SF Quake Shacks are Early Model for Disaster Relief and Tiny Housing

Keyed to the anniversary of the 1906 earthquake, yesterday the San Francisco Chronicle had a fascinating piece on "quake shacks," tiny cottages built in the aftermath as emergency housing, of which a few survive scattered around the city today.

Yesterday in SF Chronicle

From the piece:

[the cottages are] the Shelby Mustang or Stradivarius of tiny houses: one of dozens of surviving 1906 earthquake shacks that are still scattered around the city. Some are lived in by people who don’t realize their celebrity status....

There were once 5,610 refugee shacks in 11 San Francisco parks, assembled with lightning speed in the months after the April 18, 1906, earthquake and fire. Today, there are fewer than 50 identified in the city. But those that remain are a symbol of civic vision, built in a bureaucracy-free utopia that included a partnership among city officials, labor unions and the U.S. Army. They’re also a symbol of post-crisis rebirth, designed to house the displaced workers who built back San Francisco better than ever....

Using redwood and fir lumber sent from Washington state and Oregon, the cottages were built in tight clusters in the parks with cooperation among the San Francisco Parks Commission, headed by John McLaren, the San Francisco Relief Corporation and the Army. Tenants paid $2 monthly rent on cottages valued at $50, with the option to own. And in 1907, many shack owners hauled their new property using literal horse power, becoming starter homes in empty lots across San Francisco and beyond.

SRC Cost Estimate and 40% Contingency Nearly Certain to be Inadequate

On questions about earthquake and seismic resilience, the Q & A makes what looks a little bit like a move for false equivalence. They are shading matters so they don't have to face the question squarely.

In Section 20.c of the Q & A they write (and Category 5 is most hazardous, Category 1 the least) that

• The Preferred Alternative east side bridge landing is primarily Category 3; the western bridge approach is primarily Category 4, transitioning to Category 2 with some Category 3.
• The current bridge locations, east side, are primarily Category 5, transitioning to Categories 4 and 3. On the west side, the bridge landings are primarily on Category 3.

This makes the current bridge locations look worse, right? Category 5 is worse than Category 4. Of course we should build the SRC on those more stable soils!

Section 20.b and 20.c

But when you look at the map - and it is significant the Q & A omits the map and merely references one in a different and hard to find document - the whole flood plain across which the SRC would cross is Category 4. The map is dated 1996, and since then there has been a great amount of gravel quarrying and there may be an additional factor of industrial disturbance to increase these soils' propensity to liquefaction. (It would be interesting too if there is any updated version of the map.) In any case, if distance or area is at all a factor in multiplying odds of an event or multiplying the severity of an event, the larger extent of Category 4 soils make the Preferred Alternative meaningfully more risky than the current bridge crossing sites.

City council, December 11th - Fisher Road and 85th Percentile Speed

Council meets for the last time in 2017 on Monday, and while I was expecting a sleepy agenda, it's surprisingly packed with interesting bits.

Not probably the most important, but maybe the most illuminating here, there's a discussion of Fisher Road NE. It offers a good entry into the ways that prevailing engineering standards are totally misguided.

Residents have expressed concerns about pedestrian and vehicular safety on Fisher Road NE. There was a pedestrian fatality in March 2017. Traffic volumes are increasing, and there is concern that vehicle speeds may be excessive. On August 28, 2017, Council directed staff to prepare a report on options to improve pedestrian and vehicular safety on Fisher Road NE....

The 85th-percentile speed is used to determine the speed at which a “reasonable” driver is comfortable traveling. This speed is used by the Oregon Department of Transportation for setting the speed limit of a road. A traffic speed count was conducted on Fisher Road NE south of Empress Way NE. The 85th-percentile speed in this posted 25 mph zone was 33.2 mph southbound and 33.9 mph northbound.

a. This 85th-percentile speed indicates speeding is an issue. The City could use this information to request a higher speed limit, but staff do not recommend changing the speed limit.

