this misconception that a lot of these apartment owners are basking in money.”

HFO is involved with several downtown apartment buildings that are unreinforced. Frick said it all comes down to what’s right for each building. A seismic upgrade is in most instances a major financial burden. And costs vary from a few thousand to over $1 million.

“It’s just a question of what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense,” he said.

Steward’s group, BOMA Oregon, drafted a report ahead of a release of findings by the city’s URM Seismic Retrofit Project calling for financial assistance to cover or reduce the cost of a retrofit, as well as exemptions to help keep costs for owners low.

Though many notable and historic URM buildings are publicly-owned, 95 percent of the URM stock in Portland is held privately. Not all the owners are wealthy corporations, Steward said, and few can afford to sink a huge cost. She said if the city mandates seismic upgrades, tax credits and grants above what’s currently available will be necessary.

California current

Though things move slowly in geologic time, public awareness of the earthquake danger in the Pacific Northwest has moved rapidly in recent years, according to Dan Douthit, spokesman for Portland’s Bureau of Emergency Management. Part of the reason was an article in the July 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine – “The Really Big One,” by Kathryn Schultz.

“Leading up to it there were things that helped raise awareness, but the New Yorker article really was a watershed moment in the public’s understanding of the earthquake danger in the Northwest,” Douthit said. “It’s been building for a while, this general awareness. The New Yorker article was just written in a way that captured international attention. I think these days people are aware of it – Oregon and Portland get earthquakes.”

Compared with other major West Coast cities, Portland has a high number of URM buildings. This has something to do with when Portland was built, and a lot to do with the fact that Portland and Oregon have yet to be hit with a sizable quake. Laws requiring retrofits have been in place in California since the 1980s. Seattle’s URM inventory is notably smaller than Portland’s because many unreinforced brick buildings have been either upgraded by now, demolished or lost in a temblor.

Some of Portland’s approximately 1,800 URM buildings are considered significant from a historical perspective. In these cases, federal and state tax money is available. The federal government offers a 20 percent tax credit for rehabilitation of historic income-producing buildings, and a 10 percent tax credit for non-historic buildings. The Portland Development Commission offers grants through a storefront improvement program and the city waives or reduces building permit fees for certain renovations.

About 75 percent of the $1 million cost to upgrade the Montgomery Court residence hall at Portland State University was covered by a grant by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Predisaster Mitigation Program. The building was designed by noted architect A.E. Doyle, and today still houses students during the academic year. Those factors helped preservationists win the funding, said Yumei Wang, senior engineer with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries who worked on the project.

“In general, if you were to do a full upgrade of a URM building like that, it’d be very expensive,” she said.

At hazard

San Francisco transplant Eric Cress knows he’s in the minority. His firm, Urban Development Partners, specializes in adaptive reuse of old buildings, including their current home on Northeast Sixth Avenue between Couch and Davis streets. Cress did a lot of this work in the Bay Area, where the threat of an earthquake isn’t so foreign, before relocating to Portland 10 years ago.

Cress says Urban Development Partners’ philosophy is to upgrade any building it purchases, simply to protect the investment. An old warehouse can command high rents if it’s converted into a hip creative office in a cool part of town. But Cress said Urban Development Partners won’t purchase a building if a seismic retrofit doesn’t make sense. But for other owners, particularly owners of industrial URM buildings, an upgrade doesn’t make financial sense.

“There are buildings in Portland where it just wouldn’t pencil. No matter what you do, you won’t get the rents needed to pay for the upgrades,” Cress said.

Amit Kumar, senior structural engineer with the city’s Bureau of Development Services, said Urban Development Partners is the rare exception.

“What we see from our experience is totally the opposite,” he said.

The city’s Bureau of Development Services first started tracking URM data in 1994. Today’s updated count is 1,884 URM buildings, including 87 that have been upgraded. Additionally, 153 have been demolished.

“Eighty-seven isn’t very high,” Kumar said.

Most of the upgraded buildings were the result of the current local ordinance, which has a series of “triggers” that lead to seismic upgrades. They generally involve changing use of a building to a higher hazard level. Converting a little shop in a gentrifying neighborhood into a nightclub is an example, Kumar said. This is how most of the URM conversions have taken place. But it’s not a good plan for the future, he said.

