What does it mean to build a disaster-resistant community? It means raising citizen awareness of the dangers we face, the importance of preparing for disaster, knowledge of how to respond, and insisting that our elected officials do what they can to create a disaster-resistant infrastructure (e.g. building disaster-resistant fire stations and schools – which can serve as emergency shelters – in every community in our city, beefing up seismic building codes, etc.)
A prepared citizenry is the most important component of a disaster-resistant community! One need look no further than New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina to see the effect an unprepared citizenry. Wholesale reliance on government to prepare for (or respond to) disaster can be a fatal mistake. Government planning is critical, but citizen preparation is essential. If every citizen is prepared to deal with disaster, our community will fare far better than if we rely on government alone.
It is important to understand that as bad as Katrina was, the devastation of a Cascadia subduction zone earthquake will be far, far worse. It will affect 84,000 square miles of the Pacific Northwest! “Don’t be scared, be prepared” is Alaska’s emergency preparedness motto. Wise words. It should be our motto too. We need to start planning and preparing now, today. Every one of us. Individual citizen, school principal, business owner, elected official, government agency, all of us.
Fire stations are critical to every community. They house our emergency responders: Emergency medical technicians and fire fighters. And schools house our future, including our future EMT’s and fire fighters. Shouldn’t both of these facilities be as disaster-resistant as possible?
Our current seismic standards are too lax (and give us a false sense of security). And certain big-money interests would like to keep things that way. Ironically, the most seismically resilient design, a monolithic dome, is more economical than conventional box-shaped buildings. It seems criminal to build critical facilities like fire stations and schools to lower standards when monolithic dome technology is so disaster-resistant, energy efficient and cost effective. Isn’t it time the taxpayer got their money’s worth for a change?
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Portland is retrofitting fire stations and bridges to meet seismic code. While this might sound comforting, not all seismic standards are created equally. Portland’s “zone 3” seismic code standards are weaker than California’s “zone 4” standards, and even “zone 4” standards are not intended to withstand a sustained M9+ event, which we now know to expect from our Cascadia subduction zone.
It is also important to understand that seismic standards are intended only to protect lives by preventing total structural collapse; the building may not be safe or usable afterward. For earthquakes larger or longer than the seismic code zone anticipates, total collapse may occur. So a school or fire station built to meet Portland’s seismic code has no assurances it will remain standing nor protect life, much less remain functional and safe, after a Cascadia subduction zone megathrust earthquake.
But there is an economical way to construct buildings which can be expected to survive such tremendous forces. Conventional buildings contain many joints between walls, roof & foundation. During an earthquake these joints – called “moment connections” – are subjected to enormous stresses. If the stress is great enough or prolonged enough, the joint fails and the building collapses. Creating stronger joints can rapidly escalate construction costs, yet failure of the joint is still possible. A better and more economical approach is to reduce the number of moment connections in a building. A building without any would distribute seismic loads evenly across the entire structure. A thin-shelled one-piece (i.e. monolithic) dome made of steel- & fiber-reinforced concrete would have few, if any, consequential moment connections an earthquake could damage. This type of building has by far the best chance of surviving Portland’s greatest seismic threat. Amazingly, a large monolithic dome structure is less costly to build, heat or maintain than similar sized conventional structures.