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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (May 19, 2016)
10A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, MAY 19, 2016 Cascadia: ‘I’m probably scaring the hell out of people’ Continued from Page 1A expect from city services,” Herzig said. “And the reality of our situation with a Casca- dia event is that there’s going to be very little service left.” Later this month, a panel of four experts — Althea Rizzo, geologic hazards pro- gram manager at Oregon Emergency Management; Tyree Wilde, warning coor- dination meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmo- spheric Administration; Pat- rick Corcoran, coastal natural hazards specialist with Ore- gon State University; and Neal Bond, protection unity forester at the Oregon Department of Forestry — will speak at the Liberty Theater on Astoria and Clatsop County’s state of disaster readiness. The Community Emer- gency Preparedness Forum on May 31 will cover a range of natural disasters facing the North Coast, from win- ter storms to wildland ires to a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami. A short question-and-an- swer session will follow each presentation, and a longer dia- logue will take place at the end. Tables with resources and emergency preparedness gear will be set up in the lobby. The goal is partly to make citizens aware of the city and county’s plans and resources to confront disasters. But the forum will also drive home an unpleasant truth: In the irst days post-Cascadia, survivors may be on their own. “Even though it may be tough to take in, it’s something we need to start facing up to. Knowledge is power, particu- larly in something like this,” Herzig said. “It’s going to hap- pen, we just don’t know when. So the more we can prepare for it, the better.” Devastating to infrastructure Astoria does not face the same tsunami threat as Seaside and Cannon Beach because the city is several miles upriver from the coast, although it still faces signiicant waterfront inunda- tion from rising sea levels, Asto- ria Fire Chief Ted Ames said. The primary threat is the earthquake itself. “If we were to face a seismic event, like … the 9-point-something-magni- tude earthquake off the coast — that nearshore event — we know that it will be devastat- ing to infrastructure,” Asto- ria Police Chief Brad Johnston said. IF YOU GO What: Community Emergency Preparedness Forum Where: Liberty Theater, 1203 Commercial St. When: 6 to 8:30 p.m., May 31 Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Bridges will fail. Build- ings will fall. Large swaths of earth will liquefy and pro- duce landslides. City roads and streets — crushed, collapsed or covered in debris — will be impassable. Even with the best of inten- tions and most professional of forces, Astoria police and ire departments will have severely diminished — perhaps non- existent — rescue capabili- ties after a megaquake and tsunami. “If we have that scale of an event, you will not see irst responders rolling up in their patrol cars. It’s not going to be possible,” Johnston said. “When you think about Asto- ria and the geography and the nature of the roadways, there’s a good chance it’s going to be very dificult to get places (with) things other than horses, mountain bikes, dirt bikes, ATVs and those kinds of things.” The ire department will be in the same situation: “I don’t think it’s realistic to think that we would be driving ire trucks around town trying to help people,” Ames said. Self-suficiency “I can’t sit here as ire chief and tell you exactly what’s going to happen, ‘cause I don’t have a clue,” Ames said. “I just don’t think that it’s a real great outlook when we think about a major event. “I’m probably scaring the hell out of people, but that’s the way it is,” he added. Corcoran said that, as soon as high-magnitude earth- quakes occur, power lines fall and arc, and gas and water lines break. “So now you’ve got gas ires starting all over the place and no water to put them out,” he said. “People’s cur- rent sense of, ‘Well, when my house is on ire, the entire ire department comes to help me,’ is wrong.” Johnston advises citizens to prepare themselves, men- tally and materially, such that they could survive without irst responders and even help their neighbors. “It’s really important for people to have that ability to care for themselves in those initial hours because it’s going to be tough,” he said, adding that emergency management specialists now tell people to plan for a period of self-sufi- ciency lasting at least 14 days. “It will be some time before government is able to re-estab- lish that infrastructure, and the people are going to have to be prepared for that.” “Professionals don’t like to say — especially cops and ire- men — that they’re not going to be there for you,” Corcoran observed. “So, when they’re telling us that they’re not going to be there for us, I think you really need to pay atten- tion to that.” A reminder Focusing on emergency preparedness is one of the City Council’s goals for the year. “We’ve been lagging behind places like Cannon Beach and some others. They’re much more exposed to the tsunami, so they’re much more aware of the danger,” Herzig said. “In Asto- ria, pretty much most of us are safe from the tsunami, but the preceding earthquake is going to be devastating, and we need to start becoming aware of that.” It takes a serious mental effort for many people to imag- ine themselves in an emergency as dire as Cascadia, let alone how they would act, he added. “Nobody wants to go there.” Corcoran sees this resis- tance to