“We’ve had these triggers for 20 years and we’ve seen very little improvement in getting rid of these hazards,” he said. “We are trying to get the ball rolling on this, because we’re at 12 percent upgraded. That means it will take another 80 to 100 years to get rid of these hazards.”

To address the slow pace of retrofitting URM buildings, three city agencies were tasked last year by the City Council to come up with a law requiring seismic retrofits for URM buildings, as well as devising incentives for building owners. BDS is joined by the Bureau of Emergency Services and the Portland Development Commission, which is involved with a number of URM buildings. They’re overseeing three committees, which are developing retrofit standards, a new policy and a system of incentives for building owners.

The post Positive reinforcement: Brittle brick still abounds appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Oregon officials are poised to make 2012 a year of statewide earthquake preparedness, although the latest legislative directive does not account for funding.

Last week, more than a hundred people met at Port of Portland headquarters to kick off a yearlong effort to develop a comprehensive, 50-year earthquake and tsunami resiliency plan for Oregon. The project, headed by five members of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission, seeks to deliver a pre-disaster plan and preliminary policy recommendations to the state Legislature by Feb. 28, 2013.

But when the House passed the resolution that calls for the planning process, no money was attached.

“We’re required to present a plan in February of next year, but there is no funding for this work – everything is what we can scrape together through volunteers,” said Althea Rizzo, geologic hazard program coordinator for Oregon Emergency Management.

On April 18, 2011, the Oregon House of Representatives unanimously passed House Resolution 3, sponsored by Rep. Deborah Boone, D-Cannon Beach. It directs the OSSPAC to form a plan to make Oregon resilient to a magnitude 9 Cascadia subduction zone earthquake by 2062.

“We can agree that we’re not robust right now, but the definitions are still evolving,” Rizzo said. “Basically what we want are buildings that don’t kill people. We’re looking right now at a whole bunch of killer buildings.”

Eight task forces are in place to look into topics such as transportation, business continuity and energy. Each group will include at least one emergency manager, one engineer, one business representative and others. But goals will depend on the volunteers who ultimately offer their expertise.

“We don’t expect a finished plan in 2013,” Boone said. “My intent is to get it started, and keep engaging people as it becomes clearer who needs to be added to the mix so that we can be as prepared as we can.”

Kent Yu, chairman of the OSSPAC and principal at , has an ambitious timeline in mind in order to achieve a thorough plan by the 2013 deadline. He is confident that the diverse group of people contributing to the effort will lay the groundwork for future policy.

“I’m really excited because from day one, everybody wanted to see this turning into something historical and make a difference in our community,” he said.

The language of H.R. 3 is ambitious, directing the group to “protect lives and keep commerce flowing during and after a Cascadia (megathrust) earthquake and tsunami.”

The first workshop drew people from a variety of professionals, including engineers, professors, architects, city staffers and people working for regional utilities. Together, they hope to develop the most coordinated, statewide resiliency plan in Oregon history.

“Right now there is no continuity between agencies – they all have plans, but they’re in silos,” said Susan Steward, executive director of the Portland Building Owners and Managers Association. “If the big event happens, you’re on your own. Building owners will get you out of the building, but they aren’t required to take care of you.”

Steward is leading the business continuity task force. She hopes to call attention to the lack of preparedness among businesses with offices in Portland.

“A big shot attorney firm may have three floors downtown, but do they have a shelter plan for their employees or a plan to get their computer records (after an earthquake)?” Steward said. “Our piece of the process doesn’t require a ton of funding; it’s more about raising awareness.”

And raising awareness may be the key to ultimately raising money, according to Yu.

“I firmly believe a public-private partnership is the only way to implement these plans – the government can’t take on such a financial responsibility, but they can engage the community,” he said.

As an example, Yu cited successful public outreach conducted by the East Bay Municipal Utility District in California. Following the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, EBMUD evaluated the seismic vulnerability of its water-treatment plants, reservoirs, buildings, pipelines and other facilities. Then it held nearly 100 public presentations.

Major community support helped lead to approval of a $189 million capital improvement program in 1994, which has paid for seismic upgrades for 21 reservoirs.

“Once the community sees the benefits these upgrades will bring to them, they can decide whether it’s a wise investment or not,” Yu said. “At the end of the day, we have a progressive community in Oregon and I’m absolutely confident we’ll be a resilient state in 50 years.”

