Cohousing-L Mailing List: Retrofitting buildings to prepare for The Big One

[Martha Wagner (wordbizpdx]

The Big One, the predicted Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake written about in 
a New Yorker story last July 
(/www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/07/20/the-really-big-one) is or should be on 
the radar of communities all along the west coast, from California to Vancouver 
Island.  It’s on my community's radar in Portland, Oregon, because most of our 
buildings were built before people knew about the potential for such a major 
earthquake (8 to 9.2 on the Richter Scale).We’ve made various efforts to 
encourage household and community preparedness, but our older buildings have 
not been retrofitted to attach homes to the foundations, which is very costly. 
We are getting some estimates for the work, but we have no history of special 
assessments or otherwise funding a large expense beyond our common hall, for 
which money was set aside by our developers.

 We’d be interested to hear from West Coast communities about their 
preparedness efforts and from communities anywhere that have won approval for 
special assessments or come up with some creative financing options.

Martha Wagner
Columbia Ecovillage
Portland, OR


Martha Wagner
writing/editing/proofreading
www.marthawagner.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/marthawagner
(503) 319-3353