Earthquake Preparedness: The Big One is Coming - How Safe is Your Building?

The Big One is coming.

It's not a secret. For months there has been discussion about how the Cascade Subduction Zone is well overdue a major earthquake.

On Thursday, the City of Portland released a new interactive map and website detailing the location of some 1,800 buildings - referred to as Unreinforced Masonry Buildings (URMs) that are vulnerable during a quake.

These are buildings - mostly built before the 1960s - that were constructed with brick and little to no steel reinforcement.

The last time the city did a similar survey was in the 1990s.

Since that time, around 13 percent of the buildings had been fully or partially retrofitted.

About eight percent of the buildings have been demolished.

The URM Seismic Retrofit Project is currently working on a mandatory URM retrofit policy -- along with incentives for building owners -- for City Council to consider later this year. Other cities on the West Coast, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, already have similar policies in place. The public will be able to comment on the proposed policy later this year. Information on the project can be found at https://www.portlandoregon.gov/pbem/urmproject.