No great shakes, just a drill

First-graders Knox Besio (left) and Landyn Lilly take cover at McCornack Elementary School in Eugene as part of the Great Oregon ShakeOut training. Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler and Multnomah County Chair Deborah Kafoury are also encouraging Portlanders to do more to get prepared.

(Brian Davies/The Register-Guard via AP)

Ted Wheeler and Deborah Kafoury

The last major earthquake in the Pacific Northwest happened off the Oregon Coast in 1700. The next one could happen at any time. There is a lot of attention on this issue, and rightly so. We need to be prepared.

Building on the 2013 Oregon Resilience Plan, a 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning story in The New Yorker, and extensive coverage in the media, the City Club of Portland dug into the issue and recently adopted the report "Big Steps Before the Big One: How the Portland area can bounce back after a major earthquake."

Their report contains many good recommendations to ensure earthquake readiness and seismic resiliency, some of which are already underway in Portland and Multnomah County.

Strengthening social resilience: Neighbors are often the first to provide assistance following a major earthquake. Portland's Neighborhood Emergency Team program now has a record 1,200 active volunteers, with more than 1,500 ready to go through the training. The largest class in the history of the program is happening this April to train several hundred new members and the City will continue to grow this effort. Multnomah County is working with local non-profits, colleges and universities on plans for mass shelters that will be needed after the earthquake.

Creating an earthquake ready Burnside Bridge: Multnomah County is leading an effort to retrofit or replace this important lifeline in the coming years so we have a downtown bridge we can rely on after the earthquake. Community engagement in the process to make the bridge earthquake resilient in the coming years is critical.

Reducing the risk posed by unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings: Our city has the highest concentration of URM buildings on the West Coast. For the past two years, a team led by Portland's Bureau of Emergency Management, Bureau of Development Services and the Portland Development Commission has been working with community stakeholders to develop a policy to require seismic retrofitting of Portland's more than 1,600 URMs over a 10- to 30-year period. This policy will come to Portland City Council later this spring. Every effort will be made to identify incentives and reduce costs to building owners, including the Property Fit program.

Assessing and mitigating the Critical Energy Infrastructure hub in Northwest Portland: We support pursuing a regional or state solution to address the ongoing danger posed to residents in the area, and to ensure this critically important hub for our local and regional economy can recover quickly following a quake. A disruption to this hub will have a statewide impact.

Coordinating with the region: The Regional Disaster Preparedness Organization, with our region's full support, coordinates emergency planning and preparedness efforts across political borders in the urban area. The close coordination of our operations during this winter's severe storms served as a dress rehearsal for how we'll work together following the big quake. Preparing for this unprecedented event cannot be achieved by acting alone.

Supporting the development of the West Coast earthquake early warning system: In the coming years, the U.S. Geological Survey will launch an earthquake warning system potentially able to provide advance warning to the public before the ground starts shaking. We support federal efforts to finance and deploy this system as soon as possible.

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It is incumbent upon all of us to prepare for a major earthquake. The recent winter storms demonstrated that we as households and individuals must do much more to prepare for an emergency. The Portland Bureau of Emergency Management has a guide called "The Big One: A Survival Guide" for information about how you can get ready. Read it today.

Ted Wheeler is the mayor of Portland, and Deborah Kafoury is chairwoman of the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners.