Turkey is reeling from the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that shook its eastern border last week, and engineers based in the Portland-metro area are warning, yet again, that Oregon is running out of time to prepare for a seismic disaster.

Soon after the earthquake struck, , a Vancouver, Wash.-based engineering firm, dispatched three of its Istanbul-based engineers to assess the damage in two of the cities hit hardest – Van and Ercis.

Temperatures in Van were near freezing last week, but local residents slept in tents out of fears that their homes would collapse during aftershocks at night. However, most of the damage was non-structural, according to Yusuf Zahit Gundogdu, a Miyamoto International engineer who traveled to the disaster zone a couple of days after the quake.

The damage assessments mainly revealed cracked walls, collapsed chimneys, and suspended ceilings, gypsum sheeting and plasterboard walls.

The scene in Ercis, approximately 70 miles north, was much bleaker. More than 80 multistory buildings fell.

“When we arrived, we were shocked to see the number of buildings that had collapsed in such close proximity to each other, particularly on the main street,” Gundogdu said in a written account.

Many of the buildings crumbled because of poor construction and inferior concrete quality, according to Gundogdu. Problems caused by soft or weak ground stories featuring large openings for storefronts or parking were compounded by inadequate support and connections.

“You can find so many similar buildings in downtown Portland,” said Kit Miyamoto, president and CEO of the engineering firm. “Everyone knows they are really dangerous. These buildings can be strengthened prior to an earthquake, but we are learning the same lessons over and over again.”

Concrete and unreinforced masonry buildings on the West Coast – schools, in particular – must be seismically strengthened, Miyamoto said.

“The knowledge base is there; it’s just a matter of acting on it,” he said, emphasizing that the process to make these buildings stronger is becoming more cost-effective.

Miyamoto recently met with officials of a Southern California school district to discuss possibilities for seismic upgrades, and some of his recommendations would cost as little as $50,000 per building. Seismic shock-absorbing devices and materials to strengthen unreinforced walls are available and becoming cheaper.

And yet the U.S. is “not even half as prepared as the Japanese,” Miyamoto said.

Although many scientists predict that a major earthquake will hit Oregon in the coming decades, the state lacks a decent warning system, Miyamoto said.

“A warning system is a very cost-effective solution, and training and education are almost free,” he said. “You just have to realize that the risks exist.”

Miyamoto added that private residents and the commercial sector also must become involved.

“Ninety-five percent of the buildings are occupied by non-governmental (groups), so we can’t just wait for the government to do these things,” he said. “That’s just not good risk management.”

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Vancouver, Wash.-based engineering expert Kit Miyamoto didn’t need to catch the next flight to Japan to offer his services after the recent Tohoku earthquake. He was already there.

Miyamoto was on a train near Ikebukuro station after delivering a speech on earthquake engineering at his alma mater, the Tokyo Institute of Technology, when the 9.0 magnitude quake hit.

When the Japan railway closed because of aftershocks, Miyamoto hiked with his family along the train tracks to reach the next station. But after sending his family back to the U.S., Miyamoto, CEO of , stayed in Japan to do what his organization has recently done for Haiti and New Zealand – assess the extent and causes of the damage caused by the earthquake.

“I’m basically asking: ‘What happened here? What do we need to do immediately from a response point of view, and what do we need to do for reconstruction from a recovery point of view?’ ” Miyamoto said.

Miyamoto International’s staffers and consultants have responded to more than 100 earthquake and hurricane events in the past 30 years to provide structural safety assessment, damage data collection and development of reconstruction strategies. They then design high-performance engineering solutions.

During Miyamoto’s initial response phase in Japan, he is developing a technical foundation and knowledge of local practice – and how it might be improved – by surveying the damage. Currently based in Sendai, Miyamoto has traveled to surrounding areas to get a closer look at seawalls and the devastated towns they failed to protect.

“Yesterday I was at Arahama beach, which is totally wiped out,” Miyamoto said. “I was there when I was a kid, so I know the place. I know people who lived in houses in the area. It looked like a nuclear blast.”

Miyamoto found a long, 2-meter-high seawall in Arahama, but it was no match for the estimated 10-meter-high wave, he said.

