4A • November 13, 2015 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com
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S EEN FROM S EASIDE
W
hat makes a guy year-in,
year-Rut keeS ¿ ghting
the tide — pun intend-
ed — and take a look at our city’s
most sensitive topic: a tsunami
that could kill thousands and leave
thousands more homeless? Bring-
ing up the subject of the Cascadia
Subduction Zone megaquake and
subsequent tsunami in Seaside is
about as popular as a long bath-
room line.
Yet geologist Tom Horning
manages to sound the alarm while
proposing sensible solutions that
could save thousands of lives. He
almost makes it sound easy: “Your
¿ rst goal is to review the informa-
tion, choose a scenario, set your
goals and get going.”
I had read about the Seaside
native ¿ rst in Bonnie Henderson’s
important book, “The Next Tsuna-
mi.”
Among emergency prepared-
ness of¿ cials and seismic sleuths,
this geologist is the ¿ rst stop.
If you want to know exactly
when the big one will hit, Horn-
ing’s answer is an unsatisfying,
“No one knows.”
Maybe his own guess is as good
as anyone’s. After all, it’s Horning
who in 1995 held a séance at the
3aci¿ c Way in *earhart and came
up with a date the tsunami would
strike. “I said it was going to hit
in the summer of 2025,” Horning
said. “July 23, 2025. I’ve done
this method to try to get the lottery
numbers, but it doesn’t work.”
It’s the very randomness of the
earth beneath our feet that makes
exact predictions impossible,
Horning said. Add to that new
geologic evidence that there is not
necessarily a correlation between
the size of the quake and the size
of the tsunami.
“Short durations can result in
large tsunamis,” he said, “We have
to assume a large tsunami, at least
a 55-foot wave, could strike at any
time, and that’s what we should
prepare for. We don’t have any
patterns to tell us when. It might
be a long time in the future, it
might be a short time.”
The very complexity of the
problem can be paralyzing.
B Y
R.J.
MARX
‘You have to fi gure out a
way to break them out of the
denial phase and into action.’
— Tom Horning, geologist
“When people are confronted
with disaster scenarios, they stick
their heads in the sand and deny,”
he said. “They just can’t handle it.
You have to ¿ gure out a way to
break them out of the denial phase
and into action.”
Seaside is functioning well as a
“normal” city, Horning said.
But there’s nothing normal about
the quake and tsunami threat.
“This is an extraordinary
thing,” he said. “Judging by the
fact nothing’s happened tells me
it’s too complicated an issue for
the way the city’s structured. We
need to change the way the city
does business. Probably the most
important thing is to create a di-
saster preparedness committee
that prepares goals for the city
that become permanent goals.
And it needs to be done soon.”
Committee must
address risk
Previous Seaside city adminis-
trations failed to address the tsu-
nami risk, Horning said.
“Most of the lower part of the
city will be demolished or ex-
tensively À ooded and damaged,”
Horning said. “Death rates for
people caught within the À ooded
area will range from 15 to 99 per-
cent.”
If there are 25,000 visitors in
Seaside for the Fourth of July, the
numbers could be harrowing.
The city could be expected to
care for survivors for at least 20
days.
“For a while the city had a
committee, but they were conven-
tional,” Horning said. “They said
the things we need to worry about
were forest ¿ res, windstorms or
Hell’s Angels coming through
town. No one was really geared
to handling earthquakes and tsu-
namis.”
After abandoning that commit-
tee, the city has seen “short period
of progress surrounded by long
periods of nothing,” Horning said.
The ¿ rst step, he said, is to as-
sume the worst-case scenario and
so plan for it. “The thing Seaside
hasn’t done is undertaken this with
the gravity of the disaster that’s
going to hit,” he said. “They’ve
been ignoring this.”
Horning looks to Japan and
their “culture of preparedness” as
a model.
“I’ve got numbers from Japa-
nese studies that suggest for this
kind of water depth —about 35 feet
in Seaside — you can expect 50 to
99 percent fatality rates,” he said.
