Good article to start explaining the amount of work that lies ahead of Portland and Oregon for us to prepare for the Cascadia earthquake. Besides buildings and bridges we have sewer, water, gas, and fuel tanks to upgrade. I am not surprised by O'Longaigh response. Additional studies and associated costs are not easy to consider during economic hard times. However these need to be done, and if they show the harbor wall at risk, it should be strengthened. The costs are high to do such work, but the costs of not doing so are much higher. The quake will happen, the question is how much time we have before it happens and whether we can will get the work done. We are gambling on the economic livelihood of Portland and Oregon. We are fortunate for the work that both Yumei and Carmen are doing.

O'Longaigh has made broad sweeping statements before to address public concerns that really make no sense. O'Longaigh relies more on political talk than technical expertise. For instance, it is a secondary matter that the harbor wall is in "great shape." One could walk the streets of downtown Portland and point out many Unreinforced Masonry (URM) buildings that are in "great shape", yet they contain inherent seismic vulnerabilites in their construction. And no one would argue those points. O'Longaigh is outgunned in the battle he was waging with Wang. His background is in building design, not bridges and soil-structure interaction. The City would be wise to accept Wang's advice and investigate mitigation measures. Instead O'Longaigh, arguably underqualified for his position, is engaging in political handwaving to remove the problem from public interest (at the detriment to the city). If you polled the engineering design community, both from the geotechnical and structural disciplines, it would, in my opinion, validate Wangs statements regarding seismic vulnerability of the harbor wall. Ultimately it would appear that the City of Portland PBOT is turning a blind eye to serious potential problem.

Clearly it's worse than the rosy story that politicians paint. After having Earthquake insurance for a year, my premium just got upped by 300% (!!!!). After many phone calls to make sure it wasn't erroneous or just our home that caused our premium to go up by triple, we were told that the rates for Oregon had been "adjusted" and that was now the "normal" competitive rate for the state. Since it seems obvious that all Insurance carriers will probably declare bankruptcy in the case of an 8+ Cascadia event (have you tried to get flood insurance since Katrina?), we told them that we would just cancel the policy and hope that with our seismic retrofit can prevent total loss of our home.