Tony Hernandez

Portland Fire & Rescue firefighters simulate a collapsed highway overpass with overturned cars, a damaged high-rise building with a collapsed roof and the triage of dozens of patients arriving for help after the disaster.



By Molly Harbarger

The Oregonian | OregonLive



Oregon is nowhere near ready to deal with a catastrophic earthquake or tsunami like the predicted Big One, according to an audit released Thursday.



The state's command center for disasters is not even retrofitted to withstand a strong earthquake, the audit said.



Despite years of requests, the Oregon Legislature has not granted requests for funding more full-time emergency preparedness workers, leaving the state with far fewer than other coastal states. Without those people, the Office of Emergency Management runs the risk of losing important federal dollars and is behind on emergency planning efforts.

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Tony Hernandez

Gov. Kate Brown at a 2016 simulated collapsed highway overpass with overturned cars, a damaged high-rise building with a collapsed roof and the triage of dozens of patients arriving for help after the disaster.



The Office of Emergency Management and the governor's office agreed with the auditors' recommendations.



"For Oregon communities and our economy to thrive, we must ensure our state is resilient and able to quickly recovery from a catastrophic event," said Gov. Kate Brown. "We've taken critical steps toward bolstering statewide resilience in recent years, and I commit to continuing to work with the Legislature to ensure state agencies and local jurisdictions are even better prepared."

Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, was on the coast when the audit came out. He watched the ocean while saying that he wonders if Oregon could ever be truly prepared for such a large earthquake.

Yet, he wants to allocate more funds.

"I’m sure we could use more staffing. Emergency management could be better funded," Courtney said. "And every session I have to talk about this. I have to keep working on that."

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Tony Hernandez

Portland Fire and Rescue firefighters, Portland-based Air Force Reserves 304th Rescue Squadron, a response team from the 142nd Fighter Wing and others participated in a disaster simulation in 2016.



The Secretary of State's office conducted the audit and acknowledged that Oregon has created plans and identified barriers to a statewide response to a major disaster. However, the deficiencies are damning in their potential ramifications -- especially with a potential 9.0 earthquake on the horizon.



"State planning efforts for a catastrophic disaster are incomplete and inadequate," said the report. "Critical plans to ensure continuity of government services in the wake of a disaster are either missing or incomplete."



Oregon also fields smaller natural disasters every year, for wildfires or major storms.

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The state has not implemented changes to its disaster response strategy after a 2016 simulation of the Big One.



The emergency coordination center, which is within the emergency management office, responds to big and small events several times a year. Last year, staff there handled the severe winter storms that caused floods and landslides in several counties in winter and then monitored the flow of people and traffic throughout Oregon during the total solar eclipse in the summer.



But Oregon has a one in 10 chance of soon experiencing an earthquake on the scale of the 2011 one in Japan that killed more than 18,000 people and cost the country $220 billion.



The auditors say that Oregon is less prepared than Japan was at the time, meaning that the state runs the risk of even more death and destruction.

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Tony Hernandez

Rescue workers have trained for a major disaster like the Big One, but an audit says that Oregon is still unprepared.



For instance, the building where a disaster response would coalesce is too small for the amount of people and equipment involved in the response effort. But perhaps most importantly -- it is at high risk to be unusable because it is not retrofitted to withstand a large earthquake.



In 2017, lawmakers allowed the Oregon Military Department, which oversees the Office of Emergency Management, to seismically retrofit the emergency communication center, along with two other buildings. It would cost $5.4 million.



That work is not done yet. There are three backup sites where the emergency coordination center could relocate if the main facility is unusable, but two of those are in hazard zones or have not been seismically retrofitted either.

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Tony Hernandez

Rescue crews practice for a natural disaster in 2016, as they simulated a collapsed highway overpass with overturned cars, a damaged high-rise building with a collapsed roof and the triage of dozens of patients arriving for help after the disaster.



Half of counties have a command center facility in a hazard zone. A quarter don't have a building that could serve that purpose at all.



In 2016, Oregon participated in a multi-state simulation, called Cascadia Rising, for what would happen in a earthquake and tsunami. The event was largely considered a success, and Oregon pinpointed several obstacles to work on to hone its disaster response. The state has not finalized its plans to correct those points, nor acted on them.



Washington did so within six months.

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Tony Hernandez

Oregon has practiced its response to the Big One, but an audit says the state is still significantly unprepared.



Oregon is also behind national emergency preparedness standards that help states cope with any major disaster, such as a volcanic eruption, terrorist attack, or Cascadia earthquake and tsunami.



The standards, set by industry experts, were established a decade ago, yet Oregon's attempts to comply with them are still short.



One area the auditors identified as especially ill-equipped is the state's ability to continue functioning after a catastrophe. The auditors surveyed people in the emergency management agency, as well as state agencies that would respond to a disaster, and found that less than 10 percent met the basic elements needed to resume operations.

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Naoya Osato

A man with a child, walks past houses destroyed by Thursday's earthquake in Mashiki, Kumamoto prefecture, southern Japan, Friday, April 15, 2016. The powerful earthquake struck Thursday night, knocking down houses and buckling roads.



"Oregon's government is at serious risk of failing to continue with or reestablish its key operations following a catastrophic event," said the audit.



Likewise, only a third of key officials across state agencies are fully trained on their emergency preparedness plans.



Many of the problems, according to auditors, stem from too few employees who could hold other agencies and counties accountable to complete and implement their plans.

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Tony Hernandez

Portland Fire and Rescue firefighters, Portland-based Air Force Reserves 304th Rescue Squadron, a response team from the 142nd Fighter Wing and others simulated a collapsed highway overpass with overturned cars, a damaged high-rise building with a collapsed roof and the triage of dozens of patients arriving for help after the disaster.



Oregon ranks 12th in the country for its emergency management staff, behind Washington, Alaska and Florida.



Oregon has a single person dedicated to finding ways before a disaster to reduce its effects, whereas Washington has six and Alaska five in that area alone.



More than half of the Office of Emergency Management's $6.2 million budget comes from federal grants. But the lack of staff and incomplete plans put Oregon at risk of losing some of those dollars, as well as money doled out after wildfires or storms -- the kind that provided $5.4 million in 2015.

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Despite some training and planning, an audit says Oregon is unprepared for a major natural disaster.

Andrew Phelps, Office of Emergency Management director, said that his office has worked to stay eligible for that federal funding, which has contributed $70 million to the state. But, it means that other standards and tasks sometimes take a backseat.

He said that Oregon will likely never be truly prepared for a disaster on the level of the Big One, but neither would any other state on its own.

“I think Oregonians can see the emergency management community across the board can meet our mission, but there’s always more work to be done and I think that’s what the report is saying,” said Andrew Phelps, Office of Emergency Management director.

He agrees with the report and plans to comply with its recommendations.

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger

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