Hannah Norman, KFF Health News and Daniel Chang
ASTORIA, Ore. — Residents of this small coastal metropolis within the Pacific Northwest know what to do when there’s a tsunami warning: Flee to increased floor.
For these in or close to Columbia Memorial, the town’s solely hospital, there’ll quickly be a special plan: Shelter in place. The hospital is constructing a brand new facility subsequent door with an on-site tsunami shelter — an elevated refuge atop columns deeply anchored within the floor, the place almost 2,000 folks can safely wait out a flood.
Oregon wants extra shelters just like the one which Columbia Memorial is constructing, emergency managers say. Hospitals within the area are more likely to incur severe injury, if not smash, and will take greater than three years to totally recuperate within the occasion of a significant earthquake and tsunami, based on a state report.
Columbia Memorial’s present facility is a single-story constructing, made of wood a half-century in the past, that might seemingly collapse and sink into the bottom or be swallowed by a landslide after a significant earthquake or a tsunami, mentioned Erik Thorsen, the hospital’s chief govt.
“It is just not built to survive either one of those natural disaster events,” Thorsen mentioned.
At least 10 different hospitals alongside the Oregon coast are in peril as effectively. So Columbia Memorial leaders proposed constructing a hospital able to withstanding an earthquake and landslide, with a tsunami shelter, as an alternative of relocating the ability to increased floor. Residents and state officers supported the plans, and the federal authorities awarded a $14 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to assist pay for the tsunami shelter.
The undertaking broke floor in October 2024. Within six months, the Trump administration had canceled the grant program, referred to as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC, calling it “yet another example of a wasteful and ineffective FEMA program … more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans affected by natural disasters.”
Molly Wing, director of the enlargement undertaking, mentioned dropping the BRIC grant felt like “a punch to the gut.”
“We really didn’t see that coming,” she mentioned.
This summer time, Oregon and 19 different states sued to revive the FEMA grants. On Dec. 11, a judge ruled that the Trump administration had unlawfully ended this system with out congressional approval.
The administration didn’t instantly point out it will enchantment the choice, however Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin mentioned by e-mail: “DHS has not terminated BRIC. Any suggestion to the contrary is a lie. The Biden Administration abandoned true mitigation and used BRIC as a green new deal slush fund. It’s unfortunate that an activist judge either didn’t understand that or didn’t care.” FEMA is a subdivision of DHS.
Columbia Memorial was one of many few hospitals slated to obtain grants from the BRIC program, which had introduced greater than $4.5 billion for almost 2,000 constructing tasks since 2022.
Hospital leaders have determined to maintain constructing — with unsure funding — as a result of they are saying ready is simply too harmful. With the Trump administration reversing course on BRIC, fewer communities will obtain assist from FEMA to scale back their catastrophe threat, even locations the place catastrophes are seemingly.
More than three centuries have handed since a significant earthquake induced the Pacific Northwest’s shoreline to drop a number of toes and unleashed a tsunami that crashed onto the land in January 1700, based on scientists who research the evolution of the Oregon coast.
The best hazard is an underwater fault line referred to as the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which lies 70 to 100 miles off the coast, from Northern California to British Columbia.
The Cascadia zone can produce a megathrust earthquake, with a magnitude of 9 or increased — the kind able to triggering a catastrophic tsunami — every 500 years, based on the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists predict a ten% to fifteen% probability of such an earthquake alongside the fault zone within the subsequent 50 years.
“We can’t wait any longer,” Thorsen mentioned. “The risk is high.”
Building for the Future
The BRIC program began in 2020, throughout the first Trump administration, to offer communities and establishments with funding and technical help to fortify their constructions towards pure disasters.
Joel Scata, a senior lawyer with the environmental advocacy group Natural Resources Defense Council, mentioned this system helped communities higher put together so they may scale back the price of rebuilding after a flood, twister, wildfire, or excessive climate occasion.
To qualify for a grant, a hospital needed to present that the undertaking’s advantages had been higher than the long run hazard and price. In some instances, that profit may not be readily obvious.