The post Volunteers help with unfunded Oregon seismic safety plan appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

When it comes to design concepts for structures to handle tsunami-type emergencies, Cannon Beach city officials have pretty much seen the gamut.

This past fall, city councilors were considering as many as eight different alternatives. The front-runner was a new, $4.5 million city hall that would double as a tsunami evacuation building.

The 10,000-square-foot, two-story reinforced concrete structure would be elevated on pretensioned concrete pilings. During a tsunami, as many as 1,500 people would be able to wait out high waves inside the building.

The idea petered out.

“That (idea) is a very difficult one for people to accept,” Cannon Beach Councilman Sam Steidel said. “For the most part, they just don’t trust it.”

Steidel said that any city project to mitigate tsunami danger would need to be financed by a locally supported bond measure, so public buy-in is essential. With support for the city hall idea waning, Steidel said the city is now targeting construction of a new evacuation bridge across Ecola Creek.

The existing bridge represents the only viable escape route for downtown residents to reach safer, higher ground in the event of a tsunami. However, a one-two punch of an earthquake and a tsunami would likely cause the bridge to collapse.

Kevin Boyle, project coordinator for , the company hired to conduct a feasibility study, said that in addition to being founded on shallow wood pilings, the existing bridge is held together by weak, steel pins that connect the concrete slab to its foundation.

“The concern is if they have a big earthquake … those could potentially rip the pile cap apart and cause the bridge to collapse into the creek,” Boyle said. “There is just a very high probability of liquefaction of the soils in that area too.”

It has happened before. The 1964 Alaska earthquake sent a tsunami rippling up Ecola Creek, destroying the bridge and causing $250,000 in damage, according to OBEC’s report.

Part of the solution to ensure that doesn’t happen again, Boyle said, is to conduct a full geo-analysis of the soils and drive concrete pilings to necessary depths. But the city first needs to choose from among seven options, which range in scope from a $796,000 floating pedestrian bridge to a $4.76 million replacement bridge.

The first option, which Boyle said was requested by the city, is a floating timber pontoon bridge with a 6-foot-wide deck. That bridge would withstand a large earthquake, but it would not resist a tsunami wave. Boyle said it had another key drawback too.

“For a 6-foot wide bridge, if there’s a panic situation you really create a lot of chaos trying to get people across that in one way,” he said. “You just can’t pass that many people.”

The second option, a 6-foot-wide fixed timber bridge, faces the same issues.

Other options include constructing a 12-foot-wide, fixed, pre-stressed concrete pedestrian bridge; replacing half of the existing bridge with a concrete section; and building a fixed timber suspension bridge.

While some of those options have more merit than others, all share the same hurdle.

“All of those have fairly significant costs associated with them for a small community,” Boyle said. “Cannon Beach is not a community that necessarily has a lot of money.”

The feasibility study alone cost approximately $10,000.

One potentially affordable concept is for a pyramid-shaped berm near the city center. Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer at the , said it would cost between $1 million and $1.5 million.

Wang said the berm represents the second draft of a conceptual platform evacuation structure (like a multistory carport for people). It would essentially be a large, sloped dirt mound that people could run up to escape rising waters.

Steidel said City Council had not reviewed that idea yet.

One thing the city is pushing forward though, Steidel said, is creation of stores of food and water around town that people can access in the event of an emergency.

“If all the roads are down and the Willamette Valley is hit hard, we’re not going to see people for quite a while and so we’ll be dependent upon ourselves,” he said.

But Cannon Beach residents also have in their hands the opportunity to choose an evacuation measure.

“One of the things that is difficult about this is there are many ways to skin a cat and to have the community decide on one is difficult,” Wang said.

The post Cannon Beach considers options for tsunami evacuation bridge appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

If location, location, location is the golden rule of real estate, Cannon Beach Elementary School is in trouble.

The school, like much of Cannon Beach, lies in a tsunami inundation zone expected to be hit sometime within the next 200 years. Indeed, striking along the Cascadia Subduction Zone – 50 miles off the Oregon coast – within the next 50 years.

If that were to happen, experts say the school would collapse.

A 200-year spread makes planning for capital construction expenditures difficult, especially in such a lean economy. But Seaside School District Superintendent Douglas Dougherty is working on a plan that he feels is essential to ensure safety for the district’s students.