I just want to draw your attention to this logical chain:

1. "speeding is an issue" (therefore)
2. "the City could...request a higher speed limit."

That right there in a nutshell is how utterly effed up is our approach to design speed, posted speed, and 85th percentile speed.

If speeding and safety is an issue, the proper response is a suite of actions, both in posted speed and in road design and engineering, to reduce speed.

But nope. The current engineering dogma is that we should keep raising posted speed until it coincides with actual user speeds. It rewards speeding!

As a matter of philosophy and general approach, this is a very great ingredient in why we keep killing people on our roads. (And why the Pedestrian Safety Study whiffed and missed.)

Update and addendum - In a comment Jim rightly points out that the Staff Recommendation is for some mitigation:

All-way stop signs will be installed on Fisher Road NE at Beverly Avenue NE and at Devonshire Avenue NE.
Speed radar signs will be installed on Fisher Road NE, for both northbound and southbound traffic, between Beverly Avenue NE and Sunnyview Road NE.

These seemed band-aid-y and temporary, and inconsistent with the thrust of 85th percentile analysis. But as he suggests, it was misleading to omit them entirely. See the comment thread for more on that.

2017 Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan

The Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan also deserves more attention and discussion than it will likely get. It's a little buried here.

New Transportation Bill Includes Seismic Retrofit of Center St Bridge

A negotiated package of amendments to the proposed omnibus State transportation bill were released last week. Supposedly the votes are there for it to pass, although it has encountered some static from those who want to leverage their vote for other big legislation. (Update: It's passed both the House and Senate and is onto the Governor.)

Among transportation groups, the Street Trust is really plugging it for "record funding for cycling, walking, and public transit." Locally, it is also significant for an earmark on the Center Street Bridge.

A decade of support, via Street Trust

Transit dominates the non-auto numbers and seemingly the headlines.

City Council, February 21st - More Police Station

Council meets on Monday Tuesday! for a combo Work Session and Special Meeting on the planning for a new Police Station.

Others will have plenty to say about the prospective bond proposals themselves.

A Pulitzer for a piece on the Cascadia Quake
(via Twitter)

Let's look instead at some of the support materials. More than anything, the analytical lens still seems too small. The overwhelming scope of catastrophe in the big earthquake, as well as the scope of all the other needs we need to consider and fund, all still seem elusive.

What has the City done about earthquake?

One of the support documents is a set of answers to questions Council posed to Staff on February 6th and 13th.

The one on earthquake is very interesting:

City Council, February 13th - Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan

Council meets on Monday, and while it may not seem like a very important thing, a routine and dull thing in fact, the update to our Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan could actually be a powerful thing, and it seems like it is currently neglected.

Natural Hazards Mitigation Plan

The City will engage University of Oregon to update its Salem Natural Hazard Mitigation Plan. It's updated every five years, and the current one, from 2012, is due. When it came out last time, it seemed like it did not give sufficient attention to earthquake preparedness, and dwelled more on flood. Flood of course is more frequent and predictable, but the big earthquake will be more catastrophic. Our risk-assessment does not seem to have captured this adequately.

Focusing more on earthquake and what institutional and municipal investments we should be making in advance of "the big one," as distinct from small-scale privatized and personal "duck and cover" efforts, seems like it should be much more important that it currently is. Maybe this iteration of the plan can highlight this.

Traffic Things

There are several traffic items also to note. 

Council will apply to renew a $9,000 grant to perform crosswalk education and enforcement activities.

This grant covers $73.26 per hour for overtime enforcement for Pedestrian Safety enforcement and other traffic safety violations. The Salem Police Department has been awarded this grant in years past allowing for extra enforcement related to pedestrian safety enforcement.

It's nice the funding is available, but it's increasingly clear that the way this is framed up, it is an amenity, an extra, something outside the core mission of public safety. There's probably nothing to be done at the moment, but it is a sign of our priorities.