Miyamoto said the seawalls had lulled the Japanese into a false sense of security. The Japanese government invested billions of dollars to build the wall systems, but guessing the height of a possible wave is not as effective as reinforcing and seismically strengthening buildings, said Miyamoto, who believes it is more important to build a sustainable community than to spend billions of dollars to protect an inefficient one.

“It doesn’t matter if it’s 5 meters (or) if it’s 10 meters,” Miyamoto said. “You don’t know; you can’t predict. It was an overreliance of technology in a way that failed.”

The only exceptions to the ruin appeared to be houses made of reinforced concrete, Miyamoto said.

“Every so often there is this lone house in a destroyed desert. Sure enough, it is made of [reinforced] concrete.”

Non-ductile, or unreinforced, concrete and brick walls cannot survive the violent movement of an earthquake, Miyamoto said. He added that use of such materials has been visible in much of the devastation and rubble he has come across. But the construction of these types of buildings and schools is a worldwide problem, Miyamoto said.

After initial surveys, Miyamoto thinks the construction of multistory buildings is also important in tsunami survival situations.

“If you live in a three-story building as opposed to a one-story, you can escape vertically and possibly save your life, and the building has a better chance of survival after the tsunami comes through.”

According to Miyamoto, the same principle can be applied to nuclear plants, where emergency generators were stored at ground level. The tsunami easily overcame this crucial source of power, which relied on a 7-meter-high seawall. If the generators had been elevated, a meltdown would not have occurred, Miyamoto said.

“You can try to fight nature, but it will win; it will always overcome you,” said Miyamoto, who advocates for individual building owners to take responsibility for seismic strengthening. “You have to go with the flow and have the architecture and the kind of building system that can do that.”

Miyamoto said it remains to be seen how his findings will affect the disaster response and reconstruction.

“Japan has the capability, I think, to overcome this, and they will definitely rebuild the country,” Miyamoto said. “They need a lot of support right now. That’s why I’m here.”

Miyamoto’s journal entries are available online at .

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Kit Miyamoto, an earthquake and structural engineer who’s done work in Haiti and other international locales, is in Japan after the country’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

Here’s his report from Wednesday:

…A police officer acknowledges my credentials, points to a direction, and says, ‘Just go straight for three kilometers. You will reach the Arahama beach. Come back by dusk and tell me why the seawall failed to protect my town.’ …Nothing really has prepared me for what I see. I have been in many disasters, but this one is different. I see complete destruction. Many people lost their lives here. The feeling of desolation is heavy.

I enter a mangled pine tree forest, which was planted to slow down a tsunami. I find 2-meter-high seawalls stretched from horizon to horizon. The Japanese government has spent billions of dollars over the last several decades to build an elaborate seawall system along the country’s coastline. But the seawalls turned out to be simply too small for a 3- to 10-meter tsunami. Could a 10-meter-high wall save this town? Probably. But a 15-meter-high wave would wash over it. Any walls will eventually be overcome by nature. Over-reliance on seawalls will not mitigate the tsunami hazard. Buildings also need to be able to survive a tsunami. The Fukushima nuclear plant relied on a 5-meter-high seawall. The wall did not work for a 10-meter-high tsunami, and eventually this failure caused a nuclear meltdown. A singular solution cannot address all the potential hazards. We engineers must design sustainable communities. To do that, multiple solutions must be used, and we must understand all of nature’s forces. So, designing alternative means to address nature’s forces is critical.

For the complete story from Sendai, visit Miyamoto’s blog at

The post Engineer Kit Miyamoto surveys damage in Japan after earthquake appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Kit Miyamoto, an earthquake and structural engineer who’s done work in Haiti and other international locales, is in Japan after the country’s 8.9 magnitude earthquake and ensuing tsunami.

Here’s his report from Wednesday:

…A police officer acknowledges my credentials, points to a direction, and says, ‘Just go straight for three kilometers. You will reach the Arahama beach. Come back by dusk and tell me why the seawall failed to protect my town.’ …Nothing really has prepared me for what I see. I have been in many disasters, but this one is different. I see complete destruction. Many people lost their lives here. The feeling of desolation is heavy.

