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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 20, 2016)
BY AMY KLARUP • Ward 1 Eugene City Council candidate Emily Semple’s campaign has GOTV (get out the vote) activities planned for the next two weeks. Learn more about Semple’s grassroots movement and how to help her maintain the progressive seat that has been held by George Brown. Contact Campaign Manager Kristen Brandt at 541-515-2102 or emilysemple.com for locations and further information. • Educational old growth forest hike to McKenzie View, one of the first Bureau of Land Management’s timber sales under the new Revision Management Plan, the Cascadia Forest Defenders say. Meet at the Growers Market parking lot, 454 Willamette at 10 am Sunday, Oct. 23, for a carpool out to Leaburg. Dress according to weather, bring a lunch and water. Return at 4 pm. FREE. • Regina Lawrence, director of the George S. Turnbull Portland Center and Agora Journalism Center, will discuss “Ready for Hillary? Gender and Media in the Presidential Campaigns” 6:30 pm Oct. 25 in room 175 of the UO Knight Law Center. Lawrence is a nationally recognized authority on political communication, civic engagement, gender and politics, and the role of media in public discourse about politics and policy. She is the author of Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail and When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina. FREE. • Natural resources timber harvesting specialists Steve Bowers and Francisca Belart of the OSU Extension Service Forestry will share all the things you need to consider when building your own cabin 6 pm Oct. 27 at the OSU Extension Office, 996 Jefferson Street, Eugene. Register at extension. oregonstate.edu/lane/building-cabin-your- property, email lauren.grand@oregonstate. edu or call 541-579-2150 to register or for more information. The cost is $15 per family/ ownership, and refreshments and materials will be provided. • The Lane County Concussion hosts Battle of the Beards co-ed roller derby tournament Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 22 and 23, at the Willamalane Center in Springfield. Concussion says that “Piggybacking off a recent viral #NotInOurLockerRoom graphic and the subsequent requests for T-shirts with the logo,” it will be selling #NotInOurLockerRoom merchandise with all of the proceeds going to Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS). Concussion says after it posted a retooled logo of a skull in purple and teal with a message about domestic violence awareness and sexual assault awareness, “the Facebook post received more than 55,000 views within the first 24 hours, and roller derby teams from around the world were creating similar graphics and taking the same stance against sexual assault.” For more information about Battle of the Beards, visit the Facebook event page or contact James Brains at lccinterleaguerep@gmail.com. Games run 11 am to 9 pm on Saturday, and 9 am to 7 pm Sunday. Tickets are $15 for a day pass or $25 for the whole weekend. 8 October 20, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com SCHOOL BUILDINGS COULD BE SAFER, MORE EARTHQUAKE RESILIENT “A re my children safe?” It’s a thought that crosses the mind of Eu- gene School District 4J parent Constance Van Flandern when she drops her kids off at school. “Nobody wants to talk about children dy- ing,” Van Flandern notes, but with a massive earthquake pre- dicted to hit Oregon, she says the time has come to have a community conversation about the earthquake resilience of Eugene’s schools. As of now, information is limited, and parents whose chil- dren attend these schools find the ambiguity troubling. Some call for better planning and more vision on the part of local school districts, pointing to other districts around the state like the Beaverton School District near Portland, which has taken steps toward creating schools that double as emergency shel- ters, built to the highest standards. When the Cascadia Subduction Zone triggers a mega-earth- quake, parents want to know that school buildings will not col- lapse and, ideally, whether they could serve as shelters in the aftermath. Every year, the Oregon Department of Education issues each Oregon school district a report card, which purports to give information on earthquake resilience. On last year’s report card for Eugene School District 4J, under the heading “seismic safety rating,” the report offers a link that promises to provide a “detailed report for each school.” Clicking the link, however, leads to a hodgepodge of infor- mation, short on detail and confusing to piece together. From the reports alone, it’s difficult to discern which schools are the facility could be repaired for continued use after a moderate earthquake,” Brantley adds. What “moderate” means is up for interpretation, but scientists do know that the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a giant fault along the West Coast of the United States, has produced 9.0 magnitude earthquakes in the past, and it will happen again. The last earth- quake occurred in 1700, and the next could happen at any time. According to the Oregon Resilience Plan, published in 2013, Oregon strives to have schools up and running a month after the earthquake hits. It’s unclear if 4J’s buildings will meet that goal. Kari Parsons, a member of the parent council at Edison Ele- mentary School, says she’d like to see 4J adopt a comprehensive plan related to earthquake preparation, with more clearly stated information on the safety level of each building in the event of a large earthquake. “There needs to be some visionary, solution-oriented plan- ning,” she says. While schools aren’t required by law to be built to Category IV, the standard of hospitals and fire stations, it’s certainly an op- tion. 4J’s new schools are built to Category III with the standards required by the International Building Code — these standards “allow occupants to safely evacuate the building and reduce damage to the building, and increase the likelihood it would be able to continue to function after an earthquake,” Brantley says. But when schools are built to the highest level of resiliency, they can serve the community as emergency shelters. According to Michelle Taylor of the American Red Cross, Eugene has 50 buildings that could serve as potential shelters after a mega-earthquake. Taylor says the Red Cross doesn’t dis- ‘From a recovery standpoint, getting children back in school so families start to feel settled is very important.’ — C H R I S P O L A N D , C O N S U LT I N G E N G I N E E R earthquake safe, which ones aren’t and which will withstand the inevitable Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake, which has a 15 to 20 percent likelihood of hitting Oregon in the next 50 years, according to the latest research from Oregon State University. Van Flandern, whose daughter goes to South Eugene High School, says she worries about the timeline and scope of 4J’s seismic planning. “We’re working on borrowed time,” Van Flandern says. “The earthquake could happen right now.” According to Ben Brantley, 4J’s facilities manager, all schools in the 4J system were updated in the mid-1990s and early 2000s to meet the seismic code of that era. Brantley says occupants should be able to safely exit the building in the event of a moderate earthquake. A 2007 study by the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) found that six 4J schools had a high risk of collapsing in a large-scale earthquake. The as- sessment used rapid visual screening to grade risk and did not factor recent upgrades into its scores. “Most of the district’s schools also have had additional ret- rofitting to limit structural damage and make it more likely that tribute the list because the volunteer-based organization can’t guarantee that all shelters will survive an emergency event like an earthquake. “We use a lot of churches and a lot of schools, but in a list of 10, we might have two that are available for shelter,” Taylor says. “We don’t know which shelters will actually be standing or habitable after a catastrophic earthquake.” Once the earthquake happens, Taylor explains, the Red Cross will survey shelter sites and determine which ones are still safe to inhabit. Kent Yu, a Portland-based structural engineer and leader in community resilience planning, says that school buildings have the potential to serve as excellent emergency shelters after the mega-earthquake, should communities choose to build their schools with resilience and recovery in mind. He recently co-authored a paper that looked at the Beaverton School District and its leadership in planning to build seven new schools “to exceed building code requirements in certain critical aspects to better support the community as resource centers and emergency shelters.” Schools are uniquely positioned to serve as shelters due to their even distribution throughout neighborhoods and because