City Council, December 5th - SRC and UGB, pt. 2

On rereading the summary document of responses to public comment, there are still quite a number of items it seems possible to contest and on which more public debate, even a kind of adversarial and more robust litigation style of back-and-forth argument at Council, would be worthwhile. Matters are far from conclusively settled, and there has not been enough time to present and sift the evidence to make determinations possible about "a preponderance" on one side or the other of many sides of the issue.

Deciding on the UGB matters is totally premature at this moment.

And that is more evidence that Goal 1 for "citizen involvement" is not at all being met on this part of the SRC process.

One claim may be genuinely new, however, and is very much worth a little more investigation here.

I'm not sure I can prove this, but it has seemed that in the draft Environmental Impact Statement, and in the subsequent talk about funding that occurred in 2013-2014, there was an assumption that the bridge structure would be engineered to a mid-level quake standard, something like a 7.0 event. The DEIS on Geology is quite vague, and there is little or no explicit mention of these standards. A text search on the full chapter 2 on Alternatives doesn't turn up any instances of the word "seismic" or "earthquake."

Seismic evaded in March 6th, 2015 funding memo

Further and briefly, this level of seismic reinforcement, or any detail at all, is not mentioned in:

• The City's FAQ
• The SRC FAQ 
• SALEM ALTENRATIVE [sic] DESCRIOPTION & OVERSIGHT TEAM POLICY STATEMENTS 
• November 3rd, 2014 Council Work Session
• March 6th, 2015 funding memo
• Preferred Alternative Description from August 1st, 2016 Council Work Session

It has seemed like the level of seismic reinforcement was a deliberate fudge factor, sometimes used to allow for a lower cost estimate, other times used to say that the bridge will be reinforced adequately.

It's hard to prove a negative, but you would think that the level of reinforcement, especially to a 9.0 standard, would have appeared somewhere, in one of these documents. That would be a thing to shout about, in fact. But it was never spelled out that that meant exactly. The omission is telling.

Now, finally, they have spelled it out.

ODOT's Careless Approach on US20 Project Echoes in Geology Report for SRC

Maybe you will know otherwise, but I don't see any language about "earthquake" or "seismic event" in chapter 660 of the Oregon Administrative Rules that will govern the decision on the Urban Growth Boundary for the Salem River Crossing. There is Goal 7 about "Areas Subject to Natural Disasters and Hazards," but I couldn't find any corresponding rules. (Do you know where they are?)

So the fact that the SRC is proposed for unsuitable soils may not be directly relevant to the approval criteria of that Hearing. From here, for a non-specialist, it's hard to fit into the framework of the UGB decision.

Still, the Geology Final Technical Report Addendum is out, as are all the other addenda, and posted to the City website late last week.

It does not inspire confidence. And it seems relevant nonetheless.

ODOT's Big Project on Unstable Soil was a Disaster

"Ground Anchors" on an unstable hillside,
for US20 on the Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville segment

The other day you might have heard about the "Play on the Grade" event to commemorate the forthcoming opening of the Highway 20 Pioneer Mountain to Eddyville project.

But that's a big happy face on an embarrassing and costly mess for ODOT.

Provincialism as Liability: Earthquake may Strand Salem without Surgeons

Sunday's piece about earthquake prep touched on transportation and civic culture.

Are we overdependent on surgeons who live in Portland?

You might remember from 2010:

Promoting the Salem area to incoming physicians can be challenging: The cost of living in Salem is comparable to other parts of the U.S.; reimbursements are lower in small-population states such as Oregon; and Salem's demographic size can be a tough sell to a new medical school graduate from Chicago, Seattle or New York.

"Salem looks very rural," [executive director of the Marion-Polk County Medical Society, Dean] Larsen said.

