{"id":1181,"date":"2015-07-27T18:45:33","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T18:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/?p=1181"},"modified":"2025-12-19T01:18:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T01:18:23","slug":"big-story-and-small-stories-that-add-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/?p=1181","title":{"rendered":"Big Story and small stories that add up"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big story was the recent New Yorker article, “The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle<\/a>” that caused quite a stir both here<\/a> in the Northwest and the rest<\/a> of the country by providing a very well written summary of what the Cascadia earthquake and resulting tsunami will do to the region. \u00a0The smaller stories are the passage of a number resilience bills\u00a0in the Oregon Legislative and other efforts. \u00a0These made barely a ripple in the press but they are historic and show that\u00a0resilience planning for the\u00a0Cascadia earthquake is here to stay.\u00a0 The Legislature created a State Resilience Officer attached to the Governor’s Office who will have the responsibility of tracking the 50-year effort outlined in the Oregon Resilience Plan (ORP). \u00a0They\u00a0significantly increased funding for the Seismic Retrofit Grant Program (SRGP) to the tune of $176\u00a0million bond grants for schools and $30 million for essential facilities. They also\u00a0allowed local governments to create loan\/loan guarantee programs for the seismic upgrades of multi-family, commercial and industrial buildings. \u00a0Another bill resolved liability issues regarding assessments of the fuel tanks where 95% of Oregon’s fuel are stored, so assessments can begin. \u00a0This is the first step in making sure there will be\u00a0fuel to do relief and recovery efforts after the earthquake.<\/p>\n

State agencies such as the Department of Geological and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) and Oregon \u00a0Emergency Management (OEM)\u00a0have been outlining the risk and preparing to respond to Cascadia for a quite a while. The creation of the Oregon Resilience Plan sped \u00a0up the efforts of ODOT, which finalized its seismic retrofit plan for the roads and bridges. \u00a0This work is proceeding (most recently in seismic upgrades of I-5 bridges in Portland this summer). \u00a0Major transportation funding was hung up this last session, but should be resolved in the short session next year. \u00a0The Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLDC)\u00a0is responding to\u00a0the land use implications, especially for the tsunami, and the Department of Administrative Services (DAS) is now doing assessments of state buildings, the first step in figuring how to prioritize seismic upgrades or replacement.<\/p>\n

One of the more remarkable results of the ORP has been the stepping of local governments, service districts, and institutions. \u00a0The two major water districts, Portland and Clean Water Services, have major projects to improve the resilience of their water systems. \u00a0The City of Portland initiated the loan\/loan guarantee effort mentioned above. This is a carrot they want to offer as they consider mandatory seismic upgrades of the many unreinforced masonry buildings (URM) in Portland. \u00a0Portland School District passed its latest bond issue, in part due to its including seismic upgrades to schools. \u00a0The Beaverton School District is designing its new high school and middle school to be used as shelters following the earthquake. \u00a0Tsunami resilience accomplishments have been the relocation or closing down of schools in the Lincoln County, and in Neskowin where their Hazard Hazard Overlay Zone now includes specific references to the Cascadia earthquake and tsunami.<\/p>\n

In addition the major health care providers are reviewing the resilience of their facilities. This includes the retrofit project<\/a> of Providence St. Vincent to meet current code. \u00a0This project is interesting on several levels. First, they are making use of the SRGP program to help with funding. \u00a0They are also taking advantage of seismic engineering advances. \u00a0Rather than using the static analysis upon which codes are based on, they\u00a0used dynamic modeling to fully understand how building will actually perform. \u00a0This modeling allows for innovative solutions that often perform better at less cost than standard solutions. \u00a0In this case the solution is to\u00a0wrap the building in carbon fiber, an less intrusive method that adding concrete or steel. \u00a0In the\u00a0Meier & Frank rehabilitation this approach allowed the use of viscous dampers (hydraulic piston attached to the steel structure).<\/p>\n

There have been innovative efforts at\u00a0level of personal preparedness. \u00a0You can check out your risk and find out how long you should rely on personal supplies at Aftershock.org<\/a>, the result of a collaboration between OPB and Hack Oregon. \u00a0Seismic retrofit of homes can be seen in the rise of a number of construction companies that now specialize in this, and in the integration of seismic and energy upgrades by Clean Energy Works<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The initial reaction to hearing about the magnitude of the Cascadia earthquake and its impacts, is shock and a sense that it is an overwhelming problem. \u00a0However, the example of Chile and Japan show that you can prepare by consistent long term effort. \u00a0We have a long way to go, but Oregon has truly begun the effort, and this effort is broad based, top down and bottom up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big story was the recent New Yorker article, “The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle” that caused quite a stir both here in the Northwest and the rest of the country by providing a very well written summary of what the Cascadia earthquake and resulting tsunami will do to the region. \u00a0The smaller stories are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,21,24,18],"tags":[121,41,122,60],"class_list":["post-1181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-cascadia-earthquake","category-resilience","category-seismic","tag-cascadia-earthquake","tag-oregon-resilience-plan","tag-resilience","tag-seismic-upgrade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1181"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1181\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jayraskinarchitect.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}