10A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL July 15, 2015
C OUNCIL
Continued from page 3A
How the City Council selects
an individual for appointment
and the timeline for that pro-
cess is, however, not detailed in
within the Charter and is left to
he Council to decide. The Coun-
cil could even choose not to fi ll
the vacancy, but Meyers said
that course of action would be
inappropriate.
In other Council news:
Meyers reminded the Coun-
cil that Bohemia Mining Days
begins this week, and the Eu-
gene Symphony will visit the
Bohemia Park Amphitheater on
Monday. The park will open at 5
p.m., and the concert will start at
7 p.m. Concert goers could also
see the unveiling of a 12’ by 18’
American fl ag which would be
hoisted up a new 60’ pole by a
color guard while the symphony
plays the national anthem. The
fl ag and pole were paid for by
Steve Stewart.
Meyers noted that 13 reserved
tables located in front of the
stage have already been sold
at $500 each. These funds will
help support future concerts.
“The cities and
counties are
playing catch-up
with regard to
preparedness, and
people are, too.”
before the Pacifi c Northwest
recovers. By then, many people
will likely have moved else-
where and the economy will be
devastated.
So what’s been done so far to
prepare for this scenario? Not a
whole lot, according to the arti-
cle and to Ryan, who explained
that the existence of the Casca-
dia Subduction Zone itself was
unknown until fairly recently.
“We’ve got a lot of work to
do to get ready,” she said. “It’s
a fairly recent revelation that the
Cascadia zone could produce
a magnitude 8.0 or 9.0 earth-
quake. It’s only been consid-
ered in city planning fairly re-
cently, and it’s only been since
the mid-90s that building codes
have considered the possibility.
Anything built before then was
not built to withstand such an
earthquake.”
A large quake could bring the
facades off buildings in down-
town Cottage Grove and cause
a lot more damage, according
to Community Development
Director Howard Schesser,
who also coordinates the City’s
emergency response.
“It depends on the type of
quake, how long and where it
is,” he said. “Many of those
buildings weren’t built to cur-
rent earthquake standards.”
Schesser said the City is ex-
ploring options to shore up
buildings like the Armory, add-
ing that many other structures
downtown and buildings like
Harrison School are prone to
damage. Areas near hillsides are
also vulnerable to landslides that
may result from a large quake,
and the City has concerns about
aging infrastructure such as wa-
ter lines.
Schesser said the state of Or-
egon is putting in a “lot of ef-
fort” in an attempt to prepare
for a large earthquake and that
the City is taking its lead from
the state, as it doesn’t have the
resources to anticipate such a
disaster on its own.
“You can’t pre-stage a sce-
nario for this,” he said. “With
an earthquake, you don’t know
when it will happen, so you pre-
pare as much as you can.”
For the City, this has meant
efforts to update its emergency
management plan, and Schesser
said a new draft of that plan
should be available by August.
Events will be held in August
and September to get the word
out about emergency prepared-
ness, he said.
Ryan said that preparedness
in the home on an individual or
family level can be just as im-
portant.
“The cities and counties are
playing catch-up with regard to
preparedness, and people are,
too,” she said. “We tell people
that it’s wise to prepare to be
without many of the resources
we often take for granted like
running water, electricity and
grocery stores for at least two
weeks. When we feel an earth-
quake like the most recent one,
we can take it as an action item
and get prepared, make a plan
and start getting ready.”
Ryan recommended oregon-
geology.org, tsunami.org and
materials prepared by the Red
Cross as excellent resources for
emergency preparedness.
berg said. “People think the riv-
er is public. If you’re in a boat
or a kayak, you can navigate the
river, and you’re allowed access
to the riverbank if something
happens and you need help.
But you’re not supposed to be
swimming on private property
without permission. We’re tired
of being taken advantage of and
cleaning up after others. It’s not
safe to even walk around out
here anymore, and we don’t
know what to do.”
What many residents have
done so far, and what the Ry-
bergs say they’ve been forced
to do, is barricade themselves
behind gates. They say calls to
the Lane County Sheriff’s Of-
fi ce don’t often have the desired
effect.
“We’ve been told before to
expect at least a two to three-
hour wait time,” Cindy Ryberg
said. “There was supposed to be
a levy to increase rural patrols.
We’re tired of hearing that they
don’t have the money, and in the
meantime, we’ve had to take
care of ourselves.”
Sgt. Carrie Carver, public in-
formation offi cer for the Lane
County Sheriff’s Offi ce, said
that while help may not be im-
mediately available upriver due
to staffi ng levels and other inci-
dents, the Sheriff’s Offi ce rec-
ommends calling its dispatchers
to report any incidents of tres-
passing, etc.
“Calling to report it creates
a case number and puts it on
our radar,” Carver said. “When
fi ve or six calls come in from a
certain area, it ratchets up the
response and creates a record.
If we start to notice a problem
area, we can make sure it gets at-
tention. We want to know about
any suspected criminal activity,
and we don’t want people to be
shy about calling in.”
Carver said dispatchers know
where deputies are at any time
and, while deputies aren’t al-
ways close by, sometimes they
are.
“Dispatch will prioritize calls
based on who’s in the area, and
sometimes you’ll get lucky and
there might be a deputy fi ve
minutes away,” she said.
It’s also important to let peo-
ple know that they are on private
property, Carver said.
“Once you tell somebody to
leave, it’s considered trespass-
ing,” she said. “Give us a call
when that happens, because
that’s an in-progress call, which
is different than calling and say-
ing that somebody was out here
last week.”
Q UAKES
Continued from page 1A
of some 34500 people. So is
Oregon’s critical energy-infra-
structure hub, a six-mile stretch
of Portland through which fl ows
90 percent of the state’s liquid
fuel and which houses every-
thing from electrical substations
to natural-gas terminals. To-
gether, the sloshing, sliding, and
shaking will trigger fi res, fl ood-
ing, pipe failures, dam breaches
and hazardous-material spills.
Any one of these second-order
disasters could swamp the origi-
nal earthquake in terms of cost,
damage, or casualties—and one
of them defi nitely will.”
A large-scale tsunami can
also be expected after a major
quake on the Cascadia Subduc-
tion Zone, and it could be years
— DOGAMI
spokesperson Ali Ryan
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with them. The Rybergs say
their biggest concern, though,
is one of safety, as they’ve wit-
nessed young adults and even
children swimming and climb-
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rapids.
“The biggest reason we chase
people off is that we’re liable for
what happens here, and we don’t
want anybody slipping and hit-
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anything like that,” Steve Ry-
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Continued from page 1A
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