And back in 2012 when the corporate office of Holiday Retirement relocated to the Portland area:

The exodus of Holiday Retirement's headquarters to a Portland suburb reflects a persistent problem for Salem. The City of Roses is viewed as the state's business and cultural hub. Executives with the money and means often chose Portland over Salem for their homes. Even the governor [Kitz at that time] lives in Portland and commutes to Salem. When businesses and their employees flee Salem for Portland, money and community leadership go north as well....

Company officials told the Business Journal that it wanted to be in a metropolitan area, close to a major airport as well as its vendors and investors. They also noted that many of Holiday Retirement's employees already lived in the Portland area....

And a couple of years before that, in conversation a substantial Salem business owner said that six of the seven senior managers chose to live elsewhere at that time.

When we want to define ourselves as "not-Portland" or "not-Eugene" or "not-urban," there are costs to succeeding in that, and the loss of highly skilled, highly educated specialists is probably one of them. Our proud provincialism goes overboard sometimes, and there are ways we might instead want to be more attentive to - indeed sometimes straight-up copy even -  things Portland, Eugene, or other more cosmopolitan cities do better.

via Twitter

We don't have to flatten our narratives into one-dimensional comparisons. We can say things like "I want Salem to be more like Portland and have more low-traffic bikeways, but I don't want Salem to be like Portland in having a much higher cost of housing." Useful comparison is more complicated than simple imitation!

For earthquake prep this is a secondary point, to be sure, and no matter what Salem was like, some people might still wish to live in Portland. But there are strategic reasons to reconsider our provincialism and attachment to Salem's "uniqueness" and to give more thought to times they might hinder rather than help us.

Forget Horses, Bikes way more Useful in Catastrophe

It's great the paper published a reminder about earthquake after the catastrophe in Italy this past week.

But to say "it is not an exaggeration to say that transportation by horse will once again be essential" is to miss the actually useful technology that requires a whole lot less care and feeding, and that performs even better than horse.

In Japan after a 2011 earthquake

After Typhoon Haiyan - via the Oregonian
(AP/Aaron Favila)

The paper's even written about them before.

From 2012

While this may not be a primary reason to invest in bike lanes and a culture of biking today, it's certainly a strong secondary reason. The more we bike now, the easier it will be to get around when catastrophe strikes.

Stuck with Posters and Slogans for Earthquake

Earlier in the week did you see the piece in the paper's "Holding Court" feature about the "Cascadia: Oregon's Greatest Natural Threat" series co-sponsored by SEDCOR?

Posters and catastrophe at Holding Court

The posters read:

• Food and Water
• Transportation
• Energy

SECOR writes:

Could your business survive without electricity for 3 months? Experts agree that a major earthquake would likely cause critical services, like drinking water and sewer, and top-priority highways, to be down for up to a year. While there’s much to do to improve the reliability of basic services, the government can’t do it all. Every company needs to be prepared for the impacts of a severe outage of critical lifelines--fuel, transportation, utilities, communications, water and sewer--as well as the potential loss of data....

This series will give you the tools you need to not only prepare your business for disaster recovery, but to play a critical role in helping the community recover from catastrophe.

Business leaders engaged in the state’s disaster planning efforts have indicated that in a major disaster, interruptions of infrastructure lasting longer than two weeks will put their enterprises at risk. We can expect some interruptions to last much longer...even up to 36 months or more. Business leaders need to prepare their facilities, IT and data, and their valuable human resources now in order to be ready for a major catastrophe.

At first it seemed the series was a good idea and was pretty neutral, but now that they've had several presentations over the course of a few months, it seems possible that there is a politics here, as well.

One, unfortunately, that dovetails with the way the City is handling the Police Station debate and the Chamber's position on transit.

The message? You're on your own.

Rainy Sunday Night Newsbits

This is interesting. From the City:

The 336 Hour Challenge
Experts agree that the next major Cascadia earthquake could keep 25,000 commuters in this region from getting home for two weeks, due to road and bridge damage! Is your business ready to shelter and care for your employees for two weeks after disaster strikes? Are you also prepared at home?

