Oregon Public Broadcasting

If you're near the coastline and a major earthquake strikes, the advice as always is to scramble for higher ground.  But sometimes, high ground is far away -- for example, if you're in downtown Seaside, Oregon or Ocean Shores, Washington. 

Artist's rendering of possible tower safe haven in Long Beach, Wash. -- Courtesy of Project Safe Haven

In such places, the best option could be to head for the rooftop of a sturdy building.  That is, if there is one. 

The horrible and gripping images of destruction from the Japanese earthquake and tsunami are still top-of-mind in the string of beach towns that run along the Oregon and Washington coasts. 

I'm in one of them now, Westport, Washington.  I'm on what passes for high ground here -- one of three long lines of low beach dunes.  If the worst came to pass, I think I'd want to be a little bit higher and I'm not the only one.

Linda Orgel: "You look at some of those pictures and you could just picture Westport or Grayland, the same thing.  It would just sweep right across the peninsulas."

The roof of this building in Minamisanriku, Japan was a designated safe haven, but it proved insufficiently high. Around ten people managed to cling to life there, but twenty others were swept away. -- By Asian Disaster Reduction Center

Retiree Linda Orgel is one of hundreds of coastal residents spurred to become better prepared.  That interest is being channeled into planning and design meetings for a possible string of manmade refuge towers.

Westport apartment manager Harold Gray assumes when the Big One hits, the roads leading inland or to the hills will be impassable.

Harold Gray: "We live down toward the docks. You wouldn't have the time to get to high ground. It just wouldn't happen. This gives us another option, which is what we need because high ground is far away."

A four-year federal grant to Washington State's Emergency Management Division is paying for conceptual design work on so-called "vertical evacuation structures." 

People who ran to the fourth floor of this apartment building in Minamisanriku, Japan survived the tsunami. -- Asian Disaster Reduction Center

Examples could include a tower that doubles as a bird viewing or whale-watching platform.  Another possibility is to build a tall earthen berm along a sports field. You could put bleachers on it.

The University of Washington is helping to facilitate community brainstorming in low lying towns along the outer coast. 

UW hazard mitigation expert Bob Freitag says the structures need to have multiple uses.

Bob Freitag: "These towers really can't be single purpose to have any lasting effect.  They would be ignored. They'll be an eyesore.  They have to be part of the community."

In Southwest Washington's Pacific County, meeting-goers decided they wanted 13 berms, five towers and two parking garages spaced along the coastline to give people the means to shelter from a tsunami.

The only place in the world that's actually done this sort of thing is Japan. Last month's tsunami provided the first real world test of manmade tsunami evacuation structures. 

Coincidentally, a University of Washington tsunami researcher was in northern Japan at the time.

Professor Jody Bourgeois says fleeing up a reinforced concrete building seems to have worked -- most of the time.

Jody Bourgeois: "In some cases the building was not as high as the tsunami, which was larger than the design was."

Bourgeois says in the town of Minamisanriku, the tsunami overtopped a three story office building.  It was designated as a safe haven, but around 20 people were swept away.

Jody Bourgeois: "I would say if you're going to build a vertical evacuation structure, the major cost would be in the structure itself.  Adding another floor is not the major cost. So I guess after this event I would say, add another floor. Make it higher."

This is an artist's rendering of the proposed tsunami shelter/new city hall that officials hope to build in Cannon Beach, Ore. -- Courtesy of Ecola Architects, PC

None of the Northwest beach towns thinking about this has the money to build a tsunami safe haven.  But first things first, says Washington Emergency Management's John Schelling.

John Schelling: "In my experience, it is really difficult to obtain any kind of resources or funding without having a plan.  That is really what this project is designed to do."

In vulnerable Seaside, Oregon, officials are discussing whether the roof of an expanded convention center could double as a tsunami refuge. 

Cannon Beach, Oregon needs a new city hall.  Some residents are pressing to elevate the new building on sturdy concrete stilts so that it could potentially shelter one thousand or more visitors and locals from a tsunami. 

But choosing a more rugged design roughly doubles the cost from the $1 to $2 million range to the $3 to $4 million range, according to an architect and former mayor. 

As for Japan, a more detailed survey of what worked and what didn't awaits an "all clear" from emergency responders.  They haven't yet finished looking for bodies in the rubble there.