Earthquake! The Big One is Coming And Portland Is Not Ready, Says Report

The Big One - a 9.0 earthquake - will inevitably strike along the Cascadia Subduction Zone where Portland is located. Some scientists say that we are already overdue for such an event.

A new report commissioned by The City Club of Portland says the city isn't really ready for that. And it's not clear the city ever will be.

"A 9.0 megathrust earthquake at the Cascadia subduction zone will shake the Pacific Northwest to its foundations," the report said. "Minimizing damage and maximizing community capacities to respond will speed Portland’s recovery."

The report focused on five areas it called the "linchpins of resilience" and the steps the city can take to help make sure the city can bounce back from such a disaster.

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The five areas are: fuel, buildings, lifelines, people, and coordinated planning and investment in resilience. In each area, the report found problems and offered ideas to fix them.

"Liquid fuel will power both rescue and recovery," they write. Yet... "Almost 90 percent of the state's liquid fuel is funneled through fuel tanks" on a six-mile stretch on the west bank of the Willamette that were built on a soils likely to liquify in a quake.

"That would cause the tanks to tilt and rupture, triggering a massive environmental disaster and creating a fuel shortage that would hobble both short-term rescue and long-term rebuilding."

Then there's buildings.

"In a resilient city, most people would remain in their homes and return to their workplaces after a disaster," the report says. "But few Portland structures – new construction as well as old – would be functional after a Cascadia earthquake."

By lifelifines, the report was referring to the city's many bridges that connect Portland to the rest of the world.

"A Cascadia earthquake could devastate Portland's brittle transportation network," says the report, not building anyone's confidence by reminding people the network is already 'brittle.'

"Roads, runways, marine terminals, rail tracks, bridges and approaches to bridges are at high risk from soil liquefaction, landslides and debris from damaged buildings

"Immediately after a major quake, our rivers will become barriers to recovery."

The report points out that while the newly built Tilikum Crossing would likely survive, the approaches to it would not.

"The complexity of impacts resulting from a major earthquake is difficult to imagine," the report found. "A multitude of physical, financial, business, education and social networks will be damaged."

The City Club has many recommendations including:

• Multnomah County should begin upgrading or replacing the Burnside Bridge within three years;
• The Legislature should allow cities and counties to grant property tax exemptions to offset retrofitting costs;
• School districts in the Portland metro area should provide students and their parents with comprehensive information about earthquake risks and preparedness strategies;
• Portland and other local governments should appoint a resilience officer or designate an existing high-level position to be responsible for resilience efforts; and
• The Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries should commission a geotechnical study of the soils in the Critical Energy Infrastructure (CEI) Hub and alternatives for soil hardening. If grant funding is unavailable, the Legislature should appropriate funds for the study.

You can read the whole report here.

Photo Trimet