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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2017
Recovery six months after Cascadia could still be grim
This is the fourth part of a
series on a potential Cascadia
Subduction Zone disaster
Hurricane
Katrina’s
aftermath offers
some lessons
By JADE McDOWELL
EO Media Group
As those in charge of emer-
gency preparedness try to
understand what the aftermath
of Cascadia might look like
six months after the quake,
Hurricane Katrina can offer
some lessons.
The hurricane hit New
Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005,
breaching levees and flood-
ing 80 percent of the city. An
estimated 1,800 people were
killed by the hurricane and
its aftermath and more than
1.3 million evacuees from the
region submitted aid appli-
cations to the Federal Emer-
gency Management Agency
from new addresses across all
50 states.
Six months later, the Tulsa
World reported only 38 per-
cent of New Orleans residents
had returned to the city. Half
of the 60 million cubic yards
of debris had been removed
from the city, and only one
third of the city’s struc-
tures had working electric-
ity. Where utilities had been
restored “Help Wanted” signs
decorated every business win-
dow, the newspaper reported,
and restaurants served limited
menus.
At a morgue near Baton
Rouge, 86 bodies remained
AP Photo/David J. Phillip
A man moves items damaged by floodwaters in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in
2005 in Slidell, La., near New Orleans. Emergency responders look to the disaster as a
guide for what to expect in the months after a potential massive earthquake and tsunami
in the Pacific Northwest.
unidentified. More than 2,000
people were still listed as
missing. Some of them had
turned up safe without rela-
tives notifying the govern-
ment, but authorities estimated
there were still hundreds of
bodies that had been washed
out to sea or were still buried
in rubble. Only 20 of the city’s
128 public schools were oper-
ational, and more than 48,000
families were living in FEMA
trailers.
Some families never
returned to Louisiana.
Still empty and rotting
Umatilla County commis-
sioner Larry Givens said he
visited New Orleans three
years ago and saw hundreds
of homes still sitting empty
and rotting. Some homeown-
ers died, while others gave up
after being defrauded by fake
contractors who took their
money to rebuild and disap-
peared. Some found new jobs
and new lives in places like
Houston, which took in an
estimated 250,000 refugees.
“Those people left and for
every week they were gone,
that many more said ‘Forget
it,’” Givens said.
He said in the event of a
Cascadia earthquake, Umatilla
County would also likely have
people who decided to stay in
Eastern Oregon after fleeing
the west side of the state. The
state’s Cascadia Subduction
Zone Catastrophic Response
plan notes that east side hotels,
motels, empty buildings, fore-
closed housing and other avail-
able spaces will all be used for
temporary housing.
Even if refugees wanted
to return home, the state esti-
mates it will take six months
to a year to restore water and
sewer services to the val-
ley and one to three years to
restore it to the coastal cities.
Recovery from Hurricane
Katrina was hindered in part
by the confusing patchwork
of overlapping jurisdictions
that allowed agencies to pass
the buck or caused them to
duplicate efforts. Tom Hebert,
a public policy consultant liv-
ing on the Umatilla Indian
Reservation, wrote a policy
paper afterward proposing
that the federal government
create regional development
authorities to coordinate a sin-
gle response to natural disas-
ters. Their locations around
the country would be based on
likely disaster scenarios.
“Cascadia would play into
the scientifically placed, prep-
ositioned authorities,” Hebert
said.
Alphabet soup
For now, however, the
state’s emergency plan for
Cascadia describes the under-
taking of rebuilding utilities
and other infrastructure with
this alphabet soup: “Deploy
Federal and State teams to
evaluate damage and estab-
lish priorities: OEM and
FEMA Public Assistance Pro-
gram and Technical Assistance
Contractor staff. ODOT and
FHWA (roads and bridges),
ORWARN, DEQ, U.S. EPA
(water and wastewater facil-
ities), and PUC, ODOE,
USACE (power, levees, and
water control facilities).”
Joe Franell, chairman of
the Oregon Broadband Advi-
sory Council, said the recov-
ery phase will take place in
a situation where the inter-
net, and by extension banking
services like debit cards, will
be down all over the state for
“months.”
“For some period of time
we will be a cash and barter
society,” he said.
Franell said how quickly
the shelves are restocked in
stores will vary on a busi-
ness-by-business
basis,
depending on their prepared-
ness and how their suppliers
were affected.
In such conditions it will be
tempting for Umatilla County
residents to become refu-
gees themselves, and ride out
the first six months or so with
family in another state. How-
ever, fuel for vehicles and gen-
erators is not expected to be
available to regular citizens
for “months and months,” so if
a person’s gas tank was almost
empty when the earthquake
hit they might not be going
anywhere.
