Category Archives: coastal hazards

Pacific Tsunami Reminds Oregon to be Prepared

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Tsunami alerts were triggered up and down the Oregon Coast this morning, following a deadly 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan.  Reverse 911 calls and emergency sirens alerted Oregon coastal residents to potentially dangerous tsunami waves created by the distant quake, and the National Weather Service has issued a tsunami advisory.  Oregon Sea Grant features a short film on tsunami preparedness: “Reaching Higher Ground: The 3 Things You Need to Know” (3:09).

To learn more about what causes a tsunami, check out our longer film, “Reaching Higher Ground” (14:02).

Tsunami structure gets its test – in miniature

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Cannon Beach wave modelOfficials from the coastal Oregon town of Cannon Beach visited Oregon State University’s Hinsdale Wave Research Center this week to get a first-hand look at how a proposed new city hall and tsunami survival center might work.

Researcher Dan Cox showed off a scale model of the structure – and all of downtown Cannon Beach – and then pounded it with scale-model waves in one of the Hinsdale Center’s massive wave-generating tanks.

Cannon Beach is one of many coastal communities trying to come up with plans to save lives and property should the Oregon Coast be struck by a tsunami. Scientists say it’s not a matter of “if,” but “when” – and recent studies suggest that the region is overdue.

Along with warning systems, evacuation routes and public education, Cannon Beach is hoping to get federal funds to build a new, $4 million city hall that would stand on 15-foot-high tsunami-resistant pilings and provide safe refuge for people unable to evacuate the downtown area. Their hope is that by putting city services in a building that can survive a tsunami, they would be better prepared to manage the emergency response to such a disaster.

It would be the first such structure in the United States; the Japanese have built similar structures, but none has yet been tested in an actual tsunami.

Accompanying the Cannon Beach delegation to OSU was Patrick Corcoran, Oregon Sea Grant’s coastal hazards specialist, who has been working with coastal communities to help them develop and improve tsunami disaster planning.

“Every community from Cape Mendocino in California to Vancouver Island in Canada is vulnerable to some extent to the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake and tsunamis,” said  Corcoran, “This is arguably the greatest recurring natural hazard in the lower 48 states. Our cities are not engineered to deal with it and our residents are not prepared for it. We need evacuation routes, assembly sites, public education and outreach. And in some places, we need vertical evacuation structures. The only way to potentially save thousands of lives is through more education and better engineering.”

Sea Grant has supported a number of research projects at the Hinsdale Center, including a current effort by civil engineering professor Dr. Harry Yeh to better understand how the shape of the seafloor immediately offshore can amplify the effects of big waves on specific communities.

Oregon Sea Grant’s Pat Corcoran quoted in NY Times article on tsunamis

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Pat Corcoran, hazards outreach specialist for Oregon Sea Grant, was quoted in an article that appeared in the February 28, 2010, NY Times, “Chilean Quake a Warning to U.S. Northwest“:

“The release of pressure between two overlapping tectonic plates along the subduction zone regularly generates massive 9.0 magnitude earthquakes –- including five over the last 1,400 years. The last ‘Big One’ was 309 years ago. We are in a geologic time when we can expect another ‘Big One,’ either in our lives or those of our children. Prudence dictates that we overcome our human tendencies to ignore this inevitability.”

He was also quoted extensively in an Associated Press article appearing in the Feb. 27 Seattle Post-Intelligencer, among other places. (“Tsunami barely registers in Pacific Northwest“).

Corcoran appears in an Oregon Sea Grant video about tsunami preparedness called Three Things You Need to Know. You can view the 3-minute video here. Oregon Sea Grant also has a 14-minute video about tsunami preparedness called Reaching Higher Ground. Watch it here.

New publication reveals perceptions and opinions of climate change

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A new publication from Oregon Sea Grant, An Analysis of a Survey of Oregon Coast Decision Makers Regarding Climate Change, reveals that

• most people are concerned about climate change and how it may affect the Oregon coast
• the most frequently cited risks associated with effects of climate change on the Oregon coast involved physical processes such as sea-level rise and erosion
• few are ready now to respond to climate change
• people would be willing to take action in work if there were compelling information, new funding, and a sense of local urgency
• coastal professionals have needs for assistance regarding climate change, particularly credible, relevant information to provide the public
• coastal professionals have low amounts of information on climate change topics they consider important for the performance of their work

You can order this 20-page publication (color cover, B&W insides) for $3.50 plus shipping and handling by calling 541-737-4849 or e-mailing sea.grant.communications@oregonstate.edu. You may also download it from http://seagrant.oregonstate.edu/sgpubs/onlinepubs.html#socialsci

Oregon Sea Grant-funded tsunami research featured in NSF “Discoveries”

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“One of our experiments found that small seawalls cause a skyward deflection of an incoming tsunami wave, which consequently reduces wave energy and the force on structures directly landward of the wall. … As seawalls are inexpensive and easy to build, they are a sustainable tsunami defense measure applicable for most coastal communities.”

So writes Oregon State University (OSU) graduate student Mary Beth Oshnack in her article, “Building Tsunami-resistant Cities,” in the National Science Foundation’s online news feature, Discoveries. Oshnack has been working with Oregon Sea Grant researcher Dan Cox at OSU’s O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, part of the National Science Foundation’s  (NSF) Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation, or NEES.

Prepare now to survive a West Coast tsunami

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Pat CorcoranASTORIA, Ore. – Two weeks after tsunamis in Sumatra and American Samoa initiated by powerful earthquakes killed hundreds of people, a growing number of Oregonians are wondering how people living along the West Coast will fare when a large – and possibly overdue – quake shakes our own soil.

“Unfortunately, our fascination with the physical phenomena eclipses our interest in preparing to survive our next big earthquake and tsunami,” said Patrick Corcoran, coastal hazards outreach specialist with the Oregon Sea Grant program at Oregon State University.

(Read more …)

Pacific tsunami highlights need to prepare

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The tsunami that struck American Samoa this week – and prompted a brief warning on the Oregon coast – illustrates the need for coastal tsunami preparedness, and how far most of the tsunami-prone world has to go toward developing an effective warning and response system.

This CBS News report on the science of tsunamis includes a good animation of how tsunamis occur, along with commentary by Dawn Wright, Oregon State University geosciences professor. National Public Radio, meanwhile, reported on progress toward preparedness in the seismically active Pacific Rim since the devastating tsunami that struck Indonesia in 2004. “The biggest challenge … remains keeping people aware and knowledgeble about this hazard so that they strike, people do the right thing, ” said Charles McCreery, director of NOAA’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

In Oregon, Sea Grant’s Pat Corcoran is among those working to make coastal communities and their residents aware of what to do should a tsunami strike our coast:

For more information about tsunamis and preparedness, watch the Oregon Sea Grant video “Reaching Higher Ground.”