SEDCOR’s Cascadia Threat Series assists large and small businesses in improving their ability to recover from a disaster. Gain the knowledge you need to not only prepare yourself and your company, but to play a critical role in helping the community recover.

The City of Salem is partnering with SEDCOR, Marion County, Oregon Emergency Management and the American Red Cross for this purpose on December 9, 2015 at the Salem Convention Center. There will be lunch and a presentation from noon until 1:30 p.m. Exhibitors will be available from 11a.m. until 2 p.m.

Admission including lunch is $20. To register and learn more go to 336 Hour Challenge.

It seems like there's some increasing realism here about the disruptions caused by the earthquake - even if two weeks seems yet on the short side. If it's as massive as they say, months seems more realistic than weeks.

At the same time, it's still about finer-grained and small-scale preparation for individuals rather than about infrastructure. So still not very much about the massive significance of preparing the Marion and Center Street Bridges. How many State employees and managers live in West Salem and won't be able to reach State offices?

If we assume that the probability of earthquake is evenly distributed, there are 168 hours in the week and 40 hours in a standard workweek. So the odds that earthquake strikes while you are at work are only about one in four - and the more likely problem is  you are away from work and you can't get to work.

It still seems like we're talking about one big camping adventure and not enough about the loss of life, critical services, and infrastructure.

Morningside

The Morningside Neighborhood Assocation meets on Wednesday the 9th, and they've got a few items of interest.

Third Bridge Debt Service Would Cost nearly 10x Proposed New Cherriots Revenue

This has come up a couple of times in comments on the blog and in casual conversation elsewhere. Proponents for transit should be highlighting the contrast with the Chamber's position on the Third Bridge.

The transit package aims to raise $5 million per year, and the Third Bridge package aims to raise more than $45 million per year.*

Maybe you're a design wiz
and can come up with a better infographic?

If you view transit as involving "jobs-killing taxes," at the very least, the taxes involved in funding a third bridge deserve higher scrutiny. You should be able to make a strong case that these taxes will be much less harmful to the local economy than the taxes necessary for a functional transit system.

Bicycling Bob, a Doomed Oak, Bridge Neglect: Newsbits

Did you see the profile of "Bicycling" Bob H. Reinhardt, the recently appointed Director at Mission Mill?!

There are many reasons to find it interesting, not least the conversation about future programming at the Heritage Center.

But it's also remarkable that the bike commute is a significant detail worth comment - but mainly in passing, and not as a freak show, outlier, or grand or heroic gesture unavailable to ordinary folks.

It's a small and sensible commute decision, one based on "fun" and proximity to home -  and even a little banal.

That's a moment to cheer in the mainstreaming of bicycling and the way it's handled in the press.

Thanks, Bob and Tom!

However...at another Salem institution, there is sad and unsurprising news. The giant parking lot at the former Blind School property has claimed another loss.

Interesting Cluster of Earthquakes you got There...

More random clustering of unequally distributed events? Or something less random?

Five decent-sized earthquakes on the faultline today
via USGS

Reminder of how terribly vulnerable we all are?

Reminder that we need to fix and maintain before we build big shiny new things?

None of Salem's bridges are expected to stand

The Council Streets and Bridges Bond Committee met today at noon, and there wasn't anything new that seemed important to mention on the agenda. But maybe there was earthquake talk. We can hope, anyway.

(For more on our lack of preparedness, see notes tagged earthquake.)

Earthquake, not Congestion, is our Bridge Problem; Council Work Session Monday

Monday night the 3rd at 5:30pm in Council Chambers, Salem City Council meets for a work session on the Third Bridge.

This is what our "preparedness" looks like

We're nowhere close to being ready in any real way

As N3B points out, despite Salem's role as the capital city, and despite the very large numbers of State employees who live in West Salem and who rely on the bridges for connectivity to critical State offices, ODOT doesn't see the Marion and Center Street bridges as at all critical.

