Category Archives: Natural Resources Policy Fellow

The Agora Journalism Center & the 2015 APA Conference

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A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend a build-a-thon at the Agora Journalism Center. During this 3-day event, I worked with web designers, map makers, journalists, and subject area experts to create a web app that will help Oregon residents prepare for the Cascadia Earthquake. The app allows the user to enter any address in Oregon in order to receive a personalized story about what you should expect to experience if the Cascadia Earthquake occurred while you at that specific location. Your personalized story tells you what you should expect when the earthquake occurs (shaking intensity, soil liquefaction, landslides, etc.); how long your community will have to go without resources such as electricity, fuel, and running water; and how you should prepare yourself for the earthquake. In the end, our app produces over 300 individualized stories that help inform Oregon residents how to prepare for the Cascadia Earthquake based on location.  Last week, I returned to the Agora Journalism Center to talk about this app as part of my presentation at the “What is Journalism?” Conference.  Currently, OPB is working to finalize the app, and it should be available to the public very soon.

Here is a promotional video about the app: https://vimeo.com/125524401. Please forward it to anyone who might be interested.

Then, this past Monday, I got to head up to Seattle to present about the Seismic Rehabilitation Grant Program (SRGP) at the American Planning Association’s 2015 National Convention.  Not only did I get to learn about community planning and emergency management efforts taking place around the country, I also got to promote the SRGP to a ton of APA attendees.

So, stayed tuned for the new Cascadia Earthquake web app and more updates about the SRGP.

How will the Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake Impact Hospitals and Water Systems?

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DOGAMI recently released Yumei Wang’s analysis of how the Cascadia earthquake will impact hospitals and water systems. I suggest checking out the executive summary: http://public.health.oregon.gov/Preparedness/Prepare/Documents/oha-earthquake-risk-report-2014.pdf

The main takeaway for me: “Both pilot study hospitals have seismic vulnerabilities and are expected to incur significant hospital bed shortages for over 90 days after a Cascadia earthquake… Lincoln City hospital is estimated to incur significant damage due to its proximity to the Cascadia subduction zone and will slowly recover to operate at about 52% bed capacity in 90 days. A number of bridges that connect the community and hospital, including bridges crossing the Siletz River, are expected to incur major damage and impede citizen access to the hospital complex. Although the McMinnville hospital has modern seismic structural engineering, design, and construction, it is expected to have a severe reduction in function due to shaking damage. It is expected to recover to about 76% bed capacity in 90 days. A number of bridges that connect the community and hospital, including the Three Mile Lane bridge and nearby Highway 18 bridges to the west of hospital complex, are expected to incur major damage and impede citizen access.”

315th Anniversary of the Last Great Cascadia Subduction Zone Earthquake

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At approximately 9 p.m. Pacific Standard Time on Jan. 26, 1700, a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake occurred on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 600-mile stretch between Vancouver Island, British Columbia and Cape Mendocino, California. 315 years later, we are preparing for another Cascadia Subduction Zone event to occur.  Check out these OPB articles to learn more:

Can Coastal Communities Survive a Tsunami?

Japanese Earthquake Holds Lessons For Oregon Coast

Jan. 26, 1700: How Scientists Know When the Last Big Earthquake  Happened Here

Why Would You Build A Hospital In A Tsunami Zone?

A Fleet of Meetings

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How do you talk about issues like ocean acidification and habitat preservation and changing land use patterns? Where do you even start? Having now coordinated two such meetings, I can answer that question: Start with a working coffee machine. At the first of these meetings, the snazzy built-in coffee machine provided by the meeting place malfunctioned and flooded so we had to abandon the idea of making a pot of coffee– and the look on people’s faces as they tried to get coffee out of an empty pot can only be described as “crestfallen.” But eventually we got it working, and the meeting took off from there. That first day our topic was water quality issues. During the second meeting, we tackled the larger and somewhat more amorphous category of “habitat” issues.

Why were we meeting at all? As an Oregon Sea Grant Natural Resources Policy Fellow placed at the Tillamook Estuaries Partnership for a year, it is my job to coordinate the revision of the organization’s Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan, or CCMP. The original CCMP came out in 1999, and devotes a chapter each to habitat, water quality, erosion and sedimentation, flooding, citizen involvement, and monitoring. These early meetings are a way to meet with many of the agencies we partner with and get a sense of the issues they feel are most pressing; what they feel has changed since the original CCMP was written; and how these evolving policies can best be implemented.

It’s very satisfying to get twenty people in a room—a feat in itself because of so many busy schedules—and talking about these big issues and the long-term plans for addressing them. For me, this experience has really driven home how important it is to, well, talk to people. Reading and solo research is important, but nothing can quite substitute for the understanding that comes from conversing with the players who have been involved with the issue at hand for two, five, ten years. In fact, some of the meeting participants were involved in the drafting of the original plan back in the mid-90’s. Because they were starting from scratch, that process was much more intense. The people involved met every week for five years.

For the revision, we’re condensing that time frame. We’ll be holding another couple of meetings in February to narrow down and clarify the brainstorming list produced by the first meetings, and then we’ll be holding public information sessions in March to present a rough draft of the management plan and ask for input from the community. In early May, my time at TEP ends. I may not leave with the plan finalized, but I do think I’ll be able to produce a solid rough draft or outline at the very least before I leave TEP. Certainly I’ll leave with a better understanding of the process of planning an organization’s future and a knack for jury-rigging reluctant coffee machines.

SRGP Awards Announced

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For this round, the SRGP has awarded 22 emergency service buildings a total of $13.4 million and 13 public schools a total of $14.7 million.  Complete lists of these awards are attached here (School Award List Names and Amounts & Emergency Service Buildings Awards), along with a press release from Oregon’s Senate President Peter Courtney(PR-seismicgrantawards).

$100 Million for the SRGP!

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See the exciting message below from Yumei Wang, Geotechnical Engineer at the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI):

Dear SRGP colleagues,

I am excited to inform you that the just-released 2015-2017 Governor’s recommended budget includes $100 million for earthquake safety of public schools and emergency response facilities (page 408 of http://www.oregon.gov/gov/priorities/Pages/budget.aspx). If approved by the next Legislature, this would mark a significant increase over the 2013-2015 budget of $30 million for schools and emergency response facilities.

Many more thousands of lives will be protected. Funds would be distributed to through the state’s seismic rehabilitation grant program (SRGP), which was initiated by Oregon Emergency Management and now administered by the Oregon Business Development Department. This grant program uses DOGAMI’s 2007 seismic needs database, available at http://www.oregongeology.org/sub/projects/rvs/default.htm.

To date, this grant program has funded 22 K-12 schools, which has helped to protect over 8,600 school children, 3 higher ed institutions and 18 emergency response facilities in our communities. It is slated to fund additional ~$30 million in grants on February 15, 2015. This critically important progress would not not have happened without many key players, especially Senate President Peter Courtney, OSSPAC, staff from OEM, OBDD and DOGAMI, Ted Wolf, SRGP committee members, as well as other partners including many of you.

In our future, we still have a whole lot of work ahead to meet the state deadlines of seismically safe schools and emergency response facilities. My hope is to make our school children safer and community resilience a reality.