Walls crumble, glass shatters and the ground ripples as the subduction zone off the coast of Oregon releases hundreds of years of tension, setting off a chain of catastrophes known as the Cascadia Event: a high-magnitude earthquake causing an estimated 30-foot tsunami along the coast, widespread flooding, power outages, broken highways, ruptured gas lines, fires and thousands of deaths in Oregon.
In Eugene, bridges and overpasses will collapse, crippling highways. On the University of Oregon campus, many buildings will be damaged beyond repair, and occupants will have to leave immediately.
When this event happens, students will need to be self-sufficient, according to Kelly McIver, communication director for UO’s Safety and Risk Services.
For at least two days, UO students will be without internet and cell service. They will face shortages of food, shelter and medical attention. A team of runners will be putting up handwritten signs to direct people to help.
This event could happen at any moment, seismology experts say. The consensus among scientists is that it’s overdue.
This is all according to the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Commission and UO’s emergency management and continuity team.
When Kathryn Schulz’s article “The Really Big One” was published in The New Yorker in 2015, years of research in the Pacific Northwest came to the attention of residents. Earthquake preparedness became for Oregon what it had been for its neighbors to the south for years, according to Leland O’Driscoll, project manager for the West Coast’s earthquake early warning system.
Only a handful of faults in the world are capable of doing the kind of damage that is projected for the Cascadia event, which is expected to affect the entire West Coast. Since accurate tracking capabilities became available in the 1900s, 17 quakes have registered at 8.5 or higher on the Richter scale across the globe, according to the United States Geological Survey. The likelihood of a Cascadia Event in the 8.3 to 8.6 range is 37 percent, according to the Oregon Resilience Plan.
The most destructive quake in the state’s history, in terms of property damage, came March 25, 1963, when a 5.6 magnitude temblor caused $30 million in damages. But further back, it gets significantly worse: more than 250 years ago, the last Cascadia event dropped the Oregon Coast five feet and sent a tsunami as far as Japan.
Officials at UO must plan for an event that is unplannable.
“There is no effective way to plan for dealing with earthquake response,” Krista Dillon, UO director of emergency management and fire prevention said. “We won’t know what we’ve got until it happens.”
UO officials can’t be sure how many buildings will withstand the Cascadia Event. Of the 86 major buildings on campus, 39 aren’t built to current code and could be damaged beyond repair in an earthquake, according to Darin Dehle, the director of the design and construction office at UO.
A window in Fenton Hall shows the steel skeleton and stabilizing system of the building. (Tran Nguyen/Emerald)
The remaining 47 buildings are built so that they don’t collapse in an 8.0, “but they may not be salvageable,” Dehle said.
“That is a big quake,” Dehle said. “The majority of our historic buildings would be un-occupiable.”
Very few buildings anywhere are designed to withstand magnitude 8.0 earthquakes. Emergency response buildings — such as hospitals, fire and police stations — are the only buildings that stand a relative chance of remaining functional after Cascadia hits, according to Dehle.
The Oregon Resilience Plan, however, estimates that health care facilities will take 18 months to return to operation.
Despite the difficulty planning for such a disaster, the UO emergency management team has taken steps to prepare the campus for a major earthquake. It has posted flipcharts around campus with detailed tips for how the public should respond to various emergencies, including power outages, severe weather and earthquakes. The team advises people on campus to “drop, take cover under sturdy furniture and hold on to it” during an earthquake. There are also detailed instructions on what to do before, during and after an earthquake.
Emergency management officials also recommend personal emergency kits with survival supplies.
“You’ll need to be able to take care of yourself for the first couple of days,” Dillon said.
Taking “care of yourself” ranges from basic first aid to ensuring that survival kits include a battery-powered radio, flashlight, clothes and food for at least three days. A reusable water bottle is also recommended by Dillon. Clean drinking water will be scarce until FEMA arrives on the scene an estimated three days after the initial shock.
“Students need to be thinking about the fact that they are almost all adults,” McIver said. “Things like the university … [are] going to be very low on the priority list.”
Hospitals and K-12 schools are much higher on the priority list than the “able-bodied adults” who make up most of the UO community, McIver said.
That means students, staff and faculty on campus will have to exit buildings quickly and congregate in safe areas. But safe areas can’t be designated until after the quake is over.
“We don’t know what places are going to be fine,” McIver said.
Once safe spaces are established, information will be dispersed by volunteer runners organized by the Emergency Response department. A team of about 40 people who have taken courses in emergency response will report to Dillon, McIver and other authorities before spreading out over campus and the city.
“We are going to have to rely on hand-written posters with information,” Dillon said.
Because UO can’t plan for the Cascadia event, staff want to know as soon as possible that an earthquake is coming.
To give people a chance to get to safety before earthquakes strike, O’Driscoll and UO geophysics professor Doug Toomey are collaborating with UC Berkeley, University of Washington and USGS. In the last three to five years, UO has taken on more responsibility in this project, O’Driscoll said.
The face of the program is a smartphone app called ShakeAlert. It’s the brand name for the project, O’Driscoll said. It’s still in the beta stage, but in 2018 the app will use sensors up and down the West Coast to alert users before the quake hits.
ShakeAlert could give Eugene residents up to a minute to evacuate unsafe buildings or drop, cover and hold until the initial shocks cease.
A minute is a relatively short amount of time, but Toomey told a live forum last year that “even one minute of warning would give you time to protect yourself.”