by Tom Banse, Oregon Capital Chronicle
March 24, 2025
Most of us would rather not think about what our lives will be like in the aftermath of the Big One – a magnitude 9.0 rupture of the offshore Cascadia earthquake fault. Yet, it’s worth considering where you’ll go if your house slides off its foundation or your apartment lacks heat, electricity and running water.
For many, if not most Pacific Northwest residents, walking to their neighborhood school to find earthquake relief is a reasonable first instinct. The trouble is the majority of Oregon schools were built before the state had a seismic building code and could well be unusable.
Emergency preparedness advocates made another try at the Oregon Legislature this spring to raise the standard for new school construction. But it might take a political earthquake to overcome opposition from wary school associations.
“Let’s be clear, the Cascadia Earthquake will most likely be the most powerful natural disaster in modern U.S. history, and we must be bold in our efforts to build a strategic resilience vision for Oregon,” said state Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth.
Evans introduced a measure in the Oregon House that would require new schools to be built stronger and to include disaster shelter features as a condition of receiving state construction support. House Bill 3707 would apply in earthquake country west of the Cascades and in Klamath County, but it didn’t receive a hearing or have a work session scheduled by the March 21 deadline to keep bills moving.
“What we’re proposing in this bill is to have a nominal increase in the cost of construction basically to give local jurisdictions a pool of places to use as shelters as needed,” explained Portland architect Jay Raskin, a longtime earthquake preparedness advocate.
Current seismic codes require public buildings to be built strong enough so they don’t fall down in a quake. But you might not want to go in afterwards until repairs take place. The proposed legislation would direct new schools to be designed so they can stay open with the lights on in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake or another natural disaster such as a catastrophic winter storm.
In building code terminology, this entails a targeted step-up from the current “life safety” construction standard to an “immediate occupancy” or “functionally usable” standard.
This matters to millions of Northwest residents because buildings erected in the near future stand a good chance of being violently shaken by an earthquake. The most recent magnitude 9 rip of the offshore Cascadia Subduction Zone happened over three centuries ago, in 1700. Seismologists say that means the region is now well into the window for the next catastrophic temblor.
Additionally, the Northwest faces risks from a multitude of shallow crustal faults and deep slab quakes. Each of these is capable of unleashing up to 7.0-7.5 magnitude shaking in a more localized area.
Political realities intrude
A similar schools-as-shelters proposal brought forward by the Oregon chapter of the American Institute of Architects failed to advance during the 2023 legislative session. The prospects for Evans’ bill this session are looking increasingly shaky, too.
The chair of the House Emergency Management, General Government and Veterans Committee, Rep. Thuy Tran, D-Portland, has not granted the proposal a committee hearing, which means the bill will soon fall by the wayside. Tran did not reply to a request for explanation.
“The school districts are worried about every little dollar because of the difficulty of passing bond measures,” Raskin said in an interview. “One of our fears is that they just don’t believe us when we have documented facts that it basically doesn’t cost that much. They think it must cost more. It’s a bit frustrating.”
A contract lobbyist who worked on the earthquake preparedness issue on behalf of the architects said opposition from schools associations in Salem is blocking the targeted building code changes.
Two intertwined objections are in play. One argument that the Oregon School Boards Association advanced beginning in 2023 was to maintain local control: It should be a local decision what seismic standard to follow because they are paying the lion’s share.
The Coalition of Oregon School Administrators also reportedly voiced concern to the bill sponsors about the added cost of the proposed seismic strengthening. The school administrators lobbying arm said the state government would need to cover the incremental construction costs to win its support. Both OSBA and COSA declined to provide an on-the-record comment to the Capital Chronicle this week.
Oregon lawmakers are reminded almost daily about earthquake safety design because their workplace, the Oregon State Capitol, is undergoing a $595 million renovation and seismic retrofit. Project manager Jodie Jones said the Capitol is being upgraded in some respects to the “immediate occupancy” standard and other parts might take a few weeks to come back into service after a quake under the “life safety” standard.
While not giving Evans’ bill a hearing, the Legislature does appear to be advancing a bill that would send plaques to retrofitted public schools that memorialize the late Senate President Peter Courtney for his support of seismic rehabilitation.
Twists and turns in Washington state too
Officials in Washington state are also examining whether to toughen the building code for certain new construction such as schools to improve disaster response and recovery. But like in Oregon, the path to implementation is as bumpy as an earthquake-buckled road.
The 2024 Washington Legislature allocated $361,000 to the state Emergency Management Division to conduct a wide-ranging feasibility study to examine the costs, benefits and applicability of targeted building code upgrades. The state agency hired a project manager late last year, but then put the majority of the study funding on hold in anticipation of having to take budget cuts.
Department spokesperson Karina Shagren said the agency would still try to deliver a preliminary report with some findings to the Washington Legislature by a mandated June 1, 2025 deadline. But she said what happens after that would depend on further direction and funding from lawmakers.
Some school districts build stronger on own accord
While policymakers in Northwest state capitals dicker, some school districts are choosing on their own accord to embrace the schools-as-shelters building standard. Those places include Beaverton, Eugene, Seaside and Lake Oswego.
Beaverton School District leaders decided to build all of their new schools, including the new Beaverton High School and Raleigh Hills Elementary now under construction, with extra structural bracing and more tie-downs on mechanical systems. Each new school also gets an emergency generator and exterior couplings to receive clean water from tankers.
Eugene School District 4J recently completed three new schools after passage of a 2018 construction bond. The administration there decided to build the gym and cafeteria portions of the new schools to a higher seismic standard so the community could count on having those large spaces in an emergency.
An unusual resilience feature of the brand new River Grove Elementary School in Lake Oswego is its microgrid. This school can stay open with lights and heat on thanks to a combination of solar panels, generator and battery storage onsite even when the surrounding neighborhood goes dark.
Mary Kay Larson, director of communications for the Lake Oswego School District, said the incremental cost of attaining the higher seismic standard added about 1% to the River Grove school’s construction tab. She said the district is now building a new middle school, which will be its third new building constructed to the “immediate occupancy” standard with natural disasters in mind.
“It’s not a decision taken lightly,” Larson said in an interview. “But if we’re going to invest in these buildings, let’s build them to last. Especially in an earthquake, we want them to be standing.”
Larson said the schools-as-shelters and emergency relief design features were a selling point to voters without kids in the district’s schools during recent bond elections.
“It has worked in our favor with our voters,” Larson said.
A retired facilities administrator who worked on the first wave of Beaverton’s quake-ready schools agreed, while also mourning the missed opportunities elsewhere to build new schools to a higher standard.
“Every project that is executed not meeting the shelter and seismic standards is an opportunity lost,” Richard Steinbrugge said.
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