Because the City of Portland is going to try to take care of you in case of an emergency.
City leaders met Monday to work on its evacuation plan.
That plan is a work in progress. Mayor Tom Potter, department heads, emergency planners and others envision several scenarios where an evacuation might be necessary. However, they agree that the most likely one would be a major earthquake.
Seismologists say a huge, devastating quake is only a matter of time. Whether that’s a lot of time or little time is unknown. But some geologists say that, judging by historic patters, the region is about due.
Emergency responders, including police and fire bureaus, would bear much of the responsibility for getting people out of town. But it’s an overwhelming task which could turn chaotic. Even if nearly everyone got out, there are questions about what would happen to those left behind – or possibly to those who might deliberately stay behind, to defend their homes, or to loot them.
Portland’s many bridges are potential bottlenecks. So are the freeways. According to emergency planner Shawn Graff, “the transportation infrastructure, the bridges could be down, the waterways could be impassable.”
The details of the plan are still being worked out. They’ll be tested in October, when the federal government will run an emergency preparedness drill.
I really do find it disgusting when city planners try and plan for something more involved than where they’re all going to eat luch later in the day. Mostly because it breeds a sense of contentment in the population about what they themselves can do to prepare.
My other reason is that the government always wants to tell folks “The How” and “The When”. Remember, the government will only help you on their own terms, so the less you want their help, the more they’r going to try and give it to you when they get around to it.
The way I see it, the city can go right on ahead and write down whatever plan they feel like, because 1. The city is run by far left Dems who could fuck up a ham sandwich, and 2. No plan withstands first contact with whatever it was designed to be for.
But if they could just please not advertise the plan.
Seattle did this a few years back with the FEMA crew. There was a giant warehous that was being torn down for the above-ground light-rail station and, before the city had all the debris hauled away, they pretended a dirty bomb on a traincar went off.
Their disaster plan was a disaster and nearly everyone ended up with a red “you’re dead” tag. They said shortly thereafter that they had improved the previous plan and fixed the things that had gone wrong, and as expected, everyone cheered.
I’m so glad I got the fuck out of that town.
The outlying cities around Portland aren’t much better. I live in one of them, Gresham, about 15 miles to the east of downtown Portland.
If you look at an Oregon map, you will note that there are only two highways that go East from Portland, I-84 and US 26, also known as Powell Boulevard.
In the event of said major disaster, much of the relief would come from the East via road (Railroads would be much slower to recover). It can’t get into Portland via I-84 realistically, because that highway travels through the Columbia River Gorge, where a good rain sets off landslides, and a major earthquake would bury the road for months. Once I-84 gets into the cities, it crosses dozens of viaducts, and/or has dozens of overcrossings, most of which would fail in said major earthquake.
You are down to US 26, originally a military road built back in the 1800’s so the Army could control the Indians and the settlers could get from the Utah-Oregon border to Portland and west to the sea.
It’s a good road, and has stood the test of time. Parts of it are 4 lanes wide, and the rest could be widened easily. Best of all, from 25 miles east of Portland to the Willamette River, it has exactly TWO overcrossings and NO bridges (military roads are built like that, if possible).
Enter the Socialist government of Gresham, OR. Mind you, Gresham is the seat of the only group of conservatives in this county, but the government is still mostly Socialist. They have a HUGE “Planning” division, the job of which it is to dream up ways to spend huge amounts of tax money. They decided to “beautify” US 26 as it runs through Gresham (it’s the road Gresham was originally built on, along with a short-line railroad which is now a linear park). They planned for (evidently without consulting the disaster planners) and built a mostly-two-lane road with “enhancements” such as raised medians (traffic accident generators), curb extensions (to harass turning drivers and bicyclists), brick crosswalks (so last-minute braking on the wet surface guarantees you will slide into the intersection or strike pedestrians) etc. Many dollars went into the project. So many that it is very likely that the entire road could have been widened in it’s few remaining 2-lane places to four lanes with the same money. A wider boulevard means swifter flow of traffic, more traffic, all logistical plusses if the road were to have to be depended upon to relieve a shattered Portland after a big quake/nuclear attack.
What boneheads.
I write a letter to the editor of the local fishwrapper (one of many, unlike Portland’s paper, they are not afraid to publish all of my letters) and ask if any consulting was done with the Feds (FEMA) or any other disaster-planning outfit before the capacity of the highway was so badly limited.
That was two months ago. To this date I have gotten zero replies. I know City Hall read the letter.
What I hope happens when said disaster happens, and martial law is declared is that the Army engineers abandon I-84 as unrepairable in the short term, and come in with LARGE bulldozers and mega trucks of gravel, scrape off all the impediments to a four-lane road, and rebuild the military road to military standards.
If I’m still around, I’ll visit the engineer in charge, and hand him a list of names of those responsible for giving him such a headache. I’ll wager that he will have enough troops left over to form a firing squad.
I’m fortunate to live on top of a ridge quite far from any major infrastucture; freeway, gas or oil pipeline, power transmission line, that sort of thing. Barring nuclear attack, I can foresee no need for me to go anywhere in an emergency. I have a well stocked RV in the driveway, about a two month supply of water, fuel and food, stretchable into four months by foraging. I also have about 40k rounds of sundry ammo, it being nicely compact and easily stored.
I think I will prod around to find a somewhat long range radio tranceiver for communication over distances more than ten miles. Ihave several CB’s, one in each vehicle and some “handy talky” types. Any suggestions?
Actually, you have more chance of long range with CB than any of the newer VHF-FM stuff like FRS-GMRS or even Marine VHF.
CB is down at the low end near 30 mhz, and is AM. AM does better over the hills and dales (so does lower freq).
You could get a Marine HF/SSB rig for a boat, and they are good for 100’s of miles (they are also illegal to use on land, but many do). They are spendy, and will set you back $1,300-$2,500.
Back in the 70’s, when I (and almost everyone else) was into CB, I put a 1/8 wave loaded antenna at the back of my pickup cab, where it would use the entire top of the cab for a ground plane, but since it was at the back, it was directional, and went best in the direction the truck’s nose was pointed. I tuned that antenna with the trimming pot on the tranceiver using a ham radio antenna trim meter. I routinely got 15 mile distance and occasionally 30 with that rig. Once, on top of Neahkahnie Mountain, I talked to someone in Tillamook like they were right next door.
I still have a CB for my SHTF kit, but it is one of those “emergency” kind with a magnet-base antenna, probably not too good.
There used to be, in the General Mobile Radio Service, a provision for licensees to have a base station of 25 watts, and 5 watt mobile rigs. If any of those are still around, they might be your best bet, especially if you can find common channels with the new tiny shirt-pocket tranceivers.
Or, you could get your ham license, and just go bananas buying all sorts of good stuff which will let you talk to anyone anywhere anytime.