By DANA TIMS/YachatsNews
A sizable federal grant just awarded to Oregon State University will help the state’s coastal communities create emergency preparedness programs to face tsunamis and earthquakes.
The two-year effort is being led by Yachats resident Tracy Crews, who works as a marine educator for OSU’s Oregon Sea Grant program in Newport.
“The whole goal here is to get residents, visitors and communities to work on their own personal and community preparedness,” said Crews, who served on Yachats’ emergency preparedness committee for seven years. “We are really excited to get started.”
The grant, totaling nearly $160,000, came from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It was one of four such projects nationwide tailored to support local needs regarding disaster preparation. Money for all four grants totaled $634,936 and becomes available Sept. 1.
“The success and future of Oregon’s coastal economy depends on our ability to prepare and recover from natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., said in a statement. “And this Sea Grant will help build the needed resilience to weather these events.”
In Oregon, the effort will focus on three areas. They include refining a device that will help people identify the locations of emergency food and supply caches; expanding the use of so-called Tsunami Quests, which are directed hunts that will focus on tsunami evacuation routes; and, organizing community “Prepare Fairs” that provide opportunities for public engagement and education about earthquakes and tsunamis.
Emergency food and supply caches already exist in some areas along the coast, Crews said. Three are placed around Yachats, including a new one located at the rear of the Yachats Rural Fire Protection District’s main station.
The goal of the grant is to expand the total number of caches so that each one contains emergency food and supplies to accommodate hundreds to thousands of people for at least two days.
OSU, Newport student ideas
A key question, however arises around what happens if an earthquake or tsunami occurs in the middle of the night, or at a time when countless seasonal tourists may be in the area?
To help address that, the grant provides money to refine and scale up a seismically sensitive device that came out of brainstorming sessions with Newport High School students and their OSU engineering-student mentors.
The device, when activated by shaking, will trigger bright locator lights at the caches, while also loading voice alerts into attached loudspeakers.
The funding will allow two students, who just finished their first year of engineering studies at OSU, to continue their work and actually test the devices, Crews said.
“The idea is to take homegrown students from Newport and let them test this on local caches,” she said. “We expect this to have a serious impact in both ours and others’ communities.”
As for Tsunami Quests, the grant’s goal is to expand them from the seven already in existence to several dozen in communities up and down the coast.
“Tsunami Quests are a unique, experiential way to practice evacuation and learn about safety at the coast,” according to OSU’s successful grant application. “Through a clue-directed hunt, the Quest leads participants along a tsunami evacuation route, drawing their attention to signage and landscape features that might otherwise go unnoticed.”
In terms of “Prepare Fairs,” the city of Yachats hosted the most recent one. Not only will the total number of such fairs expand under the grant, but the topics they address will extend beyond earthquakes and tsunamis to include other natural disasters such as wildfires, winter storms and flooding.
“These events will be marketed to the tourism industry, visitors, and residents, and will reach new audiences that have not been well served by existing preparedness resources or programs,” according to the grant application.
- Dana Tims is an Oregon freelance writer who contributes regularly to YachatsNews.com. He can be reached at DanaTims24@gmail.com
I am the chair of a Disaster Preparedness Committee for a 55 plus senior park. I would like to get together with you and discuss plans and gather any resources you may have that would be helpful to us.