The recent request by the City of Cannon Beach to Clatsop County is a good example of how many small, but significant changes, need to be made to be properly prepare for a Cascadia earthquake and tsunami. The City ha has requested that the zoning in Agricultural Zone (AZ) and Forestry 80 (F80) areas be changed to allow for storage structures that allow emergency caches such as the City has already done in lands within its urban growth boundary. These two zones are typically the zoning that abuts Clatsop County, and communities in other coastal counties as well.
This change should be adopted by the other coastal counties as well, since it alleviates a common problem for many small coastal communities. Namely that there can be a lack of available land within the communities that is above the tsunami inundation zone.
There are other land use changes that need to be considered in preparing for Cascadia, some for preparedness reasons, other for mitigation and post-disaster recovery reasons. It means looking at land use ordinances in the new lens of these needs.