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