Category Archives: Concordia News

By Erin E. Cooper | Concordia/Vernon/Woodlawn Neighborhood Emergency Team

What could you do with three to 10 seconds of warning before an earthquake?

Those seconds could be enough to take steps to prevent injury or even save your life.

Oregon’s new ShakeAlert system receives information from seismic detectors across the West Coast and sends a warning to cell phones in areas that will be affected by shaking. The system is not predicting earthquakes, but is sensing earthquakes that have already begun and alerting users before the shaking starts.

It’s not necessary to sign up for alerts, since they’ll come through the Wireless Emergency Alerts system, similar to Amber Alerts or other imminent threats, such as tornadoes.

These alerts will start when your location is expected to experience “light” shaking or stronger. It’s also possible, but not required, to download the MyShake App on Google and Android phones, which will alert you when “weak” or stronger shaking is expected.

What should you do with your seconds of warning about an impending earthquake?

The ShakeAlert will remind you to drop, cover and hold on. Rather than spending the first few seconds of the earthquake trying to identify the unique sensation, you’ll be ready to act. Get off that ladder or move away from the glass window, and the probability of getting through with no or minimal injuries is much better.

In the future, ShakeAlert will also connect to more than just individuals. By shutting off gas, water and the electric grid in the moments before shaking starts, ShakeAlert could save critical infrastructure, making it both faster and cheaper to get services back up and running.

Although ShakeAlert may save lives and minimize injuries, it’s not an infallible system. If you feel shaking, take action immediately, without waiting for your phone to alert you.

For more information on what to during an earthquake, including for those with limited mobility, visit Ready.gov/earthquakes.

Erin E. Cooper is a marine biologist living in Woodlawn. She spends a lot of time thinking about disasters and has been a NET member for many years. Contact her at OceanListener@gmail. com.

By Nancy Varekamp | CNews Editor

Beth Ronk serves immigrant communities as not only a teacher, but also as a volunteer.

All 11 years she has lived in the Concordia and Cully neighborhoods, Beth has taught English as an additional language – first in public schools and now for individual children and/or their parents in their homes.

“It just kind of naturally goes with your work,” she explained. Beth is in a position to identify needs being underserved by available programs, especially in Clackamas County.

“With the pandemic, I lost a few students and had some extra time. It’s easy to fill it with work, even though it’s volunteer work.”

Last September – with the pandemic raging and fires destroying homes – she and others in immigrant rights and social justice groups formed a partnership they dubbed Immigrant Mutual Aid Coalition (IMAC). Those organizations include:

• Interfaith Movement for Immigrant Justice
• American Friends Service Committee
• Causa
• Never Again Action
• Pineros Y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste
• Familias en Acción

“We had all worked together in other volunteer efforts, and we realized we needed to shift our concerns to response, together,” Beth said.

Each organization has connections to the community and to each other. “It didn’t take a lot of promotion,” she recalled. Within two days, IMAC launched its first distribution of food, household goods and hygiene necessities.

Every two or three weeks since, there have been other distributions at a Clackamas County church that draw 300 to 400 families from the Portland area and elsewhere in the state.

“We are seeing more and more families from east and northeast Portland as the weeks go,” Beth said. And IMAC was prompt to help residents displaced by the January Villa de Clara Vista fire on Cully Boulevard. That included several hundred dollars in gift cards.

IMAC clients are largely Latinx, and Beth appreciates help from the Oregon Food Bank to provide culturally appropriate food products. “It’s important to provide people with food that they would purchase themselves, especially during stressful times,” Beth said.

Due to the nature of the organizations in the coalition, IMAC is also able to help families improve their access to resources like healthcare and unemployment benefits.

Although the needs of IMAC’s clients have not subsided substantially, the volunteers and member organizations are already looking forward.

“What do our efforts look like post pandemic, once people can get back inside a building?” Beth asked.

“We’re thinking about what other opportunities can be created to have the community participate even more.”

Nancy Varekamp is semiretired from her career in journalism, public relations and – her favorite work engagement – writing and editing targeted newsletters.

By Greg Bourget | Portland Clean Air Lead Researcher

Concordia neighborhood is near an industrial area and a busy industrial truck route. That is likely to cause dangerous industrial air pollution for neighbors because human health is not considered currently as a factor in the regulation of these industries by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

Since Gov. Kate Brown’s Cleaner Air Oregon rulemaking process started recently, DEQ has applied human-health regulation only to new industries coming to Oregon. Regulation of existing Portland-area industry has been limited so far to four of the most dangerous factories — all too far away to affect Concordia.