contemplating natural disasters as a product of evo- lutionary hardwiring; creeping threats, whether Cascadia or climate change, tend not to reg- ister as important. Of course, this condition makes preparing for these threats all the more challenging. “In general, preparing for hazards is something, as human beings, we tend not to do,” he said. “We have to remind our- selves to do that once in a while.” The emergency prepared- ness forum, he said, is intended as such a reminder. “We haven’t been around the block before on (Cascadia). We have to share what the research says, what happened in Japan, other kinds of places,” he said. “When it happens again, I guar- antee you, we’re going to wish we would’ve done more.” George Vetter/For EO Media Group Seaside High School senior Caitlynn Howe plays a victim during a countywide training exercise for the Community Emergency Response Team program in December. Joshua Bessex/The Daily Astorian Safety and survival equipment are shown in the back of a truck during a tsunami drill with the Coast Guard in January. Election: Goldthorpe still ‘staying hopeful,’ and patient Continued from Page 1A Goldthorpe would face McIntosh in a runoff if her vote count drops below 50 percent after all ballots are counted and the results are oficial. “We are still staying hope- ful and trying to be patient,” he said. Clatsop County Clerk Val- erie Crafard estimates there are nearly 300 ballots left to be counted. More than 100 are challenged ballots that do not have signatures or the sig- natures do not match voter records. Other ballots were torn, wet or need the markings to be enhanced. The clerk’s ofice is also waiting on ballots that were dropped off in other counties. Oficial results will be cer- tiied in June. As of the most recent count Wednesday morning, McIn- tosh had collected 5,021 votes, Goldthorpe had 2,895 votes, and Woltjer earned 2,057 votes. A total of 1,907 votes in the judgeship race were left blank and discarded as undervotes. Had even a fraction of voters who skipped the race made a decision, their votes could have inluenced the outcome. The candidates believe many of these voters may not have known enough about them or the court system to conidently cast a vote. “You look at those under- votes, and it’s people saying, ‘I really don’t know and I’m not going to cast a vote just to vote,’” McIntosh said. Goldthorpe could request a recount, but he has not enter- tained that idea. “I would have to consider that based on what the inal result was,” he said. The three candidates are vying to replace Judge Philip Nelson, the county’s longest serving elected oficial, who is retiring this year after 24 years on the bench. David Goldthorpe Port: Budget could grow by $10 million, depending on FEMA help Continued from Page 1A “Additionally, the 2016- 17 budget will recognize the need for the Port, as a sig- niicant contributor to the region’s economic health, to lead in the facilitation of important job-creation strat- egies,” he said. Knight said that includes the Port spurring the creation of a state-of-the-art boat- yard and repair facility on the Skipanon Peninsula, cre- ating a strategic plan for the airport in concert with local agencies, establishing a mas- ter plan for the central water- front with the city of Astoria and determining the highest and best use of North Tongue Point. A $10 million maybe The budget could grow by another $10 million, depend- ing on how much the Port gets from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to repair storm damage on Pier 2. Will Isom, staff accountant for the Port, said the agency is in the process of creating work plans for each site with dam- age. FEMA would potentially reimburse the Port for repairs. Isom stressed the grants and FEMA money heavily skew the budget. He said the Port is expecting $8.8 mil- lion in operating revenue, and $7.2 million in operating expenses, without the more than $16 million expected in grants and disaster relief, $736,000 in county tax rev- enue and $130,000 in timber taxes. Capital projects Besides the $10 mil- lion for disaster repairs and $5 million for runway reha- bilitation, the Port is look- ing to inance $1.5 million to develop a stormwater treat- ment facility on Pier 3. The Port was put on notice by the state Department of Environmental Quality after copper levels in storm run- off near piers 3 and 1 were above the limit allowed on an industrial stormwater permit. Maul Foster Alongi, an envi- ronmental consulting irm, designed a bioswale for Pier 3 that will treat stormwa- ter using a series of settling ponds and seafood shells to ilter out metals. The Port is seeking help from tenants to inance the system. The Port is also spending $60,000 to install stormwa- ter treatment at North Tongue Point after similar issues. Staffing The Port is planning to employ the equivalent of nearly 35 full-time employ- ees with a payroll of more than $2.9 million in sal- ary, wages and beneits. The agency mostly provides full-time positions, with the exception of a largely part- time security staff. Last iscal year, the Port secured $724,106 in grant revenue, which was good by its own standards but much less than the $2.6 million in annual grant revenue ports of similar size averaged. To get more support, the Port is bud- geting for a grant writer as an assistant to Matt McGrath, the director of operations. The Port is also budget- ing for a manager for North Tongue Point, an industrial facility the agency leases from Missoula, Montana-based Washington Development Corp. but wants to buy. The Port Budget Com- mittee next meets at noon on May 31.