The Oregon Resilience Plan – Critical and Essential Buildings – February 2013 92 <br /> <br /> <br />likely that homeowners will bear the majority of the expenses for upgrading deficient structures; <br />however, financial incentives, such as tax credits and low interest loans, might be considered to <br />encourage improvements if future evaluations, based on more complete data, show unacceptable <br />damage estimates. <br />Outreach should seek to provide education and resources for homeowners. A number of such tools are <br />already available, though not widely known. FEMA provides a number of publications on their website <br />for homeowners, such as FEMA-530 Earthquake Safety Guide for Homeowners. The City of Portland has <br />also created a guide, Brochure #12-Residential Seismic Strengthening – Methods to Reduce Potential <br />Earthquake Damage and provided additional information on the Bureau of Development Services <br />website at www.portlandoregon.gov/bds. <br />COMMUNITY RETAIL CENTERS AND BANKS <br />Introduction <br />There are thousands of community retail centers and banks within the state of Oregon. These types of <br />facilities have been deemed critical buildings because of their importance to the post-disaster recovery <br />of communities throughout the state. The most important of the many community retail buildings in the <br />state are large supermarket and pharmacy chain stores, which have large inventories of supplies that <br />will be in high demand following a disaster. Many of these large chains have remote storage and <br />distribution centers that will be of equal importance for supplying goods to damaged communities. <br />Banks also have an important role in Oregon’s seismic resilience, as they will be critical to processing <br />vital financial transactions for businesses and consumers as they recover from the disaster. Although <br />many banks have emergency response plans in place, if the buildings they are housed in perform poorly <br />during an earthquake, overall resilience will be compromised. <br />FEMA’s Hazus analysis includes a wide variety of commercial buildings, including some overlap with <br />other structures evaluated separately in this report using different analysis methods. However, part of <br />this large group of commercial buildings includes wholesale and retail buildings and banks, which were <br />reviewed to estimate the resilience of these structures. A specific estimate of building quantities for this <br />subset was not available, but the statistical analysis considered their construction types, general age, <br />and historical performance. The number of retail and bank buildings in each county was assumed to be <br />proportional to the overall distribution of commercial buildings. <br />Structural Vulnerabilities <br />The construction types anticipated statistically by Hazus for retail buildings vary with the building’s age. <br />Prior to 1950, wood, steel, concrete, concrete masonry (CMU), and even unreinforced masonry (URM) <br />were common. As construction practices changed, buildings shifted toward larger stores, and the post- <br />1970 Hazus statistics reflect this, with greater use of CMU and concrete, including precast (or tilt-up) <br />construction which began to see much wider use after 1970. Statistics for bank buildings also reflect