Hello World!
My name is Geoff Ostrove and I am Oregon Sea Grant’s newest Natural Resources Policy Fellow. I am a graduate student at the University of Oregon, pursuing a PhD in Media Studies from the School of Journalism & Communication as well as a Master’s of Community & Regional Planning from the Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management. For this next year, I have been given the amazing opportunity to work with the Oregon Office of Emergency Management (OEM) on a couple of really important projects.
The first one is called the Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program (SRGP). Over the last 10 years, the Oregon Legislature has recognized seismic safety as a critical element of Oregon’s disaster resiliency plan. The SRGP is a State of Oregon competitive grant program that provides funding for the seismic rehabilitation of critical public buildings, particularly public schools and emergency services facilities. Public K‐12 school districts, community colleges, education service districts, and universities are eligible for the grant program. For emergency services facilities, the emphasis is on first responder buildings, which includes hospital buildings with acute inpatient care facilities, fire stations, police stations, sheriff’s offices, and 9‐1‐1 centers. The purpose of this grant is to help fund seismic retrofits to critical public buildings that are in serious need of improvements. This grant is not intended to fund the construction of new buildings. Buildings located in a tsunami inundation zone are ineligible for this grant.
Which leads me to the second project that I am working on here at OEM: the Governor’s Japan Tsunami Marine Debris (JTMD) Task Force. On March 11, 2011, Japan was hit with a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. The subsequent tsunami impacted cities throughout the eastern part of the country, creating approximately 25 million tons of debris. 5 million tons of that debris is believed to have been pushed offshore, with about 3.5 million tons sinking and about 1.5 million tons floating and dispersing throughout the Pacific Ocean. Here in Oregon, we are seeing the impacts of that tsunami earlier than most of the rest of the world. On June 6, 2012, a dock from a Japanese harbor landed on Agate Beach. We are beginning to see more and more of this type of activity occur up and down the west cost of North America. The goal of the Governor’s JTMD Task Force is to create inter-agency coordination throughout Oregon, the United States, and with Japan in order to mitigate against the potential negative impacts of the JTMD that has been dispersed throughout the Pacific Ocean and is now reaching our coast.
I am excited for the opportunity to work on both of these projects. The coordinator for the SRGP is Kiri Carini, and the project is supervised by Paulina Layton, Director of OEM’s Mitigation and Recovery Division. John Lewis, OEM’s Director of Plans and Training, is coordinating the JTMD effort. I will also be working closely with Kim Lippert, OEM’s Public Information Officer.
I expect my experience here at OEM to be extremely educational and applicable to my future career goals. I want to thank Stephen Brandt, Sarah Kolesar, Eric Dickey, and everyone else at Oregon Sea Grant for this amazing opportunity. For updates on the SRGP and the Governor’s JTMD Task Force, look for my next blog.