The best thing people can
do, then, Franell said, is work
to be personally prepared and
to help their communities and
neighborhoods prepare to get
through Cascadia together.
Rebuilding from the ruins of disaster
This is the final part of a
series on a potential Cascadia
Subduction Zone disaster.
Cascadia’s
impacts would
last for years
By JADE McDOWELL
EO Media Group
As Oregonians prepare for a
Cascadia earthquake, they face
the daunting idea that some-
day life will change drastically
for the entire region — without
warning.
The Federal Emergency
Management Agency has esti-
mated a decades-long recov-
ery. “When it happens, it will
change the Pacific Northwest
for our lifetimes,” Joe Franell
said.
Franell, as CEO of Eastern
Oregon Telecomm and chair-
man of the Oregon Broadband
Advisory Council, is one of the
many people working to pre-
pare for the worst.
They know the next Cas-
cadia event may not happen in
their lifetime. Based on geo-
logical evidence of past quakes
over 2,000 years, scientists say
that in the next 50 years there
is a 1 in 3 chance that a partial
slip of the Cascadia Subduc-
tion Zone will cause an earth-
quake of at least an 8.0 mag-
nitude, while there is a 1 in 10
chance of a full slip that would
cause an earthquake 9.0 or
higher.
But they also know they
must act on the knowledge they
have. If the odds are against us
and Cascadia hits sooner rather
than later, preparation will save
lives. And after the time for
saving lives is over, prepara-
tion could also help save the
economy.
8 million people
More than 8 million people
live west of the Cascades in the
Cascadia zone, which stretches
from Northern California to
southern British Columbia.
The region is home to major
companies including Nike,
Amazon, Boeing and Micro-
soft, and data centers for tech
companies like Facebook and
Google dot the region.
Seattle and Portland alone
represent $450 billion in annual
economic activity, according to
the Cascadia Rising exercise
scenario, and billions more
are generated through coastal
ports that will most certainly
be destroyed by a major earth-
quake and tsunami.
The state estimates that
if Cascadia happened now it
would take three to five years
to rebuild all the roads and
bridges that collapsed during
the earthquake.
The economic impact of
such destruction would be felt
across the country. When Japan
experienced a magnitude 9.0
earthquake in 2011, one year
later the Japan Times reported
that 644 companies had gone
into bankruptcy because of the
earthquake, leaving behind $8
billion in liabilities and shed-
ding 11,412 jobs.
The Oregon Resilience
Plan, written by a state com-
mittee to educate legislators on
what needs to be done to pre-
pare for Cascadia, estimates
$32 billion in economic losses
for Oregon after Cascadia,
unless the state implements
major seismic upgrades to
buildings, roads, bridges, air-
ports and utility infrastructure.
“We cannot avoid the future
earthquake, but we can choose
either a future in which the
earthquake results in grim dam-
age and losses and a society
diminished for a generation,
or a future in which the earth-
quake is a manageable disas-
ter without lasting impact,” the
report reads. “We need to start
preparing now by assessing
the vulnerability of our build-
ings, lifelines, and social sys-
tems, and then developing and
implementing a sustained pro-
gram of replacement, retro-
fit, and redesign to make Ore-
gon resilient to the next great
earthquake.”
“We know how to engineer
buildings, roads, and power
lines to withstand this earth-
quake; the hard part will be to
Associated Press/File Photo
Portland’s four oldest bridges are over 100 years old and
county engineers estimate seismic retrofits alone are ex-
pected to cost at least $75 million. As it stands now, it
would take three to five years to rebuild all the roads and
find the will, commitment, and
persistence needed to trans-
form our state.”
Aftermath forum
At a Cascadia After-
math forum last week at Blue
Mountain Community Col-
lege, speakers Franell, Uma-
tilla County emergency man-
ager Tom Roberts and college
faculty member Philip Schmitz
said it is critical the state con-
tinue to plan and to invest in
seismic upgrades.
A $25 million retrofitting
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of the Pittock Building in Port-
land, for example, could pre-
vent the collapse of the 1913-
era building through which all
of the state’s internet flows.
“This is going to potentially
be one of the largest events in
recorded history,” Roberts told
the audience. “It might not
happen in our lifetimes, but it
is important for all of us today
to know what to expect so we
can pass that information on
to the next generation, so they
can pass it on to the next gen-
eration, until it does happen.”
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F EBRUARY 27
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