Schools, vulnerable buildings focus of emergency preparedness talk

Inslee hears update from community leaders, emergency preparedness experts during recent meeting

Ariana Wood, Results Washington senior performance adviser, facilitates the group discussion in March during a meeting about building earthquake resiliency in the state. (Results Washington photo)

Washington has the second highest earthquake risk in the United States, and a Cascadia Subduction Zone quake — with a potential to reach a magnitude of 9.0 — is due to strike again.

As state leaders work to make our communities more resilient to major earthquakes, many have focused on improvements to public school buildings, especially along the coast where an earthquake-triggered tsunami could pose even more danger to schoolchildren.

“As a school district, we really do need to make some improvements,” Aberdeen School District Superintendent Alicia Henderson said.

The school district is working to make seismic upgrades to Stevens Elementary School. The school, attended by about 500 students, was built in 1954 and last renovated in 1976.

Alicia Henderson, superintendent of the Aberdeen School District, talks about school seismic safety at a recent Results Washington meeting with Gov. Jay Inslee. (Results Washington photo)

Henderson gave her report during a recent Results Washington meeting with Gov. Jay Inslee that focused on seismic safety in Washington schools and other vulnerable buildings. More than 20 leaders and emergency preparedness experts from around the state attended the meeting.

Current studies show that Grays Harbor communities, including Aberdeen, face the highest risk statewide of experiencing a tsunami following a major seismic event.

Stevens Elementary School is near the mouth of the Chehalis River, which feeds into Grays Harbor. The school’s location poses a huge logistical challenge in getting every student evacuated to safety in the event of a tsunami, Henderson said.

“It is definitely in a precarious position with regard to not only tsunami inundation, but also the distance for evacuation of students to get to higher ground,” she said.

Preparing communities

The Cascadia Subduction Zone separates the Juan de Fuca and North America tectonic plates. It could become seismically active without warning and sits within 100 miles of the Washington coastline, leaving students and teachers, especially those in older unreinforced masonry buildings, at risk should a quake occur.

A major Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake strikes every 200 to 600 years, and the last rupture of this fault line occurred 318 years ago.

In addition to the Cascadia Subduction Zone, Washington is crisscrossed with active crustal faults with the ability to do tremendous damage at a potential impact of $49 billion in total economic losses. One of the largest quakes in recent history, the Nisqually earthquake, injured about 400 people and produced some $2 billion in damages 17 years ago.