If Japan hadn’t prepared, he
said, their fatality rates in 2011 af-
ter the Tohoku quake would have
been 10 to 20 times worse. “They
could have lost half a million peo-
ple,” he said. “They lost 23,000.
Two-hundred thousand to 400,000
people could have died, but they
got a lot of them out of there.”
Bridge repair vital
for survival
Once a group — Horning calls
for a “blue-ribbon panel” — is
formed to address the serious is-
sues posed by the tsunami threat,
attention should be drawn to the
city’s water crossings.
“The thing that I think is most
important by far is that the city
should immediately begin replac-
ing old bridges,” Horning said.
“Much of the other stuff is rela-
tively inconsequential compared
to it. It’s that important. Bridges
are 95 percent of the story.”
R.J. MARX PHOTO/SEASIDE SIGNAL
Seaside High School students practice walking the tsunami evacuation
route this fall.
The quake, which will strike
without warning, will lead to
wave heights of 30 to 45 feet and
higher. Seven out of 11 bridges
will fall down in a tsunami, Horn-
ing said.
After the shaking people have
15 minutes to get to safety before
the tsunami. “They’ve got to be
to the hills before the water gets
them,” Horning said.
How they get there is another
story. All the warning signs put
together won’t make up for one
failed bridge.
A few years back, getting mon-
ey to repair bridges was relative-
ly easy, Horning said. Seaside
petitioned the Federal Emergen-
cy Management Agency and re-
ceived federal money to ¿ x four
bridges. But when other Oregon
communities saw dollars repeat-
edly going to Seaside, politicians
vied for the funds and despite the
need, FEMA money dried up. It
was up to Seaside to get in line
for Department of Transportation
funds, or worse, to foot the bill
themselves.
“ODOT has a backlog of
6,400 bridges,” Horning said.
“And everybody wants money to
¿ x the bridge outside their town.
Now we have to raise the mon-
ey through ODOT, so we have
to raise the money ourselves. Or
maybe the state will turn over
some money through their re-
siliency plan, which should be
funded to the tune of $200 or
$300 million every year.”
Horning said the city isn’t do-
ing enough to reach out for those
funds, and the money the city
does have is being spent on costly
non-disaster ¿ xes.
“What bothers me is they don’t
have bridge replacement as part of
the city’s hazard mitigation strate-
gies,” he said. “That’s a stupid phi-
losophy. Bridges are the one thing
that will save thousands of lives. If
you’re not talking about replacing
bridges, you can’t get that money.”
Horning is speaking to every-
body who lives here, visits or pass-
es through.
“It’s about saving lives,” he
said. “If the big one hits, we can’t
do much about our real estate.
It will be lost. You’ll still own a
parcel of land but no one will be
able to build on it. We’ll all be
broke. We won’t have a tax base.
You can’t just instantly go in and
replace broken sewer and water
lines. How do you rebuild a town
that took a century to build in a
year? You can’t. The primary thing
is to save lives. The things that are
going to cause people to die are
impediments to their safe evacu-
ation.
“You ask me why am I still
working at this?” he continued.
“Because I’m the guy with more
information than anybody, there-
fore the responsibility lies more on
my shoulders than anyone else. So
I’m trying to convey that informa-
tion. That’s been my role for the
longest time: to bridge science and
society.”
Scene and Heard CLAIRE LOVELL
,Q aQ age of teFKQolog\ Zill our gadgets do us iQ"
My houseguests for their
50th high school reunion
were fortunate enough to be
in the yard when my visiting
deer came to call. She left, but
not in fear. I was glad some-
one could verify what I’ve
written about since last sum-
mer. Also on the “wildlife”
scene was the neighbor’s cat,
having a lie-down in my bird
feeder. My son and his friend
drove her off, feeling sure she
was waiting for an easy meal.
I don’t know. Had I been her
size, it looked like a comfort-
able spot to me, too!
It was fun to see the pic-
tures from Ashland deer
mingling with the populace
there. I guess we’re all going
back to nature.
