Eugene weekly., October 24, 2013, Page 13, Image 13

Bruce says instead of being out of water for days,
imagine being out of water and power for weeks. “Thinking
about personal preparedness becomes a lifestyle choice.”
For example, having a cargo bike (see sidebar) becomes an
element of disaster preparedness. “It’s not a bag you stock
up anymore.”
He says that because Lane County’s natural disasters
have been relatively minor — it’s rare that a storm leaves
us without power for more than a few hours — it can be
hard to get people to prepare for a dramatic disaster like an
earthquake, let alone climate change.
Oregon may seem quiet when it comes to natural
hazards, but the silence is deceptive. Bruce says he places
natural hazards in two categories: First are those on a
chronic, annual basis such as fl oods, wildfi re, winter storms
and windstorms. These chronic hazard events sometimes
rise to the level of a disaster, he says.
Then there are catastrophic events. “The obvious one
we are most concerned about is the Cascadia subduction
earthquake and the subsequent tsunami event that will
follow,” he says. Geological records show that the Cascadia
Subduction Zone produces magnitude 8.0 earthquakes
about once every 250 years and magnitude 9.0 every 500.
The last mega-earthquake in Oregon happened in 1700,
according to geological and historical records, and even
Native American legends.
According to the DOGAMI report, the Cascadia
earthquake could be as large as a magnitude 9.2, “which
would shake a substantial portion of the Pacifi c Northwest
and create a tsunami that would fl ood low-lying coastal
areas.” The report says a magnitude 8.0 or higher quake
“would likely result in thousands of fatalities and widespread,
devastating damage throughout western Oregon.”
Bruce says not only does Oregon face tsunami damage
the way Japan did, but also we are far less prepared for the
earthquake damage because we have not had a history of
The Cascadia Subduction
Zone produces magnitude 8.0
earthquakes about once every
250 years and magnitude 9.0
quakes every 500 years.
— “EARTHQUAKE RISK STUDY FOR OREGON’S
CRITICAL ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE HUB”
quakes that take out old buildings and instill a culture of pre-
paredness. “So much of our infrastructure is built so people
will survive,” Howard adds, “but not so it will stay up.”
AT THE INTERSECTION OF CLIMATE AND DISASTER
In addition to fostering conversations between those who
are modeling climate change and those who are predicting
disaster, sometimes OPDR fi nds that conversations need to
happen within a community itself. Bruce tells the story of
how the city and Lane County had planned to use the UO’s
Mac Court as a place to house citizens in an emergency,
but they hadn’t checked as to where the school itself was
planning to put its students in an emergency. That place also
happened to be Mac Court. “There are a lot of assumptions
that get made,” Bruce says.
McRae says that Eugene is more collaborative than most
communities and is unique in that its “Community Climate
and Energy Action Plan” takes into account climate, natural
hazards and energy as it explores community resilience.
Coastal communities might have disaster experts
coming in one day to talk about how to plan for inundation
Biking Out of Disaster
EUGENE/SPRINGFIELD AREA COMMUNITY EMERGENCY RESPONSE
TEAM MEMBERS TEST A CARGO BIKE WITH A BUILTIN HAM RADIO
from tsunamis. Then another day climate change experts
say as oceans continue to rise, coastal communities need
to plan for the bigger waves and higher seas. If the natural
disaster experts are in dialogue with the climate change
experts than communities from the coast to the valley can
put into place changes that help them to be resilient from
both types of disasters, whether that’s by building higher
up from the ocean or river or moving critical infrastructure
like hospitals away from fl ood and tsunami zones.
While Lane County has seen high waters in the
past, climate change means there will be a diversity of
challenges, including something we are less prepared for
— extreme heat in the summers. “All of these challenges
are big challenges,” Bruce says, “and we need to break
down our traditional styles of doing business. Multiple
strategies are really important.”
In addition to the pipelines and fossil fuel infrastructure
Oregon already has in place, the state has also been dealing
with companies looking to export coal, liquefi ed natural
gas and oil. This raises the potential of disasters in the near
future — oil and coal spills into the Columbia River for
example — but it also raises the question of long-term
climate change related problems.
“From my perspective, those are really interesting and
complex policy problems,” Bruce says, “dealing with job
creation, exacerbating global warming and placing those
port facilities at risk.” For example, port facilities are now
up against sea level rise, larger waves and tsunamis and
they need to prepare for those problems.
So you have a port facility whose fossil fuel export
creates the climate change that causes the rising oceans.
“Are those two things compatible? Is that successful
adaptation?” Bruce asks. “I’m going to say hell no.” ■
For more on the work of the Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience
go to csc.uoregon.edu/opdr and for Eugene’s climate and energy plan go
to wkly.ws/1lc.
When roads are blocked and gas is scarce, bikes can be
a community’s best vehicles to bring relief to its residents
and restore order. On Oct. 12, 34 riders at Eugene’s fi rst-
ever Cargo Bike Disaster Relief Trials (DRT) demonstrated
some of the useful things cargo bikes can do.
Cargo bikes are built in many styles, and one visitor
to the DRT even brought a bike with an operational ham
radio built into the front. Another participant competed on
a cargo skateboard. But event organizer Austin McKimmey
says that long-tail cargo bikes — bikes with a longer rear
rack and deck — are the most popular in Eugene. “If you
try hard enough, you can strap anything on the back of
the bike — kids, adults, groceries, lumber, surfboard,” he
says. “Your average cargo bike will hold up to 400 pounds,
including riders.”
Riders at the DRT followed a 20-mile course with
checkpoints where supplies might be distributed after a
disaster, and the challenges included carrying bikes over
barriers, passing through 6 inches of water, traveling
through rough terrain, transporting both heavy and delicate
cargo, covering distance and navigating with only a paper
map. Lucas Strain from the Cascade Courier Collective
team won the race in 1:37 hours on a front-loading Long
Haul built at the Center for Appropriate Transport in Eugene.
Jason York, the city of Eugene’s emergency program
manager, says the event showed that cargo bikes can be
used for transport, spreading information and damage
assessment. “There’s a ton of things that we can use them
for, and I’m looking forward to sitting down and putting that
on paper and to fi gure out how we can actually make it offi cial
and roll them more into our planning process,” he says.
The biggest post-disaster advantage to cargo bikes, York
says, is that they don’t require a fuel source. “They’re far
more versatile and fl exible,” he says. “They don’t have to
necessarily follow the roadways, and that just gives us an
additional tool that’s fl exible in disaster response.”
— Words and photo by Shannon Finnell
eugeneweekly.com • October 24, 2013
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