“It prevents bad disasters from happening, and so you don’t necessarily see it in action,” Scata mentioned.
Scata famous that the Trump administration has additionally stopped awarding grants by FEMA’s Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which predates BRIC.
“There really is no money going out the door from the federal government to help communities reduce their disaster risk,” he mentioned.
A latest KFF Health News investigation utilizing proprietary knowledge from Fathom, a world chief in flood modeling, discovered that no less than 170 U.S. hospitals are at risk of serious and probably harmful flooding from extra intense and frequent storms. That rely didn’t embrace Columbia Memorial, as Fathom’s knowledge didn’t account for tsunamis. It fashions flooding from rivers, sea degree rise, and excessive rainfall.
In latest days, an atmospheric river — a slender storm band carrying important quantities of moisture — dumped greater than 15 inches of rain on elements of Oregon and Washington, inflicting catastrophic flooding alongside rivers and the coast. In the Washington city of Sedro-Woolley, which sits alongside the Skagit River, the PeaceHealth United General Medical Center evacuated nonemergency sufferers.
High winds battered Astoria, leaving the town with some minor landslides, based on information experiences. But flooding on the street to the close by seashore city of Seaside made the drive almost impassable.
The Trump administration is leaning on states to take higher duty for recovering from pure disasters, Scata mentioned, however most states should not financially ready to take action.
“The disasters are just going to keep on piling up,” he mentioned, “and the federal government’s going to have to keep stepping in.”
A Hospital at Risk
Columbia Memorial is blocks from the southern shore of the Columbia River, close to the Washington border, the place the area’s natural hazards embrace earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, and floods. A essential entry hospital with 25 beds, it opened in 1977 — earlier than state constructing codes addressed tsunami protections.
Thorsen mentioned the brand new facility and shelter could be a “model design” for different hospitals. Design plans present a five-level hospital constructed atop a basis anchored to the bedrock and surrounded by concrete columns to defend it from tsunami particles.
The shelter will probably be on the roof of the second ground, above the projected most tsunami inundation. It will probably be accessible by way of an outside staircase and inside staircases and elevators, with sufficient room for as much as 1,900 folks, plus meals, water, tents, and different provides to maintain them for 5 days.
With most affected person care offered on the second and third ranges, turbines on the fourth degree, and utility traces underground, the hospital is anticipated to stay operational after a pure catastrophe.
Thorsen mentioned an earthquake and tsunami threaten not solely huge flooding but also liquefaction, through which the bottom loosens and causes constructions above it to break down. Deep foundations, thick slabs, and different structural helps are anticipated to guard the brand new hospital and tsunami construction towards such failure.
Through the years, hospital directors and civic leaders in Astoria have sought different places for Columbia Memorial. But relocation wasn’t economical. Columbia Memorial dedicated to spend money on a brand new hospital and tsunami shelter to guard not solely sufferers and workers but additionally close by residents.
“Your community should count on your hospital to be a safe haven in a natural disaster,” Thorsen mentioned.
Fighting To Restore Funds
The estimated building funds for Columbia Memorial’s enlargement is $300 million, largely financed by new debt from the hospital. The tsunami shelter is budgeted at about $20 million, for which FEMA’s BRIC program awarded nearly $14 million, with a $6 million matching grant from the state, which has maintained its assist.
The shelter and the constructing’s structural protections — that includes bolstered metal, deeper foundations, and thicker slabs — are integral to the design and can’t be eliminated with out compromising the remainder of the construction, mentioned Michelle Checkis, the undertaking architect.
“We can’t pull the TVERS [tsunami vertical evacuation refuge structure] out without pulling the hospital back apart again,” she mentioned. “It’s kind of like, if I was going to stack it up with Legos, I would have to take all those Legos apart and stack it up completely differently.”
Columbia Memorial has sought assist from Oregon’s congressional delegation. In a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former FEMA appearing administrator David Richardson, the lawmakers demanded that the businesses restore the hospital’s grant.
