VOL. CXVIII, No. 25
DailyBarometer.com
THURSDAY, october 15, 2015 Oregon State University
OSU program prepares for earthquake
OSU’s Disaster Incident Response Team trains students to act as emergency responders in case of natural disaster, hopes for increased membership By Daylon Hutton News Contributor
Recently, citizens of the Pacific Northwest received some alarming news; a massive earthquake, also known as a megaquake, is in our future. According to Chris Goldfinger, a professor of geology and geophysics at Oregon State University, the 750 mile long Cascadia subduction zone has a 37 percent chance to rupture within the next 50 years, setting in motion an earthquake that could reach over a magnitude of 9. Experts find the Northwest woefully unprepared to deal with the fallout. “In Japan, they probably lost around 20,000 people. But by comparison, in Sumatra, a very similar earthquake, 230,000 people were lost around the Indian ocean with no preparation whatsoever. In Oregon, we’re actually closer to this (Sumatra) than Japan,” said Goldfinger at his public forum, ‘Nature Bats Last’ on Monday. From Oregon’s aging infrastructure to its general lack of preparedness, Goldfinger expects that, should an earthquake strike, a disaster on the scale of Japan’s 2011 tsunami incident is likely to occur. Being situated on a fault line of its own, Japan built its cities and coastal infrastructure with the knowledge that disaster could strike at any moment. Although Japan still suffered a devastating loss, this foresight effectively reduced the amount
of damage incurred by the earthquake and subsequent tsunami. The Cascadia earthquake is slated to be worse. “This is the elephant in the room,” said Jay Wilson, Chair of the Oregon Seismic Commission. “The earthquake threat, the tsunami threat, it’s all of the people and all the buildings that are vulnerable. When you add those two together that’s how you really define risk. Oregon now really looks to Japan, from the 2011 event, as probably the best teaching tool we’ve got.” In contrast, most metropolitan areas that are at risk in the Northwest have little to no seismic protection, making the megaquake a major concern. According to Goldfinger, Portland has 300 bridges with no earthquake standards, among other structural concerns. “The idea of retrofitting an entire region is just mind boggling, it’s in the probably trillions of dollars. But it’s starting to happen, building by building,” Goldfinger said. In an effort to combat the many hazards that arise during a disaster, OSU created the Disaster Incident Response Team, or D.I.R.T, during fall quarter of 2014. D.I.R.T. is described on its OSU web page as, “a joint effort to provide training in disaster planning and management for the University and surrounding community.” The organization’s main goal is to train a body of students that is capable of mak-
ing a difference when the community cannot rely on existing emergency medical response agencies to come to our immediate aid. Students who join the organization or take the Community Emergency Response Team, or CERT, physical activity course offered at OSU learn skills including emergency patient care, structural assessments of buildings, and urban search and extraction. “Our goal is to create a population of students who have this training, who have the desire to be helpful in an emergency setting, and that we can mobilize,” said Ty Atwater, the CERT instructor at Oregon State University. “We want them to have a central meeting place so they know where to go so we can funnel that energy.” Should an emergency like an earthquake occur in Corvallis, this group of students would be called upon to put these skills to use and support medical and search and rescue efforts. “What we’ve known for a long time is that we teach these wilderness medicine classes, wilderness first aid and especially wilderness first responder, and our students from these classes ask us, ‘how can I use these skills?’,” Atwater said. “I recognize that these skills are mostly applicable to the wilderness environment, but we argue that as soon as we have that
See Prepare, Page 6
IN THIS ISSUE >>>
John Katchaturian-Rosales | THE DAILY BAROMETER
OSU professor of geology and geophysics Chris Goldfinger speaks at Monday’s “Shaking Up the Northwest” Science Pub.
Democratic debate sets record, NEWS, PAGE 2 Ryan Nall in the backfield, SPORTS, PAGE 4 The return of Montage, FORUM, PAGE 7