PORTLAND, Ore. — Degenkolb Engineers Principal Kent Yu starts his two-year term as Chair of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Committee (OSSPAC) this month. In this role, Dr. Yu leads disaster recovery and preparedness planning in the state of Oregon for OSSPAC.

OSSPAC promotes earthquake awareness and preparedness through education, research and legislation at the federal, state and local levels. The organization consists of an 18-member commission, representing the fields of engineering, transportation, education, housing and emergency response among other professions. Dr. Yu’s focus on resiliency, the ability of an earthquake-struck region to bounce back quickly, is especially timely given this week’s 5.6 earthquake in Oklahoma, the devastating Tsunami in Japan this March and the October earthquake in Van, Turkey.

On April 18, 2011, the Oregon House of Representatives unanimously passed HR 3. Sponsored by Rep. Deborah Boone of Cannon Beach, the resolution directs OSSPAC to deliver an Oregon Resilience Plan to the legislative assembly by February 28, 2013, with the goal of saving lives and preserving economy and communities from a Cascadia mega thrust earthquake and tsunami.

“I am very proud to hand off the duties of OSSPAC Chair to Dr. Yu,” said outgoing OSSPAC Chair Gerry Williams. “Dr. Yu was appointed to the Commission by Governor Kulongoski in 2008 to represent the Structural Engineering community in Oregon on the Commission. He is an outstanding engineer and probably knows more about effects of earthquakes on buildings and other structures than any other person in the state. Dr. Yu is uniquely qualified to lead OSSPAC in crafting of the Oregon Seismic Resiliency Plan mandated by the legislature.”

The last time Oregon experienced a major earthquake was more than three centuries ago. The majority of the buildings and transportation lifeline structures here were built long before our current understanding of seismic hazard as reflected in the building codes. Many of these buildings will not be functional and many may collapse following a major earthquake, severely limiting the state’s ability to respond quickly and recover economically. Many of the coastal communities are at risk due to the very short amount of time available (generally around twenty to thirty minutes) to allow the residents to evacuate to high ground in the event of a coastal earthquake generating a tsunami. Japan has thousands of tsunami vertical evacuation structures -- there are none in Oregon.

“We are making great progress on these fronts,” said Dr. Yu. “A couple of years ago, I was involved in conceptual design of the Cannon Beach City Hall as a Tsunami vertical evacuation building, the first of its kind in the US. Certainly we have the technical capability to design and build a very robust building to resist a tsunami and save lives.” When Dr. Yu was in Japan this June as part of a NSF Rapid team, he visited a number of these evacuation structures. Most of them performed very well.

As a member of the Tsunami Loads and Effects committee of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Dr. Yu plans to incorporate the many lessons his team learned from Japan into Oregon’s National Tsunami Design Standard (expected to be complete within the next 18 months). The resilience plan as envisioned by Dr. Yu will focus on three areas: (1) Life-safety and usability of schools and other critical facilities; (2) Life-safety and property protection in the coastal communities affected by Tsunami; and (3) operational critical lifeline facilities such as energy, water and transportation for quick recovery.