The hospital’s management is looking for different grants and philanthropic donations to make up for the loss. As a final resort, Thorsen mentioned, the board will contemplate eradicating “nonessential features” from the constructing, although he added that there’s little fats to trim from the undertaking.
The lawsuit brought by states in July alleged that FEMA lacks the authority to cancel the BRIC program or redirect its funding for different functions.
The states argued that canceling this system ran counter to Congress’ intent and undermined tasks underway.
In their response to the lawsuit, the Trump administration said repeatedly that the defendants “deny that the BRIC program has been terminated.”
The lawsuit cites examples of projects at risk in each state due to FEMA’s termination of the grants. Oregon’s first example is Columbia Memorial’s tsunami shelter. “Neither the County nor the State can afford to resume the project without federal funding,” the lawsuit states.
In response to questions about the impact of canceling the grant on Astoria and the surrounding community, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said BRIC had “deviated from its statutory intent.”
“BRIC was more focused on climate change initiatives like bicycle lanes, shaded bus stops, and planting trees, rather than disaster relief or mitigation,” McLaughlin said. DHS and FEMA provided no further comment about BRIC or the Astoria hospital.
Preparing for a Tsunami Disaster
Located near the end of the Lewis & Clark National Historic Trail, Astoria sits on a peninsula that juts into the Columbia River near the Pacific Ocean.
Much of the city is not in the tsunami inundation area. But Astoria’s downtown commercial district — where gift shops, hotels, and seafood restaurants line the streets — is nearly all an evacuation zone.
Two hospitals — Ocean Beach Health in nearby Washington, and Providence Seaside Hospital in Oregon — are about 20 miles from Columbia Memorial. Both are 25-bed hospitals, and neither is designed to withstand a tsunami.
Ocean Beach Health regularly conducts drills for mass-casualty and natural disasters, said Brenda Sharkey, its chief nursing officer.
“We focus our planning and investments on areas where we can make a real difference for our community before, during, and after an event — such as maintaining continuity of care, ensuring rapid triage, and coordinating with regional emergency partners,” Sharkey said in an email.
Gary Walker, a spokesperson for Providence Seaside, said in a statement that the hospital has a “comprehensive emergency plan for earthquakes and tsunamis, including alternative sites and mobile resources.”
Walker added that Providence Seaside has hired “a team of consultants and experts to conduct a conceptual resilience study” that would evaluate the hospital’s vulnerabilities and recommend ways to address them.
Oregon’s emergency managers advise residents and visitors in coastal communities to immediately seek higher ground after a major earthquake — and not to rely on tsunami sirens, social media, or most technology.
“There may not even be cellphone towers operating after an event like this,” said Jonathan Allan, a coastal geomorphologist with the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. “The earthquake shaking, its intensity, and particularly the length of time in which the shaking persists, is the warning message.”
The stronger the earthquake and the longer the shaking, he said, the more likely a tsunami will head to shore.
A tsunami triggered by a Cascadia zone earthquake could strike land in less than 30 minutes, based on state estimates.
Many of Oregon’s seaside communities are close to high-enough floor to hunt security from a tsunami in a comparatively quick time, Allan mentioned. But he estimated that, to avoid wasting lives, Oregon would want a few dozen vertical tsunami evacuation shelters alongside the coast, together with in seaside cities that entice vacationers and the place the closest excessive floor is a mile or extra away.
Willis Van Dusen’s household has lived in Astoria because the mid-Nineteenth century. A former mayor of Astoria, Van Dusen careworn that tsunamis should not a hypothetical hazard. He recalled seeing one in Seaside in 1964. The wave was solely about 18 inches excessive, he mentioned, but it surely flooded a street and destroyed a bridge and a few houses. The reminiscence has stayed with him.
“It’s not like … ‘Oh, that’ll never happen,’” he mentioned. “We have to be prepared for it.”
KFF Health News correspondent Brett Kelman contributed to this report.
