The city of Seaside, like other coastal towns, has an evacuation plan and system of approved routes to be taken in the event of a tsunami. This link is the current tsunami evacuation map available on the City of Seaside's website.
http://www.cityofseaside.us/pdfforms/SeasideTMap.pdf
As seen on the evacuation map, a major issue in vacating the (yellow) tsunami hazard zone is the Necanicum River. The river flows parallel to the Pacific Ocean creating a natural barrier between the popular tourist center of Seaside and the beach, and the (green) safe zone. There are only three bridges that span the Necanicum in a direct path between the Turnaround and Promenade (at the center of the tourist center of Seaside and the safe zone. In the event of a tsunami, there are only about 20 minutes warning before the first wave reaches the shore. It could be extremely difficult to evacuate from the beach across one of these three bridges to the safe zone approximately 1 mile away.
The Project
The O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory is the world's largest tsunami research facility. It is currently the home of a 1:50 scale model of the Oregon coastal town of Seaside.
This model has been built in the large wave basin where tsunami waves of proportional scale will be generated and observed as they interact with the model.
One of the goals of this project is to determine the feasibility of vertical evacuation, or the evacuation of people into the upper stories of buildings, in the event of a tsunami. Therefore, the model of Seaside will be used to study the path of a tsunami and the inundation of the town, not the level of destruction a tsunami could create in Seaside, Oregon. Ultimately, the primary purpose of this project is to determine ways to minimize devastation in the event of a tsunami; vertical evacuation is one possibility.
The town of Seaside in particular is in an area that could be affected by a tsunami caused by a seismic event on the Cascadia Subduction Zone (or CSZ) situated just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest.
This blog will be updated with the progress of the project as it takes place so that others may know what we are working on, why we are doing this project, what we are finding, and how our project may impact the lives of others.
Thank you and we hope you find this site to be informative and enjoyable to visit.
~Brittany Snyder and Jennifer Krebs
2007 Wave lab students and staff
