July was a busy month here at OEM.  Beginning on January1, 2014, the Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program (SRGP) will be housed within the Oregon Business Development Department (OBDD), also known as Business Oregon.  

Click here to read SB 813, which is the legislation that moved the SRGP from OEM to Busines Oregon:  http://www.leg.state.or.us/13reg/measpdf/sb0800.dir/sb0813.en.pdf 

On July 16, OEM hosted the bi-monthly Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission (OSSPAC) meeting.   At the meeting, Dr. Chris Goldfinger from OSU gave a fascinating presentation that focused on the connection between the San Andreas and Cascadia faults.  His presentation, titled  “Reliability Analysis for Cascadia Earthquakes & Relationship between the Cascadia Earthquake and the San Andreas Earthquake,” provided OSSPAC with more issues to think about in terms of preparing for the imminent Cascadia earthquake event.   

Here is an article from Dr. Goldfinger that focuses on this topic: http://ecosystems.wcp.muohio.edu/studentresearch/climatechange03/elnino/Holocene%20Seismicity.pdf

On July 29, I had the opportunity to help fasciliate a meeting for the Coastal Community Resilience Network Pilot Project.  Held at the Seaside Convention Center, the goal of this pilot project is to help create a network between the coastal communties in Clackamas County in order to increase how resilient these communities will be in the case of a natural disaster, such as an earhquake or tsunami.  The project is supported by NOAA’s Coastal Community Resilience Program and is being led by the Oregon Partnership for Diasaster Resileince (OPDR), the Department of Land Conservation and Development (DLCD), and Oregon Sea Grant (OSG).  The Principal Investigators for this project are Josh Bruce (OPDR), Jeff Weber (DLCD), and Pat Corcoran (OSG). 

Click here for more information on this project: https://nrm.dfg.ca.gov/FileHandler.ashx?DocumentID=64849 

In August, I will be attending a meeting about the new Oregon Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan, participating in a number of public engagement events, and involved with a ton of other important and exciting meetings, projects, and events.  Stay tuned…