Whenever I try to ¿ nd a
number in My Little Phone
Book, I end up trying to
throw it across the room.
Even looking for numbers
which are there is frustrating.
The categories often don’t
make sense. A lot of people
have cell phones now that
are not listed. Maybe there
should be a special section
for them. We know there’s
already too much info about
everyone out there, but if it’s
not a privacy issue, give us
a break. Nothing is sacred
anymore. It’s all hangin’ out
for any technocrat to ¿ gure.
It seems that our gadgets are
going to do us in.
Recently, I read an ad in
a magazine about the idea
of adult immunization of
whooping cough to protect
the children — because the
adult might be the carrier.
CLAIRE LOVELL
What’s happening anyway
that all of yesterday seems
to be thrown out? When I
was in the nursing business
so long ago, every newborn
where I worked was sched-
uled for shots, beginning at
the age of about three to six
months. I’ve forgotten the
exact age. DPT or diphtheria,
pertussis, (whooping cough)
and tetanus shots were giv-
en in a series to the baby
and there was not much dis-
cussion that I knew of. Lat-
er on, they were vaccinated
for smallpox as well. When
it was discovered, we gave
them Salk vaccine for polio
and later on, live Sabin vac-
cine. It was kind of taken for
granted. Having graduated to
geriatrics, I lost track of pro-
tocol, but what we did in the
“old days” worked for us. I
just wish we’d had measles
vaccine then because one of
my daughters was so sick
with it as a teenager.
Before this column, I
used to write many letters
to the editor, during Max
Shafer’s long tenure. We
had many views in com-
mon. I wrote them because
I like to read about the ten-
or of interests around town
or in the county, and give
my own unsolicited — and
often unwelcome — opin-
ions. Today, I don’t care so
much. I think the number
of words in these present
day views should be much
less. There used to be a lim-
it. In my old age, though I
like to keep informed, it’s
daunting to see line by line
of ideas from one person. I
do read the short letters but
most of the others are way
too discouraging. They’re
like homework! I will give
in if the subject matter in-
dicated is timely but how
many ways can you say,
“vote for kids?” Brevity is
a useful tactic anytime. A
good maxim might be “say
it in 200 words or less.”
(“Look who’s talking?”)
Will some smart person
let me know what “thread-
ed the needle” means — re-
porter speak for Hurricane
Patricia going between two
cities in Mexico? I wish
those guys would learn
English rather than their
cute compositions of the
moment. Some are self-ev-
ident. Others need de¿ n-
ing as the outset. And why
isn’t Anheuser pronounced
“Ahn-hoyser?”
/augK liQe
The world only beats
a path to your door when
you’re in the bathroom.
Letters
Be fair
We are writing this letter because
we disagree with the way the short
term rentals in *earhart has been
reported. While I would suspect that
The Daily Astorian is trying to be
unbiased, the reporter has not inter-
viewed anyone who rents out their
home. “Why?” we ask.
Chad Sweet mentions that he has
received letters of support on both
sides of this issue. How many of the
letters are in favor of restrictions, and
how many are opposed? We don’t
know. Isn’t it the reporter’s duty to
make sure it is reported?
Also, we do agree that the num-
ber of short term rentals has in-
creased in the last year or so. Read-
ers should ask, as the reporter did
not, how many have been rented
for, say, ¿ ve years or more. I suspect
that the reporter will ¿ nd that many
homes have been rented for quite
some time.
All we ask is that the reporter do
his or her job. Be fair and honest
with the reading public.
*reg aQd 1aQF\ 0arsKall
*earKart
Action needed
Open letter to the mayor and
council members of the city of
*earhart: My husband and I have
owned a home in *earhart for near-
ly 20 years. When we purchased our
home, *earhart was relatively un-
known. Many home owners rented
their homes to friends and relatives,
or they used local real estate ¿ rms to
handle their rentals.
