Shake, rattle and roll the evaluators

March 23, 2007

By Russell Stigall

Frontiersman

MAT-SU - If the building is rocking, it is safe to come knocking, at least according to Keith Rountree, Mat-Su Borough public works director.

Rountree and three other instructors have begun giving classes to train volunteers to evaluate buildings for safety in the event of an earthquake.

And Alaska is prone to earthquakes.

&#8220On average, six earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater occur somewhere in Alaska each year,” said Paul Whitmore, director of the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer. The warning center tracks tsunamis for most of North America. Whitmore said magnitude 6 temblors are powerful enough to shake plates off shelves.

Whitmore said a full 11 percent of the world's seismic energy is released from faults bisecting Alaska. A pair of large quakes shook the Valley in the last two decades. A strong earthquake centered around Chickaloon rocked the Valley in 1985, while a magnitude 7.9 slip in the Denali fault sent ripples through the area in 2002.

And Alaskans likely won't ever forget the Good Friday earthquake of 1964.

At a recent two-day training seminar, Rountree shared his ability to judge whether a building is safe after an earthquake with about 30 employees from the Mat-Su Borough, school district, city of Palmer, city of Wasilla and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Rountree was joined by damage assessment teachers Archie Giddings, Wasilla director of public works; Dave Meneses, building inspector for the city of Palmer; and Brad Sworts, borough transportation planning and environmental

manager.

The damage assessment program is still in the pilot stage, said Pamela Bergmann, pilot project leader and chair for the Department of the Interior post-disaster damage assessment task force. Bergmann said she will fine tune the program from input given by class participants.

A participant's damage assessment training is good for four years, Bergmann said. During this time, they will be nationally recognized as a Damage Assessment Evaluator. And as evaluators, they will become part of Alaska's disaster-response program.

Rountree said the Mat-Su area plans to run two sessions per year to train a total of 300 to 400 evaluators.

&#8220Our goal is to train as many people as possible so we have a good pool of resources,” Rountree said.

Students spent the first day of the two-day course in the classroom. The second day, they went out for on-site training.

The instructors simulated damage at three Kenai Supply buildings owned by the Department of Transportation. They used digitally manipulated photos of buildings to simulate missing support columns and other damage. Students evaluated the photos, and instructors talked about the structural aspects of wood, masonry, steel and reinforced concrete.

&#8220The basics of structures,” Rountree said.

The program takes a holistic approach when evaluating buildings, Rountree said.

Geotechnics, broken asphalt, walls, roofs, nonstructural items and hazardous materials are all taken into account to determine whether a building is safe.

Once a diagnosis is reached, assessors will placard the building with one of three color-coded notifications. A green placard means the building is safe to enter, yellow indicates portions of the building are off limits, and red warns against any and all entry.

The process is to keep people out of unsafe buildings, Rountree said. But also to &#8220return the building and life to normalcy as quickly as possible.”

For now, only borough buildings and cities of Wasilla and Palmer buildings that house at least 10 employees on a daily basis will be assessed in the event of a quake.

Earthquakes are not the only disasters where the skills of evaluators can be called in.

&#8220In an event like the flooding of last year, it would be helpful to have a cadre of inspectors who can go out and make judgments,” Rountree said.

It also can be used after tornadoes and high winds.

The program's primary focus now is on buildings, but can be extended to bridges and other public buildings, like hospitals.

&#8220If facilities are damaged during earthquakes, floods, high winds, et cetera, we will have the in-house capability of assessing the damage and determining if the facility is safe,” Rountree said.

Damage evaluators also will receive training for light search-and-rescue and first aid, simple triage and rapid treatment for the injured.

Contact Russell Stigall at

352-2267 or russell.stigall@

frontiersman.com.