The premium turned out to be surprisingly small, though Steinbrugge didn't know that back in 2014, when he sat stunned in an Oregon engineering association meeting listening to a presentation about the region's worst seismic nightmare: a major rupture on the offshore Cascadia Subduction Zone. "This is just a smart insurance policy - a one-time premium that basically provides insurance for 80 to 100 years." "The odds of the next big earthquake happening during the lifetime of these new buildings seemed scary-high," recalls Richard Steinbrugge, the former Beaverton facilities administrator who convinced the district it made sense to spend more for sturdier schools. Many of the schools, office towers and apartments that keep communities humming are likely to be damaged beyond repair, with devastating economic and social consequences.īeaverton was the first school district in Oregon to decide that wasn't good enough for its students and neighborhoods. That means they won't collapse and kill people - or, as California earthquake expert Lucy Jones puts it, occupants will be able to "crawl out alive." What happens next is not the code's concern. To meet current standards, new structures need only be designed for what's called life-safety. That might not sound extraordinary, but it's more than state and federal building codes require. Since then, Beaverton has built an additional six schools that are equally robust, all designed to not only ride out a Cascadia megaquake, but also to remain usable after the shaking stops. The beams, painted blue and filled with concrete, are part of what made Tumwater the most seismically resilient school in the Pacific Northwest when it opened five years ago - outshining even the newest schools in Washington.
The only hint there's something unique about this structure in the Portland suburb of Beaverton is the steel cross-bracing left exposed along one hallway. Blond wood brightens the corridors, and concrete floors are polished to a shine. The two-story building is boxy, with a faux-brick facade in shades of ocher and tan. On the surface, there's not much to distinguish Tumwater Middle School from any other modern campus.
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