Pase 10
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© b s e r ü e r ____________________________ M arch 20.2013
Prepsfor Disaster
photo by
C ari H achmann /T he P ortland O bserver
Michael Wieber, owner of NW Seismic, shows what works and what doesn’t when it comes to seismically retrofitting homes
to withstand damages from a major earthquake, such as bolting a home to its foundation to resist lateral shifting.
c o n t i n u e d f r o m fron t
With more time to focus on his house,
Moro did some homework before investing.
He researched seismic retrofitting compa
nies in California, where earthquakes are
more prominent, to compare technique and
equipment standards with those in Oregon.
He chose NW Seismic, a seismic retrofit
ting company based in Portland that bolts
steel side plates or UFP10’s between a home’s
concrete foundation and the floor or wall
framing to resist lateral shifting during an
earthquake.
NW Seismic Owner Michael Wieber said
many older homes, which are a majority in
Portland, are not bolted to their homes ad
equately and floor systems aren’t attached
to the walls beneath them securely enough.
And some contractors, he said, have been
installing the wrong hardware for years in
cluding the Simpson FJA, which are panel
supports designed to resist uplift, but aren’t
strong enough to handle the load an earth
quake will produce.
“While the hardware is great in the event
o f a hurricane— it is essentially useless in an
earthquake,” said Wieber, who established
NW Seismic in 2009.
The shift plates are able to resist up to
1,340 pounds of lateral shifting, he said,
while panel supports used for uplift only
resist 185 pounds.
W ieber said M oro’s house is “a typical
Portland house” meaning its foundation has
full-height concrete walls. With an unfin
ished basement, it is easier and less costly for
his crew to install the retrofit hardware, which
costs around $2,000.
Drilling 32 steel shift plates, eight on each
basement wall, they finished M oro’s home in
one full day.
For an additional cost, the company also
installed a gas shut-off valve system, the
Northridge M75, which activates and turns
the gas off when there is a certain amount of
ground shaking.
M oro, who rem odeled his kitchen and
dining room before going through with
the seism ic retrofit, said he has put a lot o f
tim e and m oney in his home. He called the
seism ic retrofit a cost effective fix that
should have been done when the house
was built in 1913.
T he em erg en cy b u reau and the P o rt
lan d B ureau o f D ev elo p m en t S ervices
w ill c o n tin u e a se ries o f c la sse s on
seism ically upgrading hom es at 7:30 p.m.
o n T h u r s d a y , M a r c h 21 a t th e
M u ltn o m ah C o unty A rts C en ter, 7688
S.W . C ap ito l Hw y.
Monster Quake Would be Devastating
10,000 deaths and
billions in economic
damage possible
(AP) — M ore than 10,000 people could
die when — not if — a m onster earthquake
and tsunam i occur ju st off the Pacific
N orthw est coast, researchers told Oregon
legislators Thursday.
C oastal tow ns w ould be inundated.
Schools, buildings and bridges would col
lapse, and econom ic dam age could hit $32
billion.
These findings were published in a chill
ing new report by the Oregon Seism ic
Safety Policy A dvisory Com m ission, a
group o f m ore than 150 volunteer experts.
In 2011, the Legislature authorized the
study o f what w ould happen if a quake and
tsunami such as the one that devastated
Japan hit the Pacific Northwest.
The C ascadia Subduction Zone, ju st
o ff the regional coastline, produced a
m ega-quake in the year 1700. Seism ic ex
perts say another m onster quake and tsu
nami are overdue.
"This earthquake will hit us again," Kent
Yu, an engineer and chairm an o f the com
m ission, told law m akers. "It's ju st a m atter
o f how soon."
W hen it hits, the report says, there will
be devastation and death from N orthern
C alifornia to British Columbia.
M any Oregon com m unities will be left
w ithout water, power, heat and telephone
service. G asoline supplies will be dis
rupted.
The 2011 Japan quake and tsunami were
a wakeup call for the Pacific Northwest.
G overnm ents have been taking a closer
look at w hether the region is preparecffor
som ething sim ilar and discovering it is
not.
Oregon legislators requested the study
so they could better inform them selves
about what needs to be done to prepare
and recover from such a giant natural
disaster.
The report says that geologically, O r
egon and Japan are m irror images. Despite
the devastation in Japan, that country was
m ore prepared than Oregon because it had
spent billions on technology to reduce the
dam age, the report says.