Some news today and some upcoming events show that many in the city of Portland are serious about the Cascadia earthquake threat.
The Portland City Club released a report today outlining strategies and steps needed for earthquake resilience in our city. The report focuses on five areas: fuel, buildings, lifelines, people, and planning/ investment for resilience.
I commend them for taking the time to think through the implications of a megaquake on our city and I’m hopeful that efforts like these will result in action.
One interesting point of news I learned in the report is that the city may soon require a mandatory seismic disclosure in real estate transactions, focused on whether the home is bolted to its foundation or not.
The Portland City Club will be sharing the details of the report on Friday, February 24th.
Another significant event will be the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) annual meeting on March 7th-10th. The meeting will be in Portland and is titled, “The Really Big One: Road to Resilience”. Hundreds of earthquake experts will be at the meeting and it should help continue to stir up interest in the topic both locally and even nationally.
I’ll be attending both of the above meetings and look forward to both learning more and meeting others interested in earthquake resilience.