I enter a mangled pine tree forest, which was planted to slow down a tsunami. I find 2-meter-high seawalls stretched from horizon to horizon. The Japanese government has spent billions of dollars over the last several decades to build an elaborate seawall system along the country’s coastline. But the seawalls turned out to be simply too small for a 3- to 10-meter tsunami. Could a 10-meter-high wall save this town? Probably. But a 15-meter-high wave would wash over it. Any walls will eventually be overcome by nature. Over-reliance on seawalls will not mitigate the tsunami hazard. Buildings also need to be able to survive a tsunami. The Fukushima nuclear plant relied on a 5-meter-high seawall. The wall did not work for a 10-meter-high tsunami, and eventually this failure caused a nuclear meltdown. A singular solution cannot address all the potential hazards. We engineers must design sustainable communities. To do that, multiple solutions must be used, and we must understand all of nature’s forces. So, designing alternative means to address nature’s forces is critical.

For the complete story from Sendai, visit Miyamoto’s blog at

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Reconstruction efforts in Haiti are moving as slowly as the vehicles that attempt to travel on the country’s unpaved, rubble-filled roads.

One year ago, a 7.0-magnitude earthquake hit Port-Au-Prince, killing hundreds of thousands of people and leaving many more without basic shelter. Oregon building professionals have since made multiple trips to Haiti to assess damaged structures and promote modern construction techniques.

Craig Totten of since early 2010 has worked with the to train Haitian builders in confined masonry construction, and with global nonprofit to rebuild schools. He planned to return to Haiti at the end of December, but a cholera epidemic and political unrest have postponed the trip.

“When I started working in Haiti early last year, I really thought things would be further along by this year,” Totten said. “The energy and enthusiasm I saw in January and March had disappeared by my last visit in August. Now, there is resignation to bureaucracy and the way things are done at such a slow pace in Haiti.”

Much of the money given to Haiti has not been spent, Totten said, because of fragmentation and confusion within Haiti’s government. The hesitancy to spend donated money, Totten said, comes from fears of allocating funds to the wrong project or organization. Groups of churches, global nonprofit groups and government agencies all are trying to sort through the rubble on their own, he added.

Plus, many of Haiti’s government officials perished at their desks in the capitol building when the earthquake hit, Totten said.

“This is a country that didn’t function well before the earthquake,” he said. “Then they lost most of their best people. Individual groups are trying to make projects happen on their own, but there is no coordinated recovery effort.”

Meanwhile, nearly 1 million people continue to live in tent cities, which are plagued by poor sanitation and the spread of disease.

Structural engineering firm has established an office in Port-Au-Prince, and engineer Kit Miyamoto has been working with the and Haiti’s public works department to assess damaged structures. More than 400,000 damaged structures have been assessed so far, Miyamoto said, and about 100,000 were either heavily damaged or completely destroyed. His group has repaired approximately 1,000 buildings.

“Big chunks of people still live in tents because their homes are unsafe to occupy,” Miyamoto said. “Tents are horrible places full of disease, violence and rape. I am hopeful that Haiti can become safe. Haitian engineers, masons and contractors are open to learning new skills and motivated to save their country.”

Political unrest, more than anything else, has slowed reconstruction efforts, Miyamoto said. Violence erupted during and after Haiti’s 2010 elections in November, when assessments became unsafe for an entire week.

Totten plans to return to Haiti as soon as possible. He wants to join the to finish a repair project at an orphanage. Its residents presently live in tents. He also is hopeful that a school design he worked on will reach BuildOn in the coming months, so that the nonprofit can start building new schools in the southern portion of the country.

Miyamoto’s group this year plans to rebuild homes in three different communities as part of a pilot project. The neighborhoods have approximately 2,000 slightly damaged structures, including many that housed at least two families, Miyamoto said. Getting people back in their homes, Miyamoto said, is the first step to greater recovery. He is hopeful that money this year will reach those who need it.

“When an event occurs where 300,000 people die, it takes time to figure out the damage,” Miyamoto said. “It seems to go very slow. But these deaths won’t be a waste. Haiti is going to be a better place with better cities built by the Haitian people. That’s the way it should be done.”