In only the most hypothetical of ways, they are being considered for a seismic retrofit in 30 or 40 years.

Risk: Quakes and Bees Should Trump Third Bridge

Just two reminders in the paper today that we have much bigger problems than a shiny new bridge and highway...

On the quake:

A task force is recommending Oregon spend at least $100 million each year for decades preparing for a possible earthquake and tsunami similar to the one that struck Japan in 2011.[italics added]

And of course bees are foundational to our own food supply and to whole ecosystems.

A half-billion on a shiny new bridge and highway could be much better spent on other, much more urgent risk-abatement and "insurance" against loss.

The Cascadia 9.0 Quake will be about 1000x Worse than the 6.0 Napa Quake

Construction of Marion Street Bridge in Salem, OR circa 1950's @ https://t.co/M1iTv8AhRP #ORhistory pic.twitter.com/0y5Ch3heoz
— OregonStateArchives (@OregonArchives) August 25, 2014

South Napa earthquake damage estimate could reach $1,000,000,000: http://t.co/qY7JMpSkNp pic.twitter.com/1ysWCxPDkI
— ABC News (@ABC) August 25, 2014

Remember earthquake ratings are on a log scale, so each integer, from 6 to 7, 7 to 8, and 8 to 9, represents a 10-fold increase in energy. From 6 to 9 is 10x10x10 = 1000 more energy!

If earthquake prep is cited as a reason for a "third bridge," it's a lot cheaper to do a retrofit.

A bare-bones seismic retrofit doesn't fit on the chart

For hardly more than we're spending on the widening of Wallace and Glen Creek, we could retrofit one of our bridges to withstand the Cascadian Subduction Zone 9.0 "big one" earthquake.

For the cost of three Wallace and Glen Creek widenings, we could reinforce both bridges.

Seriously, why is this even a debate?

MWACT Meets August 7th, Agenda includes Earthquake Prep - updated

Thawing permafrost
releases methane
via Nature

Feeling apocalyptic? The news this week has all kinds of things to fuel your pessimism and paranoia.

Some apocalyptic scenarios are "black swans" but others are ones we know about, expect, can anticipate, even mitigate - and still do nothing about.

In a piquant irony, Thursday the 7th the Mid-Willamette Valley Area Commission on Transportation will learn about "ODOT's Bridge Seismic Safety Program" and receive an update on the Salem River Crossing EIS. (Agenda here.)

Oregon Highways Seismic Options
Report, March 2013

The "Seismic Options" report gives us a fairly knowable apocalyptic scenario:

Most of the bridges over the Willamette and Columbia rivers will either have major damage or will have collapsed [from the earthquake]. Regional commerce will be impaired. Within the first few days and weeks, fuel, food, potable water, communications options, and medical supplies will be in short supply, with few options for restocking or restoration due to lack of mobility, damage to the utilities carried by bridges, and damaged cell towers....

The Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) has so far expended minimal resources on retrofitting to prepare for such an earthquake. As a result, we are currently unprepared for use of the highway system immediately after a major seismic event. [italics added]

The report suggests that "for every dollar spent to reinforce a bridge, on average Oregon will avoid the loss of $46 in gross state product."

Overlooked Details Should Doom Third Bridge

In an editorial today, the paper responds to the National Transportation Safety Board findings that a "cascading series of bad decisions led to last year’s collapse of an Interstate 5 bridge north of Seattle."

Well, we're well on our way with our own "cascading series of bad decisions" about a bridge and there's little or no self-awareness about the irony.

The Marion and Center Street Bridges are not reinforced to withstand a big quake, and the proposed Salem Alternative is at the moment conceptually outlined to withstand only a medium quake.

There is no plan right now for connectivity across the river after the Big Bad Cascadian Subduction Zone quake.

If you survive, you'll be wanting a kayak!