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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 2, 2019
Bridges: Years ago ‘the tsunami was not even considered’
Continued from Page A1
The fi nding is important,
said Pedro Lomonaco and
Solomon Yim, Oregon State
researchers who contrib-
uted to the study, because
it can help engineers under-
stand why bridges fail and
lead to more tsunami-resis-
tant bridges along the Ore-
gon Coast.
“The breaking of the
bearing connections was the
main type of bridge dam-
age seen in recent tsunamis,
showing that it’s critical to
quantify what the tsunami is
doing to these components
and decipher the underlying
physics,” Yim said.
Deadly examples
The need to better under-
stand wave impacts on
coastal bridges was largely
motivated by seeing bridges
destroyed during tsuna-
mis off Japan and Indone-
sia. Over the past 15 years,
big earthquakes have caused
tsunamis that killed more
than 250,000 people and
caused more than $200 bil-
lion in damage, the study
estimates, washing away
or dislodging hundreds of
bridges.
The research could help
coastal cities like Seaside,
which has several aging
bridges that are expected to
fail in a tsunami.
The topic has been raised
recently by City Councilor
Tom Horning, a geologist
who has long advocated ret-
rofi tting bridges as a top pri-
ority for the city.
With two major riv-
ers to cross before getting
to higher ground, having
bridges that can last will be
crucial to maintaining evac-
uation routes.
“Bridges are one of the
easiest, fastest connection
points to help people after
an emergency,” Lomonaco
said. “If you don’t have the
bridges, there is nothing you
can do.”
To fi nd answers, research-
ers simulated a tsunami on
a model bridge at the O.H.
Hinsdale Wave Research
Laboratory’s Large Wave
Flume in Corvallis.
Part of what researchers
found was that most bridges
are built too rigidly, Yim and
Lomonaco said.
Instead of seeing the con-
crete columns under a bridge
as infl exible blocks, imagine
them like springs. When the
tsunami hits the deck of a
bridge it will bend, making
it vibrate both back and forth
and up and down.
The bridge deck and pil-
ings not only feel the static
forces coming from the
earthquake and tsunami, but
the additional pressure from
these vibrations.
“We are changing the
paradigm ... to the con-
cept of thinking about how
a bridge is moving, chang-
ing,” Yim said.
The irregular shape of
traditional trusses and gird-
ers also creates unaccount-
ed-for turbulence, they said.
In general, the wall of water
should be moving in one
direction, but when it has to
go through trusses, the water
weaves in and out, add-
ing different hydrodynamic
forces that can compromise
the bridge’s stability.
“The high pressure that
developed under the bridge
played a signifi cant role on
the stability of the bridge,
and different mitigation
measures were tested, from
closing the gaps between
girders to incorporating
venting on the concrete
deck,” Lomonaco said.
More research
Given how young the area
of study is, more research is
needed to understand why
certain bridges survive and
why others do not, the team
says.
But researchers hope the
study gives engineers a bet-
ter understanding of the
physics of what happens
when a tsunami slams into a
bridge and opens the door to
designing coastal spans that
are better able to withstand
giant waves.
“Think back 10, 15 years
ago, the tsunami was not
even considered,” Yim said.
“We’ve come a long ways.”
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Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
Several bridges in Seaside have been determined to be insuffi cient in an earthquake or tsunami.
Also closed was the Grant
Tree Trail, a popular hiking
spot, because the govern-
ment shutdown halted main-
tenance and left the path dan-
gerously slick from ice and
snow, with at least one injury
reported, the park service
said.
Campers at Joshua Tree
National Park in Southern
California’s deserts were
reporting squabbles as dif-
ferent families laid claims
to sites, with no rangers
on hand to adjudicate, said
Ethan Feltges, who operates
the Coyote Corner gift shop
outside Joshua Tree.
Feltges and other busi-
ness owners around Joshua
Tree had stepped into the gap
as much as possible, haul-
ing trailers into the park to
empty overfl owing trash bins
and sweeping and stock-
ing restrooms that were still
open, Feltges said.
Feltges himself had set up
a portable toilet at his store to
help the visitors still stream-
ing in and out of the park. He
was spending his days stand-
ing outside his store, offering
tips about the park in place
of the rangers who normally
would be present.
“The whole community
has come together,” Felt-
ges said. “Everyone loves
Dakota Snider
A road lined with trash in Yosemite National Park in California.
the park. And there’s a lot of
businesses that actually need
the park.”
Some visitors have strung
Christmas lights in the twist-
ing Joshua trees, many of
which are hundreds of years
old, the Los Angeles Times
reported.
