As Japan faces the aftermath of last month’s devastating earthquake and tsunami, vulnerable Oregon communities are planning their own natural disaster recovery strategies with assistance from a unique University program.
The Oregon Partnership for Disaster Resilience is a collaboration between the University, state officials and several public works agencies. The program aims to help communities develop their own visions of how they will continue to function in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
“If you look at what’s going on in Japan, where you have towns that have been wiped off the map, then there’s a structure you need in place to answer questions,” said Josh Bruce, OPDR assistant director. “Are we going to rebuild? If so, where? If our economy is gone, do we want to invest in renewing that same economy? That’s what we’re trying to get these communities to think through.”
Before OPDR’s inception, such questions went largely unanswered by Oregon county officials.
To Wayne Stinson, emergency manager for Douglas County, the absence of a long-term recovery strategy for communities set atop a major subduction zone was alarming.
“You can’t stop a disaster from happening, but you can mitigate what happens,” Stinson said. “The short-term recovery issues are always going to be there, but we never really looked at what it will mean to our community 10 years from now.”
The Northwest’s last major recorded quake, known as the Cascadia earthquake, happened more than 300 years ago, but geologists predict a 37 percent chance that the Pacific Northwest will experience another bout of seismic activity within the next 50 years.
According to the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries, the quake will cause structural collapse, landslides and disruption of lifeline services — a human and economic cost of approximately 5,000 fatalities and more than $30 billion in damages in Oregon alone.
“It’s not an ‘if’ question; it’s a matter of when it’s going to happen,” Bruce said. “We’re pretty well prepared to respond to an event like this, but I would argue that a lot of communities probably haven’t thought about how they are going to recover.”
OPDR’s disaster recovery initiatives started in 2006 as a pilot project for Cannon Beach. The program assisted the city in developing a how-to guide for developing a post-catastrophic recovery plan. This initiative led to a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2008 to formally develop post-recovery plans for Oregon’s most vulnerable areas.
In 2009, OPDR began organizing community forums in Curry, Coos, Lane and Douglas counties to give residents a chance to identify issues they can anticipate facing in the event of a natural disaster, such as bridge and power grid repair, while brainstorming strategies to address those issues.
Hazard mitigation at the local level is unique to Oregon. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the need for recovery planning became obvious, but the National Disaster Recovery Framework — a federal draft intended to dedicate funds and resources to states’ long-term recovery plans — was never completed.
Thankfully, said Stinson, the University was in a good position to fill that need for Oregon. Through federal grants, ODPR could secure funding for counties to develop their own grassroots strategies for recovery.
“When you have graduate students coming out of the University who have looked at some of the newest concepts and trends in disaster management, it gives them the ability to see if they actually apply at a local level,” Stinson said. “Given the resources the University has, it’s well suited to look at some of these aspects of disaster recovery.”
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