According to the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT), which measured industrial truck 24-hour counts in Concordia, industrial truck activity throughout the neighborhood is very low. Samples taken on Lombard in 2018 found just 17 or 18 trips per day. The exception is on Columbia Boulevard, which was much higher — 380 industrial truck trips per day.

Portland Bureau of Transportation (PBOT), however, sampled at 52nd Avenue and Columbia in July 2017 and recorded 2,549 truck trips in a day. That’s the second highest industrial truck count taken in over a decade of Portland-area samples taken by both agencies. Industrial trucks are all diesel-fueled. California reported that diesel particulate causes 70% of cancer risk from all airborne carcinogens combined, and the state banned unfiltered diesel trucks.

A Portland Clean Air analysis of ODOT and Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle Services records found 75% of Portland area trucks are still unfiltered. Diesel particulate is unusually tiny – so small that airborne particles enter the bloodstream easily from the lungs and are transported to every organ, including the brain.

Heavy metals and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) attach readily to the surface of these particles and are absorbed throughout our bodies to cause dozens of short-term and long-term symptoms.

When airborne diesel particulate concentrations are extremely high, this results in black or gray dust on doors and windows. Find more information at PortlandCleanAir.org.

Seventeen industries with relatively small quantities of industrial emissions comprise the industrial area to the north of Concordia. DEQ considers all but three of them small enough to not even need a permit. Three have lower-level air pollution permits.

If you smell industrial solvents, it could be them – or a leaking residential oil tank, tar from a roofing job or some other source.

We are working with the Concordia Neighborhood Association to monitor diesel particulate and VOC emissions using bike-mounted devices that take readings every two seconds. These require twohour-long bike rides to reach each street in the area.

The data are collected and made into a color-coded geographic information system map showing airborne concentrations of VOCs and airborne particulate one micron and smaller in diameter.

Volunteer bike riders are needed for this research. Please email Greg@PortlandCleanAir.org to volunteer for a ride – or if you have any questions about your exposure and/or what can be done about it.

Greg Bourger and Portland Clean Air works with 76 Portland neighborhood associations, churches and other local groups to assist stakeholder negotiations with the most dangerous unfiltered industrial smokestacks and diesel trucks.

By Erin E. Cooper | Concordia/Vernon/Woodlawn Neighborhood Emergency Team

In Portland, neighborhood emergency teams (NETs) are most often associated with earthquake preparedness and response.

Although that is often what draws people to volunteer and train for NET – and is a focus in training – NETs are also ready to respond to all kinds of large and small emergencies. For instance, in the past year, some of the ways NET members have volunteered include:

• Maintaining a safe perimeter around downed power lines until power company employees arrive
• Controlling traffic and monitoring patients at COVID-19 vaccination clinics
• Staffing warming shelters in the winter and cooling shelters in the summer
• Collecting donations of personal protective equipment and other supplies for first responders in the early stages of COVID-19
• Staffing evacuation shelters during Oregon’s 2020 forest fires
• Organizing and volunteering for mutual aid groups, including organizing and distributing food donations and other supplies
• Assisting at the Multnomah County Emergency Coordination Center with COVID-19 operations

Team members have also participated in thousands of hours of advanced training over the last year. Many of these topics are those associated with traditional disaster preparation, such as first aid and maintaining post-earthquake sanitation.

Other types of training have been made available to NETs in response to the needs of Portland’s population and the evolving role of NETs to assist in our communities. These trainings have covered topics such as diversity and equity in leadership, coping with trauma, building community resilience and building cultural competency.

There are currently over 2,000 active NET members on 87 neighborhood teams across Portland. Joining NET is a straightforward, multi-step process that starts by visiting PortlandOregon.gov/pbem/31667 to sign up.

In-person classes are suspended for the time being, but it’s possible to do the majority of the free training online. You’ll be able to complete the final – and most fun – hands-on portion of the training when it is safe to conduct in-person classes again.

Erin E. Cooper is a marine biologist living in Woodlawn. She spends a lot of time thinking about disasters and has been a NET member for many years. Contact her at OceanListener@gmail. com.