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A team of more than 200 Haitian engineers and a team of engineers from Miyamoto International has performed assessments on over 50,000 structures in Haiti in the past five weeks.

Principal Kit Miyamoto of Miyamoto International says the project’s goal is to assess damage on 100,000 structures in the greater Port-au-Prince area using local workers. A partnership between the Haitian government, United Nations Office of Project Services, World Bank and Miyamoto International, the project also trained over 200 Haitian engineers on how to perform damage assessments.

“These people are hard working, good engineers,” Miyamoto said. “They come to work rain or shine. We’ve been performing about 2,000 assessments each day.”

During a damage assessment, buildings were given red, yellow or green tags based on condition. Miyamoto said that about 45 percent of the structures were green, or safe to inhabit, 35 percent were yellow, or damaged but safe to enter, and 20 percent were red, or unsafe to enter.

Damage assessments at this point in Haiti’s recovery are key, Kit said, since nearly one million Haitians are still living in tent cities, and the rainy season is starting. Along with the International Organization for Migration, the team has identified several sites with shelter where people can be moved.

“We’ll be here until things get done,” Miyamoto said. “The last thing you want to do in a situation like this is show up and leave.”

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Oregon may not have much in common with Chile, but they do share one striking similarity: their subduction zones are nearly identical.

So, Oregon can learn a lot from the 8.8-magnitude earthquake that hit Chile on Feb. 27, according to Miyamoto International principal Scott Nyseth. He recently visited Chile, and performed building safety assessments for some of Miyamoto’s international clients.

“The Chile earthquake is almost an exact replica of the kind of earthquake we’ll eventually see off the Oregon Coast,” Nyseth said. “The performance of our buildings built to code today should mirror the way buildings performed in the Chile earthquake.”

Though ships littered the streets of Concepcion, Chile, after being tossed by 8-foot-high tsunami waves, most of the buildings remained standing. Chile has some of the most stringent building codes in the world because an earthquake hits the country almost every 15 years, Nyseth said.

“Chile is top in terms of the amount of shear wall and lateral elements in their buildings,” Nyseth said. “The way they are building is more robust than what’s required in American building codes.”

Unlike Chile, however, Oregon has not experienced any significant seismic activity since 1700, so if a large earthquake were to hit today, the damage would be much worse, Nyseth said.

“Chile’s old buildings have already collapsed,” Nyseth said. “All of our tall, heavy, old buildings won’t survive. Because of our lack of seismic history, we’re going to have a larger loss of life when it happens.”

Experts have long predicted that the West Coast’s Cascadia subduction zone will rupture, triggering an earthquake 8.5 magnitude or greater from Eureka, Calif., along the coasts of Oregon and Washington up to Vancouver, B.C.

According to Robert Yeats, a professor emeritus of geosciences at Oregon State University, recent research has shown that Oregon could see an earthquake earlier than previously thought.

“We can tell you it’s going to happen eventually, but we can’t predict it in the short term,” he said.

Coastal communities such as Bandon, Gold Beach and Coos Bay would be hit the hardest if the subduction zone were to partially rupture, Yeats said. However, Astoria and Portland would also be impacted if the entire subduction zone ruptured, he added.

Bandon city planner Charli Davis will spend the next eight months preparing her city for potential tsunamis, thanks to a grant from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. DOGAMI told Davis that if a tsunami were to strike, the town’s mostly single-story wood structures would hold up better than unreinforced masonry buildings.

Though coastal cities like Bandon are preparing for a catastrophic seismic event, Nyseth said more cities should examine their buildings’ seismic performance and that more federal and state funds should be doled out to shore up weak buildings. He said he knows that no one is eager to spend millions of dollars on a seismic upgrade, especially in this economy.

“Unless you’re going through an occupancy change or renovating to attract new tenants, owners won’t spend the money to make a building safer,” Nyseth said. “We have to figure out a way to find funds to strengthen existing buildings and safeguard the lives of people in them.”

Nyseth said he hopes that as more groups report on the devastation in Chile, more people will start to take the threat of earthquakes and tsunamis along the West Coast seriously.

“The earthquake has become a discussion point and a reason for people to pressure the government to figure out a way to get this stuff funded,” Nyseth said.

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