The Oregon Resilience Plan – Critical and Essential Buildings – February 2013 79 <br /> <br /> <br />Assessment of Current Building Performance: A Sector by Sector Review <br />EMERGENCY OPERATIONS CENTERS, POLICE AND FIRE STATIONS <br />Introduction <br />In 2005, the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries (DOGAMI) published a report titled <br />Statewide Seismic Needs Assessment: Implementation of Oregon 2005 Senate Bill 2 Relating to Public <br />Safety, Earthquakes, and Seismic Rehabilitation of Public Buildings, Report to the Seventy-Fourth Oregon <br />Legislative Assembly. This report catalogued the vast majority, if not all, of the emergency operations <br />centers, police stations, and fire stations within Oregon. Of the sources of data collected, 82 emergency <br />operations centers, 109 police stations (which includes city police, state police, and county sheriff), and <br />595 fire stations (which includes city and rural fire protection districts) provided enough information for <br />the Critical Buildings Task Group to reasonably assess the state of seismic resilience of each of these <br />buildings. <br />Most of the buildings considered by the task group are one- or two-stories tall and are constructed from <br />reinforced masonry or wood. The median building age is approaching 40 years. Despite the good <br />performance record of wood structures during earthquakes, the age of these buildings and the low level <br />of seismic design used prior to 1995 places the older structures at risk. Additionally, a number of <br />buildings located in the coastal region are at risk of earthquake-caused tsunami inundation or large <br />ground displacements due to either liquefaction or landslides. A number of buildings in the valley region <br />are also at risk of significant movement due to liquefaction or landslides resulting from an earthquake. <br />All of these factors increase the level of risk for many buildings exposed to the effects produced by a <br />Cascadia subduction zone event. <br />Estimated State of Recovery <br />The expected state of recovery of these buildings ranges from a few buildings remaining fully functional <br />during and immediately following a Cascadia subduction zone event, to many other buildings requiring <br />three or more years for repair before they are deemed fully functional or are demolished. Of particular <br />concern are the buildings along the Oregon coast, where 82 percent of the emergency operations <br />centers, 86 percent of the police stations, and 67 percent of the fire stations will most likely take 18 <br />months or more to resume normal operations. The buildings within the valley zone are also problematic, <br />with 27 percent of the emergency operations centers, 38 percent of the police stations, and 31 percent <br />of the fire stations likely to sustain damage to the extent that 18 months or more will most likely be <br />required to resume normal operations. Therefore, instead of being able to withstand and operate during <br />and after a Cascadia subduction zone seismic event, which is what we should expect of buildings <br />performing these vital life-safety functions, it is anticipated that a significant percentage of the buildings <br />that house these types of essential services will not be functional for some time after the event. Of <br />significant concern is the longer recovery time anticipated for many of the critical buildings that are <br />located along the coast and in portions of the valley.