Most visitors were being
respectful of the desert wil-
derness and park facilities,
Joshua Tree’s superinten-
dent, David Smith, said in a
statement.
But some are seizing on
the shortage of park staffers
to off-road illegally and oth-
erwise damage the park, as
well as relieving themselves
in the open, a park state-
ment said. Joshua Tree said
it would begin closing some
campgrounds for all but day
use.
At Yosemite, Snider, the
local resident, said crowds of
visitors were driving into the
park to take advantage of free
admission, with only a few
park rangers working and a
limited number of restrooms
open.
Visitors were allowing
their dogs to run off-leash in
an area rich with bears and
other wildlife, and scatter-
ing bags of garbage along the
roads, Snider said.
“You’re
looking
at
Yosemite Falls and in front
of you is plastic bottles and
trash bags,” he said.
Offi cials at Rocky Moun-
tain National Park in Col-
orado said Monday they
were closing restrooms and
locking up trash bins in
many locations.
In Yellowstone National
Park, private companies
have picked up some of the
maintenance normally done
by federal workers. The con-
tractors that operate park
tours by snowmobile, buses
and vans are grooming trails,
hauling trash and replacing
toilet paper at pit toilets and
restrooms along their routes.
Nearly all roads inside
Yellowstone are normally
closed for winter, meaning
most visitors at this time of
the year access park attrac-
tions like Old Faithful or the
Grand Canyon of the Yellow-
stone through guides. Those
guides are splitting the cost
of grooming the trails used
by their vehicles to keep their
operations going, said Travis
Watt, general manager of See
Yellowstone Alpen Guides
based in West Yellowstone,
Montana.
The tour companies can
likely keep this system going
through the entire winter sea-
son if they need to, Watt said.
“It’s defi nitely not our
preference — the park ser-
vice does a good job doing
their thing and we hate to see
them out of work,” Watt said.
“But it’s something we can
handle.”
Gecker reported from San
Francisco. Matt Volz contrib-
uted from Helena, Montana.
10TH STREET
Continued from Page A1
ASTORIA
TRANSIT CENTER
Parks: ‘You’re looking at Yosemite Falls and
in front of you is plastic bottles and trash bags’
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Daly estimates he’s shut-
tled hundreds of people in the
tram between their hotels and
Fort George Brewery’s Fes-
tival of the Dark Arts each
February, helping to free up
parking and potentially keep-
ing impaired drivers off the
road.
Daly had insurance on the
Glam Tram through Berk-
shire Hathaway . After his
friend Robert “Jake” Jacob
died last year, he received a
call from an insurance agent,
who informed him the vehi-
cle had been running with-
out insurance for the past two
months.
Daly reached out to
numerous brokers around
the country, but he said he
couldn’t fi nd any takers aside
from one offer to insure the
Glam Tram and the Joy Train
for around $10,000 a year, far
above the $1,850 he had been
paying.
“There are all these new
requirements,” Daly said of
getting the tram registered
with the DMV. “I am now on
a do-not-insure list. By mak-
ing it legal, I’ve put myself in
a corner.”
Daly has received multi-
ple calls from people wanting
to charter the Glam Tram for
private events. But the vehi-
cle has to stay in storage until
it is sold or scrapped . Because
of the steep price of insur-
ance, he has also stopped
shuttling people around in the
Joy Train.
“The chartering, the fun
stuff, that’s all gone,” he said.
“People are mortifi ed by it.”
He has reached out to the
city about employing the tram
to take people along the Asto-
ria Riverwalk while the Asto-
ria Riverfront T rolley is out
of service during waterfront
bridge repairs, but he said he
doubts the city will bite.
Daly still plans to use
the Joy Train in a partner-
ship with 1859 m agazine to
deliver copies of the state-
wide lifestyle publication to
far-fl ung areas of Oregon.
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DMD, FAGD
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teeth are very import-
A: Children’s
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not only give the child chewing function,
cute esthetics, but also serve an important
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Is it possible for someone
Q: to
change your final
Tram: ‘By making it legal, I’ve put myself in a corner’
Continued from Page A1
prices for units we have on
A: Our
display are comparable to what
disposition arrangements
if they are prepaid?
is extremely difficult for
A: It someone
to arbitrarily make
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changes to a prepaid prearrangement
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law is written in favor of the on
the responsible party who made
prepaid their final expenses. Ergo,
someone cannot change the wishes of
individual who prepaid for full casket
burial to cremation or vice versa. The
only time I have seen this happen
is when there is a legitimate risk to
public health (if the person died from
an exotic strain of disease and /or
virulent pathogen)