This City in Oregon Will Be Mostly Destroyed in a Future Tsunami. But There's Some Good News.
Seaside, Oregon Alex Butterfield / Flickr via CC BY 2.0
In Seaside, a recently approved $99.7 million plan will relocate three schools out of the inundation zone.
Each time there are large subduction zone earthquakes in the Pacific Ring of Fire, like the recent major seismic events along the coasts of Japan and New Zealand , officials in cities like Seaside, Oregon, know they very well could be the next to experience a megaquake and with it a destructive tsunami.
Seaside, and every community along the coast of the Pacific Northwest, faces the very real threat from a future megaquake along the Cascadia subduction zone offshore. Such a disaster could involve a massive 9.0 magnitude earthquake, which would send a large tsunami crashing into the coast.
The last such Cascadia megaquake was in January 1700 and while seismologists can’t predict exactly when the next one will strike, they have warned that the risks of such a quake happening have increased —northern portions of Oregon, for instance, have a 20 percent chance of experiencing a quake with an 8.0 magnitude or greater in the next 50 years.
The geography of the coast Seaside sits along makes it extremely vulnerable to a tsunami’s devastating inundation. One study by Oregon’s Department of Geology and Mineral Industries indicates that Seaside could face waves 70 feet high, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting .
Roughly 80 percent of Seaside’s residents live only 15 feet above sea level. The city of around 6,400 residents is also home to three of the four K-12 public schools in Oregon that are located in tsunami inundation zones.
Seaside’s very real and significant disaster risks were closely examined as part of an eye-opening and Pulitzer Prize-winning New Yorker article by Kathryn Schulz and a 2013 book by Sandi Doughton of The Seattle Times .
If a Cascadia megathrust earthquake were to strike during the school day, students and teachers—along with everyone else in low-lying Seaside—would have 15 to 20 minutes to evacuate to higher ground before the first tsunami waves hit the city. But with the most intense shaking concentrated along the coast, buildings, roads and bridges in Seaside are expected to sustain significant seismic damage before the tsunami waves arrives, which will likely trap survivors.
As Schulz wrote in a recent New Yorker follow-up on Seaside:
Those who manage to escape from whatever is left of the middle school will have to walk uphill for eight-tenths of a mile, through rubble, fires, and flooding, over a bridge that might not remain standing. Those who escape the high school will need to walk a mile in that landscape, likewise over a possibly nonexistent bridge.
Despite the clear danger and high risk, voters in Seaside in 2013 voted down a $128 million bond issue to relocate the vulnerable schools out the tsunami inundation zone.
But in this November’s election, Seaside voters considered a scaled-down $99.7 million bond proposal to build new school facilities on higher ground.
That bond proposal got a thumbs up.
As The Daily Astorian reported after Election Day :
The scaled-back proposal eliminated an auditorium, covered bleachers, long-term emergency shelters and a varsity playing field. The new bond equates to about $1.35 per thousand, a 37.5 percent total reduction in cost from the previous bond. A home with an assessed value of $200,000 would see a tax hike of about $270 and a $400,000 home about $540.
Timber company Weyerhaeuser donated 80 acres of land for Seaside’s relocated schools.
“I couldn’t be more proud of our community for stepping forward and making a truly historic decision that will improve the lives of children and families for generations to come,” Doug Dougherty, a Seaside superintendent emeritus, told The Daily Astorian .
Earlier this year, the Ocosta School District in Grays Harbor County, Washington, opened a new school that is also the nation’s first tsunami vertical evacuation center . The building features a reinforced gymnasium roof standing 53 feet above sea level designed to survive tsunami waves and give refuge for more than 1,000 people.
Seaside’s vote for a more resilient and prepared community is a bright spot amid an uncomfortable reality in Oregon and elsewhere in the Pacific Northwest: Hundreds of schools in Oregon have been found to be at great risk of collapse or serious damage in the next major Cascadia earthquake, including at least 20 school buildings in Portland. In Washington, seismic readiness for schools has not been a priority for the state, which “ doesn’t keep an inventory of unsafe schools ,” according to The Seattle Times . “Even earthquake and tsunami drills, routine in many schools, are a suggestion and not a requirement under Washington law.”
Looking at various regional disaster preparedness priorities, building new or retrofitting existing school buildings just scratches the the surface of the challenges.
There’s a lot of work to do in the Pacific Northwest to be more resilient in the face of future disaster. The time is ticking.
At least in Seaside, this month’s approval of the school relocation bond proposal is some hopeful news from a stunningly beautiful but also extremely dangerous coastline.
Michael Grass is Executive Editor of Government Executive’s Route Fifty and is based in Seattle. (Top photo by Alex Butterfield / Flickr
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