February 17, 2025

Whole Community News

From Kalapuya lands in the Willamette watershed

New film highlights progress in 50-year plan for Cascadia hardening

7 min read
Emergency management professionals call it the '50-year plan' to account for all the money and planning it will take to harden public infrastructure.

Presenter: The last Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake occurred in 1700. At The Art House on the 325th anniversary, EWEB’s Jenny Demaris joined a panel discussion after a screening of the film Rumblings. She’s in the movie.

Jenny Demaris (EWEB): Ed Flick, who is the director from ODHS, the Oregon Resilience and Emergency Management team, was sort of the spearhead of this. He also is a long-time emergency management professional and what we saw as emergency managers is that the three documentaries that were done by OPB somewhere between 2015 and 2016 really hit home with the community at large, like, ‘Oh, we need to pay more attention to this.’ But there hasn’t been anything since then.

[00:00:43] So Rumblings was the refresher and reminder, but what I appreciated and valued about it is that they were able to tie in the things that have improved here in Oregon, because sometimes it’s hard to see or touch. We have made progression on infrastructure hardening here at EWEB.

[00:01:02] Presenter: Jenny said that includes earthquake-ready water storage tanks and an innovative program of emergency wells, right here in Eugene.

[00:01:11] Jenny Demaris (EWEB): I was so excited when I started doing some investigation work into EWEB and what they had to offer to me as a professional emergency manager. I saw the amount of commitment that this organization has taken towards the emergency water stations, strategically positioned around the city based on access or availability to preexisting wells, or they’ve actually drilled new wells.

And so the last one, which will be at the Kennedy Middle School this spring, we will have eight functioning wells that have access to emergency power and have the capability to provide water to the community members outside of our actual water treatment and distribution system.

[00:01:57] So what this means is if we have a significant disruption either due to mechanical technology or earthquake that disrupts our system, then we can independently turn on those individual wells or utilize them all at the same time.

[00:02:14] Of course, we would be relying on our EWEB staff and perhaps our Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members partnering with the city of Eugene to support those. And then community members would be able to come and get at any time that you come, two gallons of water per person for your household.

We will have instructions—just keep in mind, you will need to sanitize the water. It can be done with simple bleach that you should have at home, a couple of little drops based on the directions, and then that water would be sanitized for you to be able to use for regular food preparation and drinking.

So again, thinking about the redundancy of having access to water during a catastrophic event, whether technology or a natural event, it will be a game-changer for this community.

[00:03:02] Presenter: It’s important to understand the risks, but it’s also important to recognize how far we’ve come. Jenny Demaris:

[00:03:09] Jenny Demaris (EWEB): Circling back, the Oregon Resilience Plan in 2012-2013 was the kickoff. It was more focused on the infrastructure in Oregon: ‘How bad would our infrastructure be impacted?’

[00:03:22] Emergency management professionals call it the 50-year plan, because when you take into account all the planning, all the money that it would take to harden our public infrastructure here in Oregon, it would take about 50 years. And then the percentage of when Cascadia will happen also correlates to that. In 50 years, there’s a 37% chance that Cascadia may occur.

[00:04:04] Presenter: We asked Jenny to share more about the movie and panel discussion at The Art House.

[00:04:09] Jenny Demaris (EWEB): We had André Le Duc from University of Oregon. We had the film director, Brian (Landon), and then Ed Flick, the director from Oregon Resilience Emergency Management through ODHS, and myself as EWEB. I was there because I was interviewed as a coastal emergency manager at the time.

[00:04:07] The questions were not unfamiliar to me. One of the themes that I see from community members (which was evidenced here during the panel and then afterwards when people spoke to me) is the community members are really looking for validation that they know what they know, that there hasn’t been something new that has changed a greater risk that maybe they weren’t aware about, and that they really are taking the right steps, like: Am I preparing enough water? How long should I be prepared to go without water? And they’re trying to connect the dots about impacted infrastructure.

[00:04:40] The CRESCENT group, who’s the one that sponsored this viewing, did a panel a couple months ago and ODOT talked about infrastructure and then tying into city roadway systems. And again, ODOT has done a good job of assessing, planning, triaging and determining how they’re going to harden those roads based on which are most likely to be impacted or which carried the greater weight of transit, meaning how much of the population is using this roadway system. And so that’s what the public wants to connect to.

