Wave lab trip shows tsunami threat

If and when a Tsunami Learning Center is built inside the wave lab at Oregon State University, the goal would be to have every fifth-grade science teacher in the state - if not every fifth-grader - walk through its doors.

Touring the university's O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory on Wednesday was a less-rambunctious group. The crowd, including Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, Oregon Democratic Sens. Kate Brown, D-Portland, and Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, marvelled at the lab's tsunami basin and 342-foot concrete wave channel.

The politicians gawked as waves repeatedly smashed scale-model bridges and inundated a mock-up of Seaside.

The tour was organized by Dean Byers, chairman of the Douglas County Democratic Party. Byers said he was alarmed to learn in September that Oregon scientists are scrambling to revise estimates about how far inland floodwaters would reach if a tsunami hit communities from Astoria to Brookings - and he wanted to learn more.

The most recent inundation maps, developed in 1995, were designed to help coastal communities figure out where to build hospitals, fire stations and community centres.

The new maps will focus on tsunami evacuation plans - pushing evacuees higher up and further inland. Preliminary data from a new study of worst-case scenarios in Cannon Beach - scheduled for release early next year - show that true safety zones could need to be "tens of feet" higher in elevation than the original estimates, which could translate into miles farther inland.

Byers is specifically concerned about the proposed Port of Coos Bay Liquid Natural Gas terminal, which would sit not only in an inundation zone, but next to a cargo container storage yard. During a tsunami, the containers might float and act like battering rams.

"These studies (and maps) are all about saving lives," explained lab director, Daniel Cox. Research and education are the keys to getting the state up to speed when it comes to developing building codes and evacuation shelters that can withstand tsunamis, Cox said.

And bringing in more young students and their teachers as part of the proposed $900,000 tsunami center - something the existing wave lab has already done, to some extent - would teach them about the science of earthquakes and tsunamis.

"It will keep the discussion active and get kids excited about science," Cox said of the learning center, which is merely a dream and proposal on a brochure at this point.

The Oregonian