“I am optimistic that the (Oregon Department of Land Conservation and Development) will understand not only the potential severity that this is something that is inevitable, but that also, with the new research that is coming out, that we need to move our schools as soon as possible,” he said.

Dougherty’s plan is to move four of the district’s five schools – Cannon Beach Elementary, Gearhart Elementary, Broadway Middle and Seaside High – onto a 50-acre campus southeast of the city of Seaside. Dougherty is working with , the property owner, to identify a price tag for the land.

Four of the district’s schools were listed on a 2007 that identified schools at risk of being destroyed by a tsunami. Cannon Beach Elementary was at the top of the list.

“What would happen (during an earthquake) is, as it’s shaking, that building would tend to twist because there’s one wall that’s really weak compared to the other three walls, and it would tend to rack and twist around on itself,” said Jay Raskin, an architect for and a former Cannon Beach mayor. “And there’s nothing really preventing that from happening.”

About two months ago, city officials contracted Raskin and structural engineer Andy Stricker to assess the structural integrity of the school. Raskin said the old, wood-framed classrooms – built before the 1990s, when seismic building codes were adopted – as well as a large, concrete canopy and a tall, brick chimney at the school all would collapse in a seismic event.

That prompted a discussion about whether the district should close the school and move its approximately 80 students to Seaside Heights Elementary nearby.

On Tuesday, Cannon Beach City Council was set to vote on a referendum recommending the school’s closure to the district’s school board, but community members concerned about losing their longtime school persuaded the council to postpone the vote.

“Obviously there was a lot of interest and a lot of discussion needed,” councilor Sam Steidel said.

Steidel said the Cannon Beach Elementary issue was just a small piece of the pie in terms of the measures the city is considering to prepare for an earthquake and tsunami. So far the council has entertained the idea of building vertical evacuation structures, rebuilding the city hall as a tsunami shelter, and constructing a new evacuation bridge across Ecola Creek. Steidel said the council has not yet decided on any one way forward.

Yumei Wang, a geotechnical engineer at the , has been working on earthquake preparedness issues for the state for the past 18 years. She thinks Cannon Beach residents should take a lesson from the earthquake and tsunami that ravaged Japan last year.

“What happened in Japan is the threat that we have here – a very powerful and destructive tsunami in low-lying areas along the coast,” she said.

Wang visited Japan shortly after the tsunami to assess the damage. She said she came across one site in particular that reminded her of Cannon Beach Elementary. It was a school about 2 kilometers upriver in which 70 percent of students and teachers were killed.

“There were little stuffed animals and candy, like little pieces of starburst-type things, as offerings to the people that didn’t make it; little flowers and stuff – it was very sad,” she said.

Cannon Beach Elementary, which sits about a mile up Ecola Creek, is almost a mirror image of that Japanese school, she said.

Wang said that in a seismic event, about 300,000 students would be exposed to life-threatening conditions in approximately 600 Oregon schools. She has narrowed that list down to the 80 most at-risk schools. She said she was not yet ready to release that list, but added that Cannon Beach Elementary was on it.

And while Raskin said that improvements could be made to the elementary school to make it seismically sound, he and Wang feel the best solution is relocation.

“The best way to really address lowering your risk is to move the school out of the tsunami zone,” Wang said. “I’ve seen plenty of buildings that duck and cover and hold means you’re dead under your desk under lots of bricks.”

Dougherty said the school board was waiting for a decision from the city council before deciding whether to close Cannon Beach Elementary. That decision will likely be pushed back now. In the meantime, he’s pushing for the campus idea, which comes with its own hurdles.

A couple of years ago he tried to pass legislation to get $10 million for the project; however, with earmarks in disfavor, the request didn’t even make it out of committee. He said he has not landed money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency either. School construction likely would require voters to approve a major bond.

Dougherty said campus development also would require the DLCD to expand the urban growth boundary to include the land. That could take from six months to six years, but he remains optimistic.

“This is one of those situations where we need to do this sooner than later,” he said. “It is a situation that we’re basically running out of time. We have not experienced this type of natural disaster in our country and so we need proactive assistance with this.”

The post Tsunami threat has Oregon Coast school district unsettled appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.