This system has worked well until
recently, when national and interna-
tional real estate agencies discovered
that many *earhart homeowners
were eager to rent their homes non-
stop for high rental fees. Because of
the abrupt entrance of nationwide
rental agencies like Vacasa, the quiet
and charm that once graced *earhart
has been interrupted. This situation
is not reserved for holidays or week-
ends, it exists every day during the
summer and into autumn.
We have a short term rental next
door to our home, where we have
been observing one bunch of renters
packing up and leaving in the morn-
ing and another group showing up in
the late afternoon after the cleaners
have come and gone. Traf¿ c has in-
creased dramatically on our street,
South Marion — a narrow, dead
end street with little or no shoulder,
where traf¿ c À ow is often imped-
ed, as has been the case with garbage
pickup.
Realistically, most rental agen-
cies don’t know how many people
are staying in any one rental, let
alone how many cars, boats, trailers,
or campers they have brought with
them.
There has been talk of polling
*earhart homeowners. I believe
there have been enough commit-
tees, emails, letters, and words of
complaint by those of us who have
been impacted by this sorry state of
affairs, which often pits neighbor
against neighbor, and has changed
the very essence of our community.
Now it is time for action, before next
summer, when this situation will
surely escalate as more and more
homeowners are tempted to take
the money these competitive rent-
al agencies offer for renting their
homes.
The mayor and city council
members need to enact rules and
regulations that are enforceable and
have teeth, not $10 parking tickets,
but ones with consequences. Like
other communities in our area, they
should consider capping the number
of short term rental units allowed
in *earhart, limit the number of
occupants allowed in a rental unit,
and set a minimum number of days
a property may be rented. We urge
the mayor and city councilors to act
quickly so we won’t have another
“lost summer.”
7err\ and CatK\ *raff
*earKart
*ood MoE *earKart
Real estate promoters can now
set higher prices and win bigger
commissions for selling homes in
*earhart and Seaside that can be
rented out on a short-term (weekend,
more or less) basis. As the new ab-
sentee homeowner makes his invest-
ment “pay for itself,” he could care
less about the peace and safety of the
neighborhood now enduring inces-
sant noise and traf¿ c congestion.
This has been something new for
*earhart, where family groups and
their friends have usually taken turns
occupying vacation houses owned
communally by their own relatives.
Those groups, identi¿ ed with a par-
ticular family, normally act respon-
sibly and with consideration for the
permanent residents in their midst.
Mutual respect between *ear-
hart’s permanent and seasonal res-
idents is part of the character of
the community, and has long been
associated with the quality of life
we enjoy in *earhart. The growing
number of new absentee rentals has
shattered that venerable tradition.
The *earhart Comprehensive
Plan foresaw the problem a gen-
eration ago: it clearly states, under
“Residential Development Policies,”
that “The city will recognize the
importance of the city’s residential
neighborhoods and the need to pro-
tect them from the negative impacts
of the transient rental of property,
and to discourage increased levels of
traf¿ c and similar disruptions.”
Immediately following that pol-
icy is a statement of “Commercial
Development Policies” to “limit
commercial activity,” “prevent the
city from becoming a tourist desti-
nation,” and limit commercial devel-
opment to what “supports the needs
of the residents of *earhart,” ending
with a declaration that “The city
shall not designate additional prop-
erty for commercial development.”
Can anyone deny that short-
term rental is commercial activity?
Doesn’t the property owner derive
income from that activity? And, if
a businessperson can now suddenly
make the specious claim that provid-
ing a historic setting for weddings
is a form of short-term rental, then
surely the real short-term rentals
must be seen as business activity,
and subject to city regulation and
limitation.
Unfortunately, the ordinances
implementing those Comprehen-
sive Plan policies have not yet been
enacted. Better late than never, the
city council is now busy with such
an ordinance, drafting it with careful
comparison to ordinances success-
fully enacted by other cities.
Three cheers for the *earhart
City Council, and three cheers for
Mayor Dianne Widdop for appoint-
ing Paulina Cockrum, a seasoned
See Letters, Page 5A
