On February 15th, the City Club of Portland released an 88-page report on the widely anticipated major earthquake that is expected to shake the Pacific Northwest at some point in the years to come, in order to give information and recommendations to Portland communities who will have to survive and recover from the earthquake.

As the City Club report noted, there has been a lot of planning and attention dedicated to what has happened during the immediate aftermath of a major earthquake, but much less attention has been given to long-term resiliency and rebuilding.

The City Club first gave five areas that they believed that Portland needs to focus on to improve earthquake resilience: fuel, buildings, lifelines, people, coordinated planning, and investment in resilience.

“Portland and Oregon must start cultivating a culture of resistance right now,” said the City Club in their report.

The City Club says that Portland’s critical energy infrastructure hub, which most of the region’s liquid fuel passes through, and which is located along the Willamette River, is built on unstable soil and would probably suffer catastrophic damage during an earthquake. The report advises the Oregon Department of Geological and Mineral Industries to commission a study of the soil in this energy hub, and to find alternatives for soil hardening in order to keep Portland’s liquid fuel supply safe.

Many buildings built before 1994 would also be devastated, so the City Club instructs that Portland buildings should be built and remodeled to fit higher earthquake safety standards. They believe that high risk buildings should be inventoried.

The City Club says that a large earthquake could destroy Portland infrastructure, but at least one bridge across the Willamette River would have to be usable directly after an earthquake. As a result, they ask Multnomah County to upgrade or replace the Burnside Bridge within three years.

One additional area that the City Club focuses on is how the people of Portland could best survive and move forward after an earthquake — they ask that people instill social resilience in their children and support emergency services in order to prevent populations from leaving Portland in droves and taking the city’s vibrant culture with them.

Finally, the City Club wants government, community organizations, and businesses to better coordinate in order to plan for and invest in earthquake resilience. They hope that coordinated earthquake preparedness will help Portland to respond faster to an earthquake.

The City Club is an organization that plans to inform and call members of the community to the obligations of citizenship, and they believe that Portlanders should now be focusing on earthquake preparedness.

“Portland-area communities are built atop tectonic forces beyond anyone’s control,” said the City Club in their report, “but the region is not helpless.” By following the instructions and recommendations given in this report, Portlanders will be on the path to earthquake preparedness and resilience.

For additional information on the City Club’s findings, you can view the organization’s four-page summary of the much longer full report.