[00:05:13] We heard questions about the dams. What’s the vulnerability of the dams? How will we be impacted? Is there a downstream effect? In case anybody’s wondering, please just go to whichever dam you’re interested in. They have an inundation mapping there, and they talk very clearly about impacts to the local dams.

[00:05:31] What if it’s a different time of year, meaning what if it’s the cold season versus the hot season? We have a lot of vulnerable community members that are very dependent on making sure that they have that maintained temperature.

[00:05:44] Cascadia can be so overwhelming to try and communicate what that damage or impact will be. This is not just a tornado blowing into one community. Based on where you’re at in Oregon will determine what that impact may be.

[00:06:00] We know that on the coastal front, they will feel that Cascadia magnitude 9.0, again, five to six minutes of continued shaking. As we move into the I-5 corridor, we are anywhere from magnitude 5 to 7; over the Cascades, narrowing down to a 5; and all the way to Idaho border somewhere around a magnitude of 3, but everybody’s feeling it for five to six minutes of continued shaking.

[00:06:25] Now one person in the audience did comment, the level of shaking or intensity that we will feel here in our Eugene metro area will be a little bit less than that of the surrounding area. And that all comes back to science and geology and the type of soil that we have.

[00:06:41] You can go to Oregon Department of Geology and Minerals, look for the HazVu locator, and then you can see the entire Oregon map, not just Cascadia, but those onshore earthquakes and how they may impact your area.

[00:06:53] Presenter: She came to EWEB after working in the health care system, public safety, and emergency management. Jenny Demaris:

[00:07:01] Jenny Demaris (EWEB): I grew up in the health care system that would be my first experience with disaster planning and what we refer to as the incident command system used by public safety. I was also a volunteer firefighter for my city of Toledo and rural fire protection district for 10 years. And I will just tell you, being a female starting out sort of mid-age as a volunteer firefighter, it was very challenging, but so rewarding.

[00:07:27] Again, as you you’ll know, as you get to learn more about me, I’m really all about community service and supporting our communities.

[00:07:36] I was a 12-year county emergency manager on the Oregon Coast in Lincoln County with the Sheriff’s Office. It was a really wonderful experience to be able to serve my community in that role.

[00:07:49] And then last, what I would add is, I have been on a school board either as an appointed member or an elected member for I think this will be my 14th year of service.

[00:08:00] So I’m a new employee here at EWEB. I am one of the three-person Resilience and Emergency Management team members. And my focus here at EWEB is really about supporting the divisions with exercise, training, mitigation planning. It’s great. I’m so, so really happy to be here. It’s a great culture and seeing an organization as positive as they are about moving into the future, it’s very rewarding.

[00:08:28] And I really appreciated having this level of intimate understanding about how the utility sector works, because normally we’re emergency managers: ‘What can the utility do for us? And how do they get the power back on and keep water flowing?’

[00:08:41] And now I’m really on the other side looking in, going, ‘Ooh, how do I support the divisions that are keeping the water running, or keeping the lights on?’ And then communicating the information back to local government. So I feel really rewarded at being able to be in this position.

[00:08:56] Presenter: EWEB has also been investing in new water storage tanks, designed to survive the expected earthquake hazard. Jenny Demaris:

[00:09:04] Jenny Demaris (EWEB): EWEB has a long-term capital improvement plan that is also tied to our natural hazard mitigation plan. Part of my job is keeping that plan up to date and then communicating and documenting all the progressive improvements that we’ve put in place, communicating up to the county and up to the state and up to FEMA so that we can see this continual progression.

[00:09:27] One other thing I want to add about these projects is it allows the opportunity for EWEB to be able to draw down on federal hazard mitigation grants, offset that immediate cost for that hardening or infrastructure to us here for EWEB on the bottom line—looking at a whole laundry list of hardening projects that we have in place here at EWEB.

[00:09:50] Presenter: EWEB’s Jenny Demaris teams up with Ed Flick and the University of Oregon’s Cascadia Region Earthquake Science Center (CRESCENT), to say: Emergency managers are making great progress on our 50-year plan.

To learn more about your closest water station, check out EWEB.org or contact your neighborhood association. If you’d like to volunteer to help operate a water station, call the Eugene-Springfield Community Emergency Response Team (the CERTs).

[00:10:19] The documentary film Rumblings is playing at the Art House through Feb